DOCSLIB.ORG

The Comprehension of the Passive Voice by Different Populations and the Effects of Structural Priming on This Process

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
The Comprehension of the Passive Voice by Different Populations and the Effects of Structural Priming on This Process The Comprehension of the Passive Voice by Different Populations and the Effects of Structural Priming on this Process By: Nenad Jovanović Submitted to the Faculty of Human Sciences of the University of Potsdam 2018 Supervisors Prof. Dr. Barbara Höhle (University of Potsdam) Prof. Dr. James Law (Newcastle University) Dr. Kai Alter (Newcastle University) Published online on the Publication Server of the University of Potsdam: https://doi.org/10.25932/publishup-47590 https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-475900 The work reported in this dissertation has been conducted under the auspices of the Erasmus Mundus Joint International Doctorate for Experimental Approaches to Language and Brain (IDEALAB) of the University of Potsdam (DE), Newcastle University (UK), University of Groningen (NL), University of Trento (IT) and Macquarie University, Sydney (AU). The work presented here was funded by the European Commission within the action nr: 2014—0685/001-001-EMJD (Framework Partnership Agreement 2012-2025). ii Acknowledgements This dissertation is signed by me alone but producing such work would not have been possible without the help and support of numerous individuals. I want to thank everyone who made this possible. I would like to thank all three of my supervisors, Prof. Barbara Höhle, Prof. James Law and Dr. Kai Alter for their guidance and support throughout the process. Thank you to all of my colleagues whom I have shared an office with – in Golm, Newcastle and Sydney. I am thankful to all of my other colleagues and friends who supported me throughout this period. A special thanks to all of my participants, who taught me a lot about testing human subjects. I have gained a lot of valuable experience from that process. I am grateful for everyone who helped me with various technical elements one encounters while doing an international Ph.D., such as eye tracker setup and troubleshooting, item preparation, data analysis, participant management, ethics approvals, visas, employment and travel regulations etc. Thank you to the dear people around the globe who supported me and who were there for me during this time. Berlin, June 2018 iii Contents Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................................. iii Contents .................................................................................................................................................. iv List of Figures .......................................................................................................................................... vii List of Tables .......................................................................................................................................... viii CHAPTER I – GENERAL INTRODUCTION ......................................................................................................... 10 General Introduction ............................................................................................................................. 11 About the Passive Voice .................................................................................................................... 12 Processing of the Passive Voice by Adults ......................................................................................... 18 Acquisition and Processing of the Passive Voice by Children ........................................................... 20 Acquisition and Processing of the Passive Voice by Bilinguals .......................................................... 24 Methodological Background ................................................................................................................. 24 What is Structural Priming and What can it tell us About the Processing of the Passive Voice? ..... 25 Structural Priming in Production ....................................................................................................... 26 Structural Priming in Comprehension ............................................................................................... 26 Structural Priming of the Passive Voice ............................................................................................ 28 Eye Tracking and the Visual-World Paradigm as a Window into Syntactic Processing ..................... 30 The Current Thesis ................................................................................................................................. 33 References ............................................................................................................................................. 35 CHAPTER II: THE EFFECTS OF PRODUCTIVE AND RECEPTIVE STRUCTURAL PRIMING ON THE COMPREHENSION OF GERMAN PASSIVES: AN EYE TRACKING STUDY ............................................................................................... 41 Introduction ........................................................................................................................................... 42 The relationship between language production and comprehension .............................................. 42 Priming as a method of testing this relationship .............................................................................. 43 Previous priming in production studies ............................................................................................ 44 Previous priming in comprehension studies ..................................................................................... 45 Research question ............................................................................................................................. 47 Motivation: Why eye-tracking is useful............................................................................................. 49 Short preview for experiment and hypotheses ................................................................................ 49 Methods ............................................................................................................................................ 50 Preparation of data for analysis ........................................................................................................ 58 Data Analysis ..................................................................................................................................... 60 iv Results ................................................................................................................................................... 61 Discussion .............................................................................................................................................. 65 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................. 69 Literature ............................................................................................................................................... 71 CHAPTER III – PRIMING EFFECTS ON THE COMPREHENSION OF PASSIVE SENTENCES BY GERMAN-ACQUIRING CHILDREN – AN EYE TRACKING STUDY .......................................................................................................... 74 Introduction ........................................................................................................................................... 75 Theories on the delay in the comprehension of passives ................................................................. 76 Acquisition of passives by German-speaking children ...................................................................... 77 The Effect of structural priming on children´s comprehension of passives ...................................... 79 The Current Study ................................................................................................................................. 84 Experiment I – Children ......................................................................................................................... 87 Methods ............................................................................................................................................ 87 Data Analysis ..................................................................................................................................... 93 Results ............................................................................................................................................... 95 Experiment II – Adults ........................................................................................................................... 99 Methods ............................................................................................................................................ 99 Data analysis .................................................................................................................................... 100 Results – the priming group ............................................................................................................ 100 Results – the no-priming group ....................................................................................................... 101 Discussion ............................................................................................................................................ 102 Conclusion ..........................................................................................................................................
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Introduction
    Introduction Thefocusofthe present thesis isthe passivevoice,perceivedfromasemantico- syntactic pointofview.Myprimaryaimistoexplore theuseandfunctionsofthe passivevoiceinEnglish,examiningthereasons whichmotivateanauthortopreferthe passiveformtotheactiveone.Secondaryinterestisdevotedtothefunctionandtheuse ofthe passivevoice inCzech.AsresearchmaterialIhavechosentheshortstories by theAmericanwriterO.HenryandtheirCzechtranslations byStanislavKlíma.The reasonswhyIhavechosenthegenreofashortstoryare that itisnotedfortheunityof time,placeandaction.I believethat duetothisfact,theresultsof myresearchwillgive higherevidenceoftheuseofthe passivevoicesincethe basis forcomparisonisunified andcompactcontraryto,forexample,anovel.Forthesamereasonofevidence,I explore just thetranslationsofonetranslator,sinceeveryone hashis/her personal style anddifferentwayofthinkingandunderstandingoforiginal text. Iaminterestedinthe issueofinformationpackaging,especiallyinthedifferent waysofexpressingone andthesamerealityinthetwolanguages:when bothactive and passiveversionsareformallypermitted,whatfactorsfavour thechoiceofoneover other?The passivevoice isa phenomenonwhichisinvolvedbothinEnglishandin Czechbutinunlikeextent.Asfaras Iknow,the passivevoiceisafavouritemeansof expressioninEnglishwhereas inCzechitsusageisnotsopopular.Inviewofthisfact,I supposethattheresults willworkthisway. Thethesisisdividedintotwomainpartswhichareinterlinked,andcomplement eachother.Thefirst partdealswiththetheoreticalknowledgeaboutthe passivevoicein EnglishaswellasinCzech,whereas inthesecondpartI
    [Show full text]
  • Difficulties in Learning and Producing Passive Voice
    International Conference on Linguistics, Literature and Culture Difficulties in Learning and Producing Passive Voice Fitnete Martinaj Faculty of Foreign Languages, AAB College Prishtina Abstract This study examines how learners learning English produce and judge English passive voice structures. The ultimate goal of this study is to contribute to an understanding of the extent, nature and sources of learners' persistent difficulties with some syntactic properties of the language they are acquiring. It is to examine whether word order errors in the production of English passive voice by L2 learners stem from lack of knowledge or from difficulties with automatic implementation of L2 procedures. To examine whether errors in the production of English passive voice by L2 learners (in our case, English) can be attributed to transfer of L1 (in our case, Albanian) properties and vice versa, Albanian and English patterns are compared. Taken together, the facts indicate that difficulties with English passive voice structures are a consistent phenomenon in L2 acquisition, and do not follow in a direct way from properties of the L1. Furthermore, the facts show that learners' errors are associated with some syntactic configurations, suggesting that L2 learners divert similar grammatical hypotheses and make use of similar mechanisms for language acquisition. Keywords: transfer, compare, similarities, interference Introduction The English passive is an English language structure that is used in many reading passages, particularly in academic and scientific texts, when it is not necessary to be mentioned the responsibility of the doer. Therefore, it is obvious that English passive is included in English instruction in most education levels. During my teaching experiences, I have found that a large number of Albanian EFL learners, at university level, cannot use the English passive correctly, although they have been taught this structure since secondary schools.
    [Show full text]
  • Sentiment Analysis in Chinese Master's Thesis Presented to The
    Sentiment Analysis in Chinese Master's Thesis Presented to The Faculty of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Brandeis University Department of Computer Science Nianwen Xue, Advisor In Partial Fulfillment Of the Requirements for Master's Degree By Lin Pan February 2012 Copyright by Lin Pan © 2012 Abstract Sentiment Analysis in Chinese A thesis presented to the Department of Computer Science Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Brandeis University Waltham, Massachusetts By Lin Pan Sentiment analysis has been a rapidly growing research area since the advent of Web 2.0 when social networking, blogging, tweeting, web applications, and online shopping, etc., began to gain ever more popularity. The large amount of data from product reviews, blogging posts, tweets and customer feedbacks, etc., makes it necessary to automatically identify and classify sentiments from theses sources. This can potentially benefit not only businesses and organizations who need market intelligence but also individuals who are interested in iii purchasing/comparing products online. Sentiment analysis is performed on various levels from feature to document level. Supervised, semi-supervised, unsupervised and topic modeling techniques are used towards solving the problems. In this thesis, I explore linguistic features and structures unique to Chinese in a machine-learning context and experiment with document-level sentiment analysis using three Chinese corpora. Results from different feature sets and classifiers are reported in terms of accuracy, which shows the
    [Show full text]
  • The English Passive: a Cognitive Construction Grammar Approach
    Passive Constructions in Present-Day English Jérôme PUCKICA University Grenoble 3, France, LIDILEM (EA 609) In English grammars, voice is often presented as a system opposing two formally defined members expressing two different ways of viewing the event denoted by a (transitive) verb: the active voice (e.g. The chief manager fired the employee) and the passive voice (e.g. The employee was fired (by the chief manager)). While maintaining that voice is a category of the English verb, analysts generally note that voice in English is a clause or sentence-level phenomenon which concerns the way the semantic arguments of a verb are mapped onto syntactic functions, with subject selection being the central issue. The ‘BE + past participle’ construction is understandably the main focus of presentations of the passive voice in Present-Day English (PDE). Yet, the label ‘passive voice’ cannot be reduced to that single construction. A passive construction may involve a verb other than BE combined with a past participle, as in the case of the GET-passive, but it may also not involve any kind of ‘helping’ verb. In addition, there are reasonable grounds for arguing that a passive construction may not even contain a past participle. In this paper, we argue that two main kinds of passive constructions may be recognized in PDE: first, standard or ‘central’ passive constructions, which all involve a passive past participle form; second, ‘marginal’ passive constructions, which do not involve such a form. The first part of this paper (§1) deals with central passives. It provides several arguments for distinguishing between passive past participles and active (or perfect) ones and suggests a distinction between two subtypes of central passives, namely, simple or bare central passives and periphrastic central passives.
    [Show full text]
  • Comprehensibility of English Written Sentences Made by Non-Language University Students 181
    Comprehensibility of English Written Sentences Made by Non-language University Students 181 COMPREHENSIBILITY OF ENGLISH WRITTEN SENTENCES MADE BY NON- LANGUAGE UNIVERSITY STUDENTS Patrisius Istiarto Djiwandono Faculty of Language and Arts Universitas Ma Chung, Malang, Indonesia [email protected] Abstract The study aimed to identify how an English native speaker and a highly proficient non-native speaker rated the comprehensibility of English sentences written by learners who were studying non-language majors. Nine essays written by students of Pharmacy and 14 essays written by students of Accounting were rated by the two raters. They were guided by a scoring rubric which emphasized mainly on the grammaticality and comprehensibility. Their ratings classified the sentences into two major categories: sentences with mistakes that potentially hinder comprehensibility, and sentences with mistakes that completely make them incomprehensible. Mistakes that make sentences partially comprehensible include wrong word order, coma splice, wrong auxiliary, wrong form of finite verb, wrong form of active sentences, the omission of verb be, intensifier, and introductory “there”. Mistakes that completely blocks comprehensibility are fragmented phrase, wrong collocations, mismatched markers, wrong part of speech, unfinished sentences, and excessively long sentences joined by a coordinator. A number of suggestions for the teaching of grammar, writing, and vocabulary are then proposed on the basis of the findings. Key words: Comprehensibility, errors, grammaticality, mistakes Comprehensibility is an important issue in communication. When messages are delivered in a language that is foreign to the speakers or writers, it becomes even more critical. These senders of the messages have to put their ideas in meaningful strings of sentences, with the right grammatical patterns, and preferably appropriate collocations.
    [Show full text]
  • Passive Voice Usage in Undergraduate STEM Textbooks
    University of Central Florida STARS Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2004-2019 2018 Passive Voice Usage in Undergraduate STEM Textbooks Huiyuan Luo University of Central Florida Part of the Language and Literacy Education Commons Find similar works at: https://stars.library.ucf.edu/etd University of Central Florida Libraries http://library.ucf.edu This Doctoral Dissertation (Open Access) is brought to you for free and open access by STARS. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2004-2019 by an authorized administrator of STARS. For more information, please contact [email protected]. STARS Citation Luo, Huiyuan, "Passive Voice Usage in Undergraduate STEM Textbooks" (2018). Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2004-2019. 5894. https://stars.library.ucf.edu/etd/5894 PASSIVE VOICE USAGE IN UNDERGRADUATE STEM TEXTBOOKS By Huiyuan “Tia” Luo B.A. Capital Normal University, 2011 M.A. University of Kansas, 2014 A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the College of Education and Human Performance at the University of Central Florida Orlando, Florida Spring Term 2018 Major Professor: Florin Mihai 2018 Huiyuan “Tia” Luo ii ABSTRACT The present study, a corpus-based quantitative analysis, investigated the use of passive voice in terms of percentage (percentage of total passive usage), constructions (the most commonly used passive forms), and dispersion (the verbs that tended to be associated with passive usage) in college STEM textbooks, more specifically in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. The corpus consisted of twenty textbooks with over 1 million running words selected from the textbooks’ chapters.
    [Show full text]
  • English Passive Voice Table Pdf
    English passive voice table pdf Continue The verbs are also said to be either active (the executive committee approved the new policy) or passive (the new policy was approved by the executive committee) in the voice. In an active voice, the theme and verb relationship are simple: the subject of being-er or do-er and the verb moves the sentence together. In a passive voice, the subject of the sentence is neither do-er nor be-er, but it is operated by any other agent or something unnamed (the new policy has been approved). Computerized grammar checkers can choose a passive voice design from miles away and ask you to revise it for a more active design. There's nothing wrong with a passive voice, but if you can say the same thing in active mode, do it (see exceptions below). Your text will have more pizzazz as a result, since passive verb designs tend to lie around in your pajamas and avoid actual work. We find an overabundance of passive voices in proposals created by self-defense business interests, magniloquent educators, and bombastic military writers (who should get tired of this accusation) who use a passive voice to avoid accountability for the measures taken. Thus, cigarette ads have been designed to appeal especially to children placing the burden on ads - unlike we have developed cigarette ads to appeal especially to children in which we take responsibility. At the White House press briefing, we could hear that the president had been informed that some members of Congress had been vetted, and not the Head of the Internal Revenue Service informed the President that her agency was auditing some members of Congress because passive construction avoids responsibility for counseling and auditing.
    [Show full text]
  • Word Template
    dissertations Lea Meriläinen Language Transfer | 9 Lea Meriläinen | in the Written English of Finnish Students Language Transfer in the Written English of Finnish Students is a study Language Transfer in the Written English Finnish of Students Lea Meriläinen on the learner English of Finnish students and its development be- tween 1990 and 2005. The study Language Transfer identifies and analyses some of the most frequently occurring deviant in the Written English L1-induced lexical and syntactic patterns in Finns’ written English. of Finnish Students Through the examination of these patterns, the study also addresses the changes that have taken place in Finnish students’ English skills during 1990–2005. Publications of the University of Eastern Finland Dissertations in Education, Humanities, and Theology Publications of the University of Eastern Finland Dissertations in Education, Humanities, and Theology isbn 978-952-61-0229-0 issn 1798-5625 LEA MERILÄINEN Language Transfer in the Written English of Finnish Students Publications of the University of Eastern Finland Dissertations in Education, Humanities, and Theology 9 University of Eastern Finland Joensuu 2010 Kopijyvä Joensuu, 2010 Sarjan vastaava toimittaja: Jopi Nyman Myynti: Itä-Suomen yliopiston kirjasto ISSN (nid.) 1798-5625 ISSN-L 1798-5625 ISBN (nid.) 978-952-61-0229-0 Meriläinen, Lea Maarit Language Transfer in the Written English of Finnish Students Joensuu: Itä‐Suomen yliopisto, 2010, 238 sivua Publications of the University of Eastern Finland. Dissertations in Education, Humanities, and Theology; 9 ISSN 1798-5625 ISBN 978-952-61-0229-0 Diss. ABSTRACT: LANGUAGE TRANSFER IN THE WRITTEN ENGLISH OF FINNISH STUDENTS This study examines patterns of lexical and syntactic transfer in Finnish students’ written English between 1990 and 2005.
    [Show full text]
  • Identifying Reduced Passive Voice Constructions in Shallow Parsing Environments
    IDENTIFYING REDUCED PASSIVE VOICE CONSTRUCTIONS IN SHALLOW PARSING ENVIRONMENTS by Sean Paul Igo A thesis submitted to the faculty of The University of Utah in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Computer Science School of Computing The University of Utah December 2007 Copyright c Sean Paul Igo 2007 All Rights Reserved THE UNIVERSITY OF UTAH GRADUATE SCHOOL SUPERVISORY COMMITTEE APPROVAL of a thesis submitted by Sean Paul Igo This thesis has been read by each member of the following supervisory committee and by majority vote has been found to be satisfactory. Chair: Ellen Riloff Robert Kessler Ed Rubin THE UNIVERSITY OF UTAH GRADUATE SCHOOL FINAL READING APPROVAL To the Graduate Council of the University of Utah: I have read the thesis of Sean Paul Igo in its final form and have found that (1) its format, citations, and bibliographic style are consistent and acceptable; (2) its illustrative materials including figures, tables, and charts are in place; and (3) the final manuscript is satisfactory to the Supervisory Committee and is ready for submission to The Graduate School. Date Ellen Riloff Chair, Supervisory Committee Approved for the Major Department Martin Berzins Chair/Dean Approved for the Graduate Council David S. Chapman Dean of The Graduate School ABSTRACT This research is motivated by the observation that passive voice verbs are often mislabeled by NLP systems as being in the active voice when the “to be” auxiliary is missing (e.g., “The man arrested had a...”). These errors can directly impact thematic role recognition and applications that depend on it.
    [Show full text]
  • WHY ENGLISH PASSIVE IS DIFFICULT to TEACH (AND LEARN) Eli Hinkel Seattle University
    WHY ENGLISH PASSIVE IS DIFFICULT TO TEACH (AND LEARN) Eli Hinkel Seattle University Hinkel, E. (2002). Why English passive is difficult to teach (and learn). In E. Hinkel & S. Fotos (Eds.), New perspectives on grammar teaching (pp. 233-260). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Introduction As many ESL and EFL teachers know from experience, teaching the meanings, uses, and functions of the passive voice represents one of the thorniest problems in L2 grammar instruction, and speakers of many L1s appear to have difficulty with passive constructions. However, the uses of passive structures are common in academic writing (Talmy, 1988), and advanced learners are often expected to produce written texts that utilize passive forms. Because learners often do not use passive verb phrases in correct forms, much of the L2 instruction associated with the passive voice includes the derivation of passive structures from active. For example, The average American seeks independence. ... Independence is sought by the average American. (Steer and Carlisi, 1998, p. 263) The presentation of the passive verb form in simple tenses (present or past) is usually followed by the demonstration of passive verb forms in various tenses, such as progressive (The letter is being written (by Mary)) or perfect (The book has been read (by John)). Most grammar textbooks provide exercise drills for various passive structures that often require learners to identify the tense and the voice of the verb in the context of a sentence or a short passage and produce the appropriate verb form. A vast majority of grammar textbooks include a chapter on the meanings, forms, and uses of the passive voice, and most L2 learners at intermediate and higher levels of proficiency have studied the derivation of passive structures and worked through the exercises.
    [Show full text]
  • The Acquisition of English Passive Constructions by Mandarin Speakers: a Developmental Perspective
    THE ACQUISITION OF ENGLISH PASSIVE CONSTRUCTIONS BY MANDARIN SPEAKERS: A DEVELOPMENTAL PERSPECTIVE Kenny Wang B.A. (I&T), B.A. (Hons. I) A thesis presented to the University of Western Sydney in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy January, 2010 © Kenny Wang 2010 To my son Jeremy 揚華, who is growing up to be a speaker of the “Pure Language” (Zephaniah 3:9). Acknowledgement It has been an exciting journey writing this thesis. I would not have been able to complete this thesis without the support of my supervisors, my colleagues, my family and other people. Firstly, I would like to thank my thesis supervisors, A/Prof. Sandra Hale, Dr. Bruno Di Biase, Dr. Satomi Kawaguchi, Dr. Michael Tyler and Dr. Ruying Qi. I am most deeply indebted to Dr. Bruno Di Biase and Dr. Satomi Kawaguchi for being my mentors right throughout my postgraduate studies. I have benefited immensely from their guidance, expertise, as well as their critical and encouraging comments. I wish to also express my sincerely gratitude to A/Prof. Sandra Hale and Dr. Michael Tyler for their guidance and their insightful comments; and Dr. Ruying Qi for her constant encouragement and support. My PhD study was made possible by the Australian Postgraduate Award and the financial support from the University of Western Sydney, for which I am very grateful. I am grateful to Dr. Yanyin Zhang for her constructive comments and for encouraging me to expand my BA Honours work into this PhD. I would like to also thank Dr. Jing Han and Ms.
    [Show full text]
  • The Mysteries of the English Passive Voice and Its Use (And Misuse) in EFL Writing in Japan
    Journal of Pan-Pacific Association of Applied Linguistics, 21(2), 1-13. https://doi.org/10.25256/PAAL.21.2.1 Secret Agents and Innocent Patients: The Mysteries of the English Passive Voice and its Use (and Misuse) in EFL Writing in Japan Paul Mathieson Nara Medical University Mathieson, P. (2017). Secret agents and innocent patients: The mysteries of the English passive voice and its use (and misuse) in EFL writing in Japan. Journal of Pan-Pacific Association of Applied Linguistics, 21(2), 1-13. Though generally under-utilised in spoken English, the passive voice plays a crucial role in formal, written English (Biber et al., 1999). An understanding of how the passive voice operates in English writing is therefore a vital skill for EFL learners in secondary and higher education so that they may be able to both understand and produce fluent and accurate formal English writing. Using samples of Japanese high school learners’ writing, this paper sought to shed light on why many Japanese EFL learners struggle to produce accurate passive constructions in English writing. The paper begins by examining how the passive voice is used in English, focusing on core passive forms, “pseudo- passives” (Balcom, 2001), agency, and transitivity. Conveying a sense of objectivity (such as through the use of agentless passives) is also highlighted as a crucial feature of the use of the passive voice in formal, written English. Comparing the use of the passive voice in Japanese to its use in English reveals some structural and functional similarities, although there are some syntactic differences – particularly in relation to verb conjugation.
    [Show full text]