A Visual Metho d for Teaching

Grammatical Concepts to Primary and

Secondary Scho olers

An Interactive Sentence Assembly To ol



on the Internet

Masters Thesis by

Camiel van Breugel

httpwwwwileidenuniv nl hom ecv breu ge

cvbreugecsleidenunivnl

Department of Computer Science

Leiden University Netherlands

Septemb er

 httpwwwwileidenuniv nl hom ecv bre uge bin spo okj esh tml

Contents

Intro duction

Initial Grammar Instruction

instruction

Drawbacks of traditional grammar instruction

Visualizing grammar

Sentence diagrams

Examples of sentence diagrams

What go es on within the brain of a language user

Lexical frames

Using lexical frames for a new typ e of exercise

Applying Lexical Frames in a new kind of grammar exercises

Design philosophy

New exercises for grammar instruction

Access through internet

Implementation

Drawing the ghostlike shap es

Shap e description

Living eyes

Bracketed string notation

Constructing a Lexical Frame into SegmentShapes

The syntactic prop erties in the Feature Matrix

Interaction on lexical frames

Freeedit mo de

Conclusion

Future extensions

App endix A

References

Preface

There are several serious problems with conventional grammar instruction for

young children The biggest problem of all is that grammatical concepts are often

to o abstract for them Furthermore conventional grammar instruction proves

to b e demotivating and causes many children to lose interest in language edu

cation In traditional grammar instruction the childrens primary task consists

mainly of the rather monotonous exercise of analyzing sentences One concept

that might help is that of edutainment which is not very surprisingly the com

bination of education and entertainment Edutainment might turn learning into

a more attractive pro cess and draw the childrens attention more easily than

conventional educational metho ds What I prop ose is an alternative approach

by which children develop grammar skills by building sentences ie constructing

them out of several dierent building blo cks which results in complete sentence

diagrams My work resulted in the design and implementation of a prototyp e of

such a computer application in the form of an interactive grammar puzzle The

big advantages in this design are that abstract names for grammatical concepts

can b e replaced by visual shap es like the pieces of a puzzle and that the under

lying cognitive mo dels of the grammar visualization metho d are very suitable as

building blo cks These mo dels were designed by Kemp en and are explained

briey in this do cument To maximize accessibility I try to exploit the current

rise in multimedia p ossibilities and availability by presenting the grammar exer

cises by means of an interactive computer puzzle that will b e accessible through

the internet

Intro duction

This do cument describ es the prototyp e that I designed and implemented of a

computer application for computer assisted grammar learning and training for

children in the higher grades of primary education and the lower grades of sec

ondary education It forms part of my graduation pro ject that was done at the

Department of Computer Science at Leiden University in co op eration with the

Exp erimental and Theoretical Psychology Unit of the Department of Psychology

at Leiden University It deals with the main psycholinguistic and educational

asp ects of this pro ject the prototyp es design and design philosophy and the

ma jor asp ects of the implementation It is concluded by an overview of the

p ossibilities of this system and some ideas for future development I will start

this pap er with a short overview of the current state of grammar instruction

in section Section is a short intro duction to initial grammar visualization

by means of sentence diagrams Next in section I describ e in short a psy

chological mo del of cognitive structures named lexical frames that can serve as

building blo cks for constructing these sentence diagrams Section deals with

the interface design of a computer game for grammar instruction for children

that is based on these lexical frames The actual design and implementation

of the system and the main data structures and algorithms of the computer

application are describ ed in section This pap er ends with a short summary

and some ideas for further progress in section

Initial Grammar Instruction

Language is certainly the most p owerful medium that we humans p ossess to

express ourselves Even if we wanted to we would never b e able to stop joking

chatting tittletattling debating and discussing with others We write things

down in order to preserve the b est or worst of our thoughts and studies to

send letters to p eople at distance or just to keep notes More rambling souls

may write p o etry dramatic plays or even ction Serving all kind of purp oses

sp oken and written language play a very central role in the life of all sp eakers

listeners readers and writers It is the very foundation of our culture Lud

wig Wittgenstein has put it this way The limits of language are the limits of

my world For innumerable things such as convincing selling keeping acquain

tances explaining tale telling and many other things it is a huge advantage for

one to b e an exp ert user of his or her language This is why during basic educa

tion children should b e drilled extensively in sp eaking listening orthography

reading and writing to try and make them exp erienced language users It would

b e more than an educational goal alone to teach students to comprehend and

use their language fully and exp erience all of its rich p ossibilities However as

one observes the numerous errors and p o or quality that students pro duce in

writing one is almost forced to b elieve that this is not p ossible for the larger

part of the students They lack the necessary insights and fail to see what their

mistakes are and why The Dutch language contains lots of word pairs that are

pronounced the same while their orthography diers and dep ends on their role

in the sentence This is probably the main source of missp elling in Dutch

This problem can only b e tackled by some form of grammar instruction that

unveils the structure of a sentence and the relations b etween the words But not

only writing skills b enet by grammar instruction Reading do es require a lot

of grammatical exp erience to o

Unfortunately it cannot b e said that grammar instruction has b een very

successful in the past There is often p o or feedback and it can b e demotivating

for b oth teachers and students The lack of enough time at scho ols for teaching

grammar to pupils is not the only reason for this To b egin with there is the

pitiful delimitation that grammar instruction in the sense of simply learning

the rules by heart do es not yield the b enets wished for Children manage to

learn a language without consciously knowing the rules and imp osing these

rules on them only tends to confuse them With this in mind many metho ds

were develop ed for the Dutch language over the years which I shall now and

then refer to as traditional grammar instruction

Traditional grammar instruction

For Dutch grammar instruction there are a numb er of several commonly applied

metho ds such as Taalactief Montessori Grammatica in balans and Taaltoren

What most of these have in common is that the developing language user is

provided with exercises that concentrate on the orthography of the nite

analysis of the sentence structure the parts of sp eech while the diculty level

is increased gradually There is a lot more to say ab out them of course but I

shall rst give the most imp ortant asp ects of these metho ds Grammar in

struction often follows the path of confrontation with a new rule followed by its

application to concrete sentences There is no direct connection with the other

forms of language instruction like training in sp elling writing sp eaking and

listening but it takes place in separate courses The main concept is learning by

training exercises not by the exchange of ideas or much discussion They deal

with rules for classication of constituents direct object indirect

object parts of speech noun article and sentence types armative

interrogative imperative And they touch up on dealing with rules for recogni

tion and pro duction of conjugations and inections tense activepassive voice

stndrd person imperative adjective comparative form and inectional form

noun singularplural case analysis and punctuation marks mainsubordinate

clause point comma exclamation mark interrogationmark and stylistic construc

tions indirectdirect speech clause length choice of words references The average

pupil sub jected to this approach should probably b e able to improve his p erfor

mances in comprehensive reading and logical thinking a great deal But there

are still a numb er of imp ortant drawbacks to overcome Apart from this the

question rises whether traditional grammar instruction still meets the mo dern

educational standards

Drawbacks of traditional grammar instruction

Evers mentions some ma jor disadvantages of traditional grammar instruction

like that it takes away childrens natural wonder ab out sp eech and language

employs unrealistic use of language in the exercises and provides knowledge of

grammar but not directly the understanding of everyday sp eech Her main con

clusion is that traditional grammar instruction is to o abstract and to o dicult

for young children so that tricks are needed that it is insuciently integrated

in the education of reading and that it is often demotivating for children Kem

p en mentions low level of motivation in pupils and teachers little time for

practising late and fragmented feedback insucient scaolding and the little

ro om for explanatory learning The cause of all the troubles that children en

counter when dealing with grammar rules lies mainly in their inability to think

abstractly Roughly sp eaking it can b e said that children aged under twelve can

only p erform concrete op erations It is not until the age of ab out eleven years

that they enter the abstract phase The main problem of traditional grammar

instruction is that it prescrib es rules that are not concrete enough And a rule

that is to o abstract to b e fully understo o d is not likely to mean a lot to one No

wonder that making those exercises is not regularly regarded by children as a

very interesting o ccupation It is simply not the natural way for young children

to learn by starting with a sequence of rules They have a completely dierent

learning mechanism of playful and eortless discovery and challenge They are

stimulated a lot when they are given the chance to comp ete with others How

ever later on in their development this mechanism seems to b e replaced more

and more by explicit and logical reasoning All this forms a strong argument

that it would b e b etter if somehow the young students were guided to discover

the rules themselves What is needed most to accomplish this is having easier

exercises with the same eect with immediate result and feedback Computer

assisted language learning probably might oer just the necessary p ossibilities

Doing exercises with the go o d oldfashioned p encil and pap er still might b e

useful of course but this activity takes a lot of valuable time and a dierent

kind of eort which can distract from the intended learning And it takes a

lot of the teachers time to correct the worked out exercises This time can b e

sp ent more eciently when that task is taken over by some form of computer

assisted learning One of the promising things ab out computer assisted learning

is that it allows scaolding This is a concept by which the learner is stim

ulated and guided to follow the desired b ehavioral patterns rep eatedly which

hop efully results in the correct b ehaviour For practical use in grammar instruc

tion scaolding should b e used to keep the children busy with the construction

of sentences out of a set of suitable building blo cks that are limited in their

use only by the nature of their grammatical prop erties This has the enormous

advantage of immediate feedback which would normally seem imp ossible for a

teacher with twenty pupils or more In this pro ject I try to exploit mo dern mul

timedia technology to supp ort the exercises in an interactive setting as a new

eort in this eld The exercises can b e presented in the form of a puzzle or as a

work of construction The element of game is a very imp ortant and sometimes

underestimated asp ect of the childrens learning mechanisms

Visualizing grammar

The rst thing to b e done when making abstract terms more concrete is applying

visualization There are several asp ects of visualization in general that are worth

noting with resp ect to computer assisted learning To b egin with it can b e

used as an analogical representation that can serve as an external memory and

provide contextual clues Such an analogical representation is often strong in

combination with a direct manipulation interface Structures b ecome more

concrete b ecause visualization builds an imaginative bridge b etween task and

concept Furthermore it can b e used to draw attention esp ecially when it lo oks

funny and it is not disturbing or confusing In the case of grammar instruction

the sentence structure can b e unveiled at once or in steps which hop efully

improves comprehension Next I shall describ e the sentence diagrams in which

grammatical relations of sentences usually are expressed

Sentence diagrams

The common metho d for visualizing the structure of a sentence is drawing a

sentence diagram Generally there are two kinds of sentence diagrams In the

rst one every single word is to b e lab elled with the prop er partofsp eech lab el

In the second sentence diagram the syntactic relations b etween the words and

word groups in the sentence are represented in a diagram as a hierarchical tree

structure This distinction is known as partofspeech tagging versus syntactic

in Dutch taalkundig ontleden versus redekundig ontleden An example of

these sentence diagrams is illustrated for the Dutch sentence De schildpad ver

sloeg de haas English The turtle has b eaten the hare in gures and The

lw zn zww lw zn

De schildpad versloeg de haas

Figure Partofsp eech sentence diagram of The turtle has beaten the hare in

Dutch

ZIN

OND HFD LV

NG NG

det hfd det hfd

De schildpad versloeg de haas

Figure Syntactic of The turtle has beaten the hare in Dutch

1

lab els in Dutch indicate the various grammatic terms Partsofsp eech lab els

and phrasal category lab els are shown in b old font whereas the identiers and

the syntactic function lab els are printed with plain characters I use capitals

1

In App endix A a list of abbreviations can b e found with the English translations

only for syntactic function lab els in the second row and for all phrasal category

lab els As one can see the parse tree in gure is slightly dierent than one

would rememb er or exp ect to see with his own education in mind This is a so

called headdriven parse tree It is like the sentence diagram of old but now the

constituents are sub divided into more detailed subtrees The leading memb er

of such a subtree is called hoofd English head In the sentence of gure for

instance the main verb versloeg plays the role of head of the sentence and b oth

nouns schildpad and haas are heads in a noun phrase The other memb ers of a

subtree also play a role in that subtree Eg article de plays the role of deter

miner in b oth noun groups Most grammar instruction metho ds let the students

p erform some sort of partofsp eech tagging and syntactic parsing Their task

in the latter case is to analyse sentences by nding the sub ject the nite verb

the direct ob ject the indirect ob ject etcetera For the ma jority of the students

it can b e said that their skills in partofspeech tagging outrun those in syntactic

parsing This could well b e explained by the assumption that the classication

of words with partofsp eech tagging is more concrete and therefore easier than

the rather abstract denitions and large numb er of p ossible phrasal categories

with syntactic parsing

Examples of sentence diagrams

To intro duce the partofsp eech lab els I have provided two sentences ik vraag me

af waar die is in gure and Er wordt me door niemand verteld dat die en haar

twee jonge zussen elkaar vaak besproeien in de tuin in gure Together these

sentences contain most partofsp eech lab els that exist These two sentences

ZIN

OW HFD MV PRT CMP

NG NG BWG ZIN

hfd hfd hfd KV OW HFD

BWG NG

hfd hfd

pers.vn zww wednd.vn bw vrag.vn betr.vn kww

ik vraag me af waar die is

Figure Example of a sentence diagram in Dutch ik vraag me af waar die is

already use a lot of segments Figure shows the most imp ortant segments that

are needed for Dutch grammar ZIN

BEP PV MV BEP HFD CMP

BWG HLP NG VZG ZIN

hfd hfd hfd hfd vzgobj OS OW LV BEP BEP HFD

NG OSG NG NG BWG VZG

hfd hfd nev hfd nev hfd hfd hfd vzgobj

NG NG NG

hfd det teller bep hfd det hfd

DG TWG BNG DG

hfd hfd hfd hfd

bw hww pers.vn vz onbep.vn zww ond.vgw betr.vn nev.vgw bez.vn telw bn zn wedig.vn bw vz lw zn zww

er wordt me door niemand verteld dat die en haar twee jonge zussen elkaar vaak in de tuin besproeien

Figure Example sentence diagram in Dutch

What go es on within the brain of a language

user

Among other things Kemp en is studying the ins and outs of sentence p erception

and pro duction for years now seeking explanations for slips of the tongue and

slips of the p en by language users It shall always b e the case that p eople create

illformed sentences and missp ell words And some p erfectly correct sentences

are in some ways so nasty that one can almost predict the mistakes a reader

is going to make when reading them aloud Another example is every years

Dutch event of the Nationaal Dictee where a TVpresentator reads aloud a

dictation and a selected group of Dutch language users tries to write it down

attempting not to miss any It has to b e said that this dictation is often bulking

of uncommon and dicult words not really every day sp eech

Many cognitive mo dels of linguistic structures in language users are b eing

develop ed in an attempt to explain human language b ehaviour Mayb e the sim

plest way to lo ok at these structures is to see them as little elements that contain

conceptual morphophonological or syntactic information that are activated or

connected when needed One theoretical mo del of brain structures at the syn

tactic level is based on lexical frames or word frames Kemp en has comp osed

these lexical frames in his earlier research They are small elementary gram

matical units that are mo deled after the cognitive structures that might well

exist somehow in the brain of a language user In the next section I will give a

short overview of the design and the p ossibilities of these lexical frames NG NG NG NG NG DG

hfd det teller bep vzvw hfd

zn/vn DG TWG BNG/VZG/ZIN VZG lw/bzit.vn/aanw.vn/NG

BNG BNG BNG BNG BNG TWG

hfd bep vzvw lv mv hfd

bn BWG VZG NG NG tw

VZG VZG VZG VZG BWG BWG

hfd vzgobj bep cmp hfd bep

vz NG/BWG BWG ZIN bw BWG

ZIN ZIN ZIN ZIN HLP

HFD PV OS PRT hfd

zww/kww HLP ond.vgw VZG/BWG/BNG/NG hww

ZIN ZIN ZIN ZIN ZIN ZIN ZIN ZIN

KV IVL MV VZVW OW LV CMP BEP

NG/BNG/VZG/ZIN vz NG/VZG/ZIN VZG NG/ZIN NG/ZIN ZIN BWG/VZG/ZIN/NG

Figure The most imp ortant segments for Dutch grammar

Lexical frames

Kemp en utilizes the hierarchical tree structures mentioned ab ove to visualize

the grammatical concepts within a sentence He distinguishes twenty dierent

parts of sp eech ve dierent word groups and fteen syntactic functions These

are not very dierent from those generally used in scho ols Word groups but also

single parts of sp eech may p erform one of the syntactic functions Furthermore

there are seventeen dierent syntactic prop erties that b elong to some of the

no des A complete table of their names and translation in English can b e found

in App endix A An imp ortant feature of the sentence diagrams prop osed by

Kemp en is that the two sentence diagrams in gures and are combined

into one now The partofsp eech lab els are connected to the leaf no des of the

syntactic parse tree as is shown in gure The structure of this twoinone

sentence diagram shows a rep eating pattern in the vertical direction First comes

a phrasal category ZIN sentence then the role or syntactic function of each ZIN

OND HFD LV

NG NG

det hfd det hfd

lw zn zww lw zn

De schildpad versloeg de haas

Figure Combined sentence diagram of the parse tree and the partofsp eech

lab els

subtree such as OND sub ject and LV direct ob ject and then again another

phrasal category of a subtree followed by a syntactic function again The two

no des at the b ottom of each subtree nally contain only the partofsp eech

lab el and the word lab el This pattern makes it p ossible to split the tree into

small segments Every sequence phrasal categorysyntactic functionphrasal

categorypartofspeech label is one segment The top lab el is called the root

the second one function and the third one foot Figure shows the segments

for the sentence The turtle has beaten the hare Two or more segments with

the same ro ot lab el can b e joined back again by a horizontal link op eration

as shown in gure A numb er of segments that are joined in this way with

precisely one segment playing the role of head forms the basis of one lexical

frame Every segment contains also syntactic prop erties like case p erson etc

that b elong to that segment These are stored in an array named the feature

matrix The lexical frames at the b ottom of a parse tree have an additional row

lab eled by the words of the sentence So a lexical frame may have four rows

with lab els a phrasal category called the root next a numb er of n grammatical

functions each with a partofsp eech lab el and a word lab el attached to it

When the third lab el is another phrasal category there are only three rows of

lab els Lexical frames can b e linked by connecting a ro ot of one lexical frame to

a fo ot no de of another lexical frame This pro cess of linking is called unication

Figure shows an abstract example of such an unication Unication of two

lexical frames can only b e done when the ro ot lab el of the rst lexical frame is

the same as the fo ot lab el of the second lexical frame and these lab els where not

connected yet This limitation is needed for making correct sentence diagrams ZIN ZIN ZIN

OND HFD LV

NG zww NG

NG NG NG NG

det hfd det hfd

lw zn lw zn

Figure The segments of The turtle has beaten the hare

Figure shows an example of some lexical frames that can b e used to create a

sentence diagram Figure shows how these lexical frames must b e unied to

obtain the sentence De toehoorders leunden nog meer naar voren The resulting

sentence diagram is shown in gure To ensure that only grammatically

correct sentence diagrams can b e built there are yet more conditions that must

b e satised b efore unication is allowed This is were the syntactic prop erties

come into the story For instance the plural sub ject de nachten the nights

cannot b e combined with the singular form of the nite verb verdwijnt vanishes

and this also applies to the combination of de nacht the night and verdwijnen

vanish although the fo ot and ro ot lab els involved are b oth NG But de nachten

verdwijnen and de nacht verdwijnt are completely legal combinations The same

holds for the rd p erson noun James and rst p erson nite verb cook In general

unication can only b e grammatically valid if and only if when the syntactic

prop erties in the involved feature matrices match To put it simple matching

means the intersections of the syntactic prop erties b elonging to the tob eunied

segments do not yield the empty set

Using lexical frames for a new typ e of exercise

Grammar instruction may b ecome more successful with a new typ e of exercise

enabling students to p erform the same task as the brain do es while putting

words together during the formation of any ordinary sentence Students should

exercise in constructing sentence diagrams out of elementary grammatical build X X X

...+... = ......

A B A B

Figure Illustration of the horizontal linking pro cess of two segments

A

A X ......

...... + ...... = C X C C

C C X C B B B ......

B B B

Figure Illustration of the vertical linking pro cess of two lexical frames where

the ro ot lab el X in the lexical frame at the right side is attached to the fo ot

lab el X in the left one

ing blo cks and learn this way what sentences can b e built in a valid way and

what sentences cannot Although they were primarily develop ed to mo del hu

man language b ehaviour lexical frames are very appropriate to serve as building

blo cks The next section describ es the design and interface of a computer ap

plication that uses these lexical frames and actually allows the user to unify

lexical frames together into one sentence diagram as a kind of jigsaw puzzle

It is imp ortant that this kind of building is restricted to the construction of a

syntactically valid sentence diagram for scaolding ZIN

OW HFD BEP BEP

NG zww BWG VZG

leunden NG BWG VZG det hfd bep hfd hfd bep DG znw BWG bw vz BWG

toehoorders meer DG naar BWG BWG hfd hfd hfd lw bw bw de

nog voren

Figure Example of some lexical frames

Applying Lexical Frames in a new kind of gram

mar exercises

Early exp eriments with the construction of sentence diagrams were done with

the computer program Pal ladio Figure shows a screendump The sentence

diagram was shown in the shap e of an ancient Greek temple with some blo cks

missing The missing blo cks were lying around lab eled with grammatical terms

The students job was to t the lo ose blo cks so that a valid construction was

made and the corresp onding sentence diagram was completed This is one p os

sible implementation for sentence construction out of building blo cks However

the interface is not up to date with mo dern multimedia technology any more

Furthermore it is not p ossible now to use bigger blo cks than one lab el or to play

the game without the lab els within view So it was decided to start from scratch

again with a new design that was sketched by Nomi Olstho orn depicted in g

ure This time the design is totally based on the idea of the lexical frame

Lexical frames are now shown in the form of ghostlike gures with heads and

limbs The segment that plays the role of head gets a real head and has arms

representing the others grammatical functions Great improvement in this de

sign is also its p ossibility to replace the lab els by shap e texture and color as

illustrated in gure The lexical frames can b e used as exible building blo cks ZIN

OW HFD BEP BEP

NG zww BWG VZG

leunden NG BWG VZG det hfd bep hfd hfd bep DG znw BWG bw vz BWG

toehoorders meer DG naar BWG BWG hfd hfd hfd lw bw bw de

nog voren

Figure Ellipses indicating some p ossible unications that can b e applied on

the lexical frames of gure

in the form of ghostlike shap es and unication is done by connecting the head

of a lexical frame to an empty hand that ts

Only one alteration to the combined syntactic trees is really needed making

sure that all leaf no des are the head of a word group Until now I used an

abbreviated form of syntactic trees to keep things clear For instance the article

de played the role of determiner in gure It must now b e made the head in a

determiner phrase which now gets the role of determiner in the noun phrase

The same go es for count nouns particles and auxiliary This results in

additional entries DG HLP and TWG in table in app endix A Figure shows

the extended version of the syntactic tree of gure

Design philosophy

There are several asp ects of interface design that are of crucial imp ortance for

a successful educational application Some of them apply esp ecially for chil

dren In the case of grammar instruction they might need more than others

something familiar that helps them understanding the novel sub ject matter

Children know ab out puzzles and tting shap es together So what shap es can

b e found that are more exible and capable of representing abstract concepts ZIN

OW HFD BEP BEP

NG BWG VZG

det hfd bep hfd hfd bep

DG BWG BWG

hfd hfd hfd

lw znw zww bw bw vz bw

de toehoorders leunden nog meer naar voren

Figure Result after unication

than a ghostlike shap e except an o ctopus p erhaps For instance the ghostlike

creatures in gures and can b e combined in some sort of family p ortrait I

tried to enliven them by giving the creatures moving eyes that follow the mov

ing mouse cursor Something similar can easily b e done to o for the shap e of

the mouth in order to express a creatures mo o d an ill temp ered ghost with

empty hands can b e made happier by undergoing a successful unication A

desirable interface quality is to allow the user to reach a high mental workload

of which only a minor part is taken by the complexity of interface so that the

rest can all b e used for p erforming the task The interface itself should b e as

simple as p ossible with low visual complexity and all unnecessary information

hidden It can b e argued that some asp ects of an interface like having multiple

windows are confusing For this reason I have chosen for having only one

playingeld and without buttons I b elieve that it is a go o d thing to make scaf

folding an essential part of the interface This means that the student is allowed

only to make correct decisions and is warned immediately b efore the mistake

is actually made so that only correct patterns can b e trained An interface

can b ecome easier when it creates the illusion of manipulatable ob jects with

reversible op erations and an immediate visual eect of each mouse action

Eects of animation and moving ob jects must not b e overdone however They

are useful when they express a reward or a p enalty but otherwise they only

increase the visual complexity A learning environment for initial grammar

instruction that uses sentence diagrams cannot do without an automatic layout

of the sentence structure It is very imp ortant to intro duce the lab els step by

step by showing only relevant information For instance a nine years old child

in his rst exp erience with grammar instruction should not b e confronted with

all dierent lab els of no des or prop erties at once Later on when years old

he should gradually b ecome capable of working his way around through these

Figure Finished sentence diagram in the shap e of a Greek temple

lab els Eventually the student can reach a level where also the feature matching

pro cess is visualized after a failing attempt to unify two ghosts indicating the

reason for failure Lab els must b e placed at a plausible place and b e hideable so

that only a few distinctive shap es remain An imp ortant concept is information

hiding In the case of grammar instruction complicated names for grammatical

constructions can b e hidden and replaced by a set of distinctive twodimensional

shap es This way dicult names for things can b e avoided until their meaning

and role is understo o d By leaving the lab els out younger children can start

without knowing all the grammatical terms When certain graphical eects are

coupled to discoveries this can b e a great stimulant to keep searching All these

considerations led to my design of a sentence diagram visualization of which the

diagram in gure is an example It is my attempt to create a new attractive

visualization for sentence diagrams Each lexical frame structure is visualized by

a little ghost All segments with the function lab el head are shown with a head

and a torso The other segments are represented as limbs with a stretched hand

The ghosts torso contains the identier The ro ot lab el is p ositioned on top of

each head and the shap e of that head is unique for that lab el Only hands with

the same lab el as fo ot t onto this head So there is a distinctive hand shap e

for every separate word group that is drawn instead or b eneath the fo ot lab el

Figure New sentence diagram design with ghostshap ed lexical frames

that ts exactly the head with that word group as ro ot lab el And there is a

distinctive color of the hand that is drawn instead or b eneath a function lab el

for every syntactic function I tried to use distinctive and fancy colors like a

yellow background white ghosts and black lines and lab els During the game

only the identiers are shown to the children as shown in gure obtained

from Aesop fables To keep track of the entire sentence the word lab els are

put once more on a horizontal line at the b ottom of the screen as a kind of

anchor

New exercises for grammar instruction

At this stage the user can unify the creatures by dragging the head and limbs

onto each other While a shap e is dragged the program tests whether this

shap e can unify with one of the other lexical frames on the playingeld This is

shown in color When two segments collide the color of their edge changes from

blackdefault to green when they t or to red if not The reverse op eration of

unication is called deunication and can b e done by doubleclicking on the

limb or head involved

Figure Sentence diagram design of gure without lab els

This new interface can b e used in several other ways during grammar lessons

A novice user could start with completion of an almost nished sentence or with

watching a demonstration of b ouncing ghosts that may try unication at a col

lision After this intro ductory phase a pupil may construct whole sentences out

of lexical frames In a more advanced stage the task can b e p ointing to a certain

typ e of grammatical function like sub ject nite verb etcetera At the highest

level the student would have to determine whether the sentence is correct or

p erform a topb ottom analysis of structures from dierent levels of representa

tion Some other tasks are also useful like determining the correct sequence of

words Still a lot of work must b e done and some of the extensions describ ed in

section must b e added to make this prototyp e a fulledged application The

next step would b e to oer children a complete direct manipulation interface for

lexical frames This would eventually enable them to manipulate and play with

grammar and its syntactic prop erties to help and stimulate their mental mo del

building ZIN

OW HFD LV

NG NG

det hfd det hfd

DG DG

hfd hfd

lw zn zww lw zn

de schildpad versloeg de haas

Figure Extended sentence diagram

Access through internet

When develop ed further the prototyp es design has every p otential to result

in an application that can b e used at scho ols Before I started the question

has risen which platform and which programming language could b e used b est

There are scho ols that use Macintosh computers but others use p ersonal com

puters with Windows There arent many programming languages that are really

platform indep endent The new programming language Java seems the only ap

propriate one The creation of applications in Java oers a great opp ortunity to

circumvent the restrictions that all other program languages suer Java is the

rst byteinterpreted programming language that is available on all mo dern op

erating systems these days When compiled as an applet it can even b e accessed

through any mo dern internet browser Its concepts of events and threads make

Java very suited for combining multimedia and interaction in one application

that will run on all platforms Not all standard multimedia supp ort seems to b e

included yet but this shall improve so on The only serious problem is the limited

sp eed Java source co de is not compiled into machine co de as with ordinary com

puter programs but into byte co de that is executed by a lo cal Java interpreter

Older computers might not b e fast enough to b e capable of a reasonable p erfor

mance that is needed So this is the price to pay for platform p ortability The

gain is that it is very easy to construct a website to supp ort this pro ject with

in addition a demo of the game that can b e played online through the internet

This site may b e used to oer new sentences for the game to b e downloaded

from internet and might present an online version of the game along with the

results and corresp ondence of participating scho ols But the main reason for my

choice to use Java lies in its platform indep endence This resulted in one and

the same applet which is tested and known to work without recompiling in the ZIN

HFD OW sprak MV BEP PRT NG NG BWG BWG zww hfd hfd hfd hfd det mestkever hem bemoedigend toe DG zn pers.vn bw bw hfd de

lw

de mestkever sprak hem bemoedigend toe

Figure Sentence diagram with ghostshap ed lexical frames with lab els

same manner under Linux SGI Macintosh Windows WindowsNT HP and

Sun as well as the Javaenabled internet browsers Netscap e and Explorer Java

forces the programmer to use all sorts of highlevel programming techniques

like ObjectOrientedProgramming for instance ie sub dividing program data

into classes and into methods that op erate on the classes In the next section

describ e the main issues of the implementation

Implementation

The prop osed ghostlike gures place high demands on a welldesigned graphical

interface that allows exible manipulation of shap es I chose to create dynamic

shap es that would b e able to b e moved and could b e lled as opp osed to static

ones that would allow fast and fancier animation Dynamic shap es are needed sprak

mestkever hem bemoedigend toe

de

de mestkever sprak hem bemoedigend toe

Figure Sentence diagram with ghostshap ed lexical frames with hidden lab els

for the automatic layout of the sentence diagrams Due to the design it should

not b e dicult to create a tweeningeect when a shap es form is altered When

a new ghost rst app ears or a new arm is added to it or the ghost vanishes from

the playingeld this could b e shown as a smo oth transformation In order to

present the exercises in a game I have designed a hierarchical graphical mo del

that enables me to draw and manipulate lines lab els and exible shap es First

Ill sketch its design that allows drawing the very complex shap es I wanted

An imp ortant structure that I comp osed to form the basis of all the graphical

elements is the class Shape It o ccupies the lowest level of my graphical object

hierarchy It is now time to describ e this class in some detail b ecause the graph

ical p ossibilities of this system heavily dep end on the design of this class Every

instance of class S hape may contain a list of chil dr en containing instances of

S hape or sub classes of S hape with additional information added Shap es are

added to the list chil dr en by the metho ds addShape and insertShape A

variablefunction description

ancestor a shap e can b e attached to another shap e the ancestor shap e

in which case this shap es oset dep ends on the ancestor s oset

chil dr en a linked list of attached other shap es

x xco ordinate relative to ancestor

calculates the horizontal center minX maxX midX

minX determines the left b order of this shap e

maxX determines the right b order of this shap e

w idth maxX minX

of f setX absolute xco ordinate

y y co ordinate relative to ancestor

calculates the vertical center minY maxY mid Y

minY determines the top b order of this shap e

maxY determines the b ottom b order of this shap e

heig ht maxY minY

of f setY absolute y co ordinate

isO ns true if this shap e collides with shap e s

gets the minimal distance b etween x y and this shap e distancex y

g etN ear estx y gets the nearest element to x y from the chil dr enlist

Table Shap e metho ds and prop erties

Shape is drawn by the metho d paint at a p osition x y relative to its an

cestor the oset This facilitates the movement of entire subtrees by changing

only one set of co ordinates A shap e is usually moved by function move By

changing only the two variables x y at the top S hape of a subtree the oset

of all the memb ers of that subtree alters automatically by the same amount

Function distancex y determines the minimum E ucl idean distance from p oint

x y to the shap es chil dr en or when there are none attached to the shap es

of f set This metho d is used by function getNearest to get the nearest child

of this shap e to some p oint x y There are several additional attributes for

a S hape like a color and a p opup window to streamline the b ehaviour of the

various sub classes Finally the class Shape denes the geometric prop erties over

all of its children as describ ed in table This includes width height midX

midY minX minY maxX maxY osetX and osetY This class

S hape forms the basis for various other shapes with sp ecialized b ehaviour In

ob jectoriented design this means that these sp ecialized shap es are all subclasses

of S hape and inherit share the same geometric prop erties and op erations

For example a shap e that draws a lab el can b e dened as a S hape with its

center at its oset The geometric b oundaries are now dened by the size of the

lab el in the picture I dened for that purp ose class LabelShape which contains

a string and a font The classes PolygonShape and BSplineShape are dened re

sp ectively in order to draw p olygons and a sophisticated typ e of smo oth curves

2

Bsplines

Drawing the ghostlike shap es

Given a complete lexical frame it is still dicult to draw the exible parts like

hands and limbs in a natural manner The static parts of the ghosts I could

fortunately draw b efore I had my own Bspline algorithm see section by

means of a program by S Spaans This resulted in the sets of control points

for distinctive hands heads and torsos as shown in gure There are four

dierent torsos one for ghosts with arms on b oth sides one for ghosts with

only arms on the right one for ghosts with only arms at the left and the

last one is for ghosts without arms Every headsegment gets the appropriate

torso and head with a structure on top of the head which dep ends on the ro ot

lab el of that segment For every nonhead attached to a head segment extra

control p oints are added to the head and torso of the head in order to create the

dynamic arms These are rst ordered by their xoset The control p oints are

then added following a sine curve from the previous arm or the head to the

hand The p oints for going backwards are put onto the stack Each arm then

gets its own shap e of hand which dep ends on the fo ot lab el of that segment

And now the other half of the arm can b e completed by emptying the stack To

ensure a natural way of drawing these arms are co erced horizontally by their

neighb ouring arms

Figure Control p oints for the static parts of the ghosts connected by straight

lines

Shap e description

Most standard graphic libraries are limited to the drawing of pixels lines rect

angles p olygons and ovals These are very primitive and simply cannot satisfy

2

The Bspline algorithm is explained later in section

the demand for smo oth exible shap es themselves Fortunately a range of shap e

descriptions have b een invented to describ e a wide range of curves In general a

shap e description is a mathematical formula in the form of a parametric function

that is applied on a numb er of control p oints and describ es some sort of curve

Once a suitable parametric function pt xt y t is found it suddenly b e

comes very easy to draw the corresp onding curve by substituting some sequence

t t t for t where t t This makes parametric functions p owerful to ols

0 1 2 i i+1

for generating and representing curves Some of them have b ecome very p op

ular in interactive graphic design The most imp ortant ones are spline curves

A spline curve is a blend of vectors that uses piecewise p olynomial blending

functions which make the curve continuous at each p oint One class of splines

the Bezier curve denes a curve over a sequence of p p p control p oints

0 1 n

The Bezier curve formula as a parametric function is as follows

n

X

n

p B t pt

k

k

k =0

where

n n nk k

B t t t

k k

n!

n

are the Bernstein p olynomials f or n k These Bernstein

k

k !(nk )!

P

n

n

t is p olynomials have the elegant prop erty that their weighted sum B

k

k =0

always while they shift the share of the participating control p oints in the

P

n

n

p B t gradually from p to p as parameter t in weighted sum pt

k 0 n

k

k =0

creases Nice things ab out these Bezier curves are that they start at p and end

0

at p precisely and whenever they need to b e sub jected to an ane transforma

n

tion such as scaling rotation translation etc it is only necessary to transform

the control p oints rather than every single p oint on the curve However by the

way they are dened they bring a serious disadvantage for design purp oses

When one control p oint is moved a bit as little as it may b e the entire curve

shall have to change as every p oint on the curve is a weighted sum of all control

p oints This makes lo cal control imp ossible Because it is desirable to have lo cal

control to manipulate a curve a similar curve description that calculates the

weighted sum over only a limited numb er of adjacent control p oints would b e

very welcome Fortunately such splines exist Given any sequence of adjacent

curve p oints there is a set of blending functions that form the basis for the

spline This means that any spline whatso ever can b e formed by cho osing the

appropriate control p oints One such class of splines that denes a basis is the

Bspline Here is its parametric function

n

X

pt p N t

k k m

k =0

where k is the numb er of control p oints m is the order of the p olynomial

functions

t t t t

k +m k

N t N t N t

k m1 k +1m1 k m

t t t t

k +m1 k k +m k +1

and

n

if t t t

k k +1

N

k 1

other w ise

In the case of fourth order Bsplines m the spline consists of a set

of curves each based on four adjacent control p oints p p p p i

i i+1 i+2 i+3

n Figure shows the control p oints sets of gure but now connected

by means of the Bspline algorithm

Figure Control p oints for the static parts of the ghosts connected by smo oth

Bspline curves

Living eyes

A rather funny eect it is to p osition the little eyes on the gures as if they are

watching something for example the mouse cursor as depicted in gure To

do this one can draw the black oval of an eye instead of at p osition x y at

x l sinang l e y l cosang l e

where ang l e is the direction of the line b etween the mouse cursor and the eye

and l is the minimum of the Euclidean distance b etween the mouse cursor and

the eye and the radius of the eye minus the radius of the pupil And when in

state of sleeping an arc can b e drawn which represents a closed eye Nothing can

b e more simple Class eyeShape is used to create this funny eect As a sub class

of Shape it can easily b e attached to every other Shape Every instance of an

ey eS hape has dened one radius for the pupil and one for the whole eye itself

When an eye is to b e painted the p osition of the pupil is simply translated by

some vector v The direction of the imaginary line b etween mousecursor and

its p osition gives v s direction Of course the pupil may not exceed the b order

of the eye This is why the length of that v is set to the minimum of the radius

Figure Example of ghosts with limbs

of the eye minus the radius of the pupil and the distance b etween the center of

the eye and the mouse p osition In formula v b ecomes

sinang l e

v min j m e j ey e r adius pupil r adius

cosang l e

where m and e are vectors containing resp ectively the mouse and eye p ositions

Figure The eyes of the ghostlike creatures in several states

Bracketed string notation

The sentence diagrams are stored in a string in which every subtree is sur

rounded by brackets except the identier and the partsofsp eech lab el which

are separated by a space The example in table shows the complete string for

the sentence diagram in gure obtained from Aesop At the start of the

program these sentence diagrams are loaded from disk and the segments in

these sentence diagrams are collected which can b e used later as explained in

section

ZIN OW NGdetDGhfdLW Een

hfdZN adelaar

HFD ZWW zat

LV NGdetDGhfdLW een

hfdZN haas

PRT BWGhfdbw achterna

Table Example of a sentence diagram in bracketed string notation

ZIN

OW HFD LV PRT

NG NG BWG

det hfd det hfd hfd

DG DG

hfd hfd

lw zn zww lw zn bw

een adelaar zat een haas achterna

Figure Sample sentence diagram

Constructing a Lexical Frame into SegmentShapes

As describ ed in section sentence diagrams can b e divided into segments I

dene a SegmentShape as sub class of class Shape that contains the lab els and

the lexical prop erties of that segment In fact a lexical frame is put together

from a numb er of instances of these S eg mentS hapes that are joined horizontally

through a linked list of brothers The SegmentShape can b e connected at b oth

ends to other S eg mentS hapes through variable parent for the ro ot and variable

tail for the fo ot When a nonhead segment receives a call to move it passes this

call to the head itself this way the entire lexical frame shall b e moved In turn

the head is moved and moves along all of its brothers and their children In the

mo del there is exactly one head for every lexical frame Every segment contains

a link called head to it An array label is used to store all available lab els And

the syntactic prop erties that come with the ro ot and fo ot lab els are stored in

two separate FeatureMatrices of that segment To create a sequence of lexical

frames out of a sentence diagram class LabelTree is used to convert sentences

in bracketedstring notation into a tree structure Then for every lexical frame

the segments are cut out and linked horizontally with metho d horizontalLink

No matter in what S eg mentS hape is started metho d getRoot nds always

the top no de of that tree structure by recursive calls to the same function in its

parent Geometric prop erties are altered in only one asp ect with resp ect to those

in class Shape Functions minX maxX minY maxY of a headsegment

are determined not only over the children in this case the lab els but also over

the brothers and their children

The syntactic prop erties in the Feature Matrix

The syntactic prop erties for every S eg mentS hape are constructed by class Fea

tureMatrix It simply adds the syntactic prop erties with a choice list of all p os

sible values to the p opup panel of the S eg mentS hape ie one segment to

which it b elongs For every lab el of a S eg mentS hape the appropriate prop erties

can b e found in that diagram Every lab el of the S eg mentS hape may bring in

a numb er of prop erties At this moment the values for the syntactic prop erties

are not set yet During unication they are simply ignored Some database must

b e explored to set the correct values of the prop erties

Interaction on lexical frames

To start with I made a simple puzzle mode in which the lexical frames in their

ghostlike app earance are shown on a rectangular playingeld and can b e con

trolled by the computer mouse The ghosts are equipp ed with the limbs corre

sp onding exactly to the edges in the sentence diagram They can b e dragged

to b e unied or doubleclicked to b e deunied again after which the shap es

are automatically rearranged Figure shows an example Normally only the

identiers in the ghosts torsos are shown but here I left them to illustrate

that the ghost shap es t onto the lab els quite well In this rst prototyp e of the

grammar game mouse b ehaviour is quite simple

mouseEnter causes the state awake and the eyes of the little ghosts b ecome

op ened

mouseMove highlights the nearest shap e to the mouse cursor in blue

mouseDown causes variable current to b ecome the nearest ghost double

click deunies current controlclick removes the nearest limb an entire

lexical frame is removed when controlclick is done near headsegment

mouseDrag moves shap e current If the nearest shap e for cur r ent is close

by enough then they b oth b ecome green when they may b e unied or

red otherwise

mouseUp checks if current can b e linked to an empty slot of another shap e

If so unication is p erformed and the layout is reshap ed automatically

mouseExit returns the state to sleeping and the eyes of the little ghosts

close

After a unication or a deunication op eration a randomly selected audio

sample is played I use two separate sets of samples one set for unication and

one for deunication This concludes the simple scheme of puzzle mode In this

stage only puzzles can b e made of the set of ab out example sentence diagrams

that I have in bracketed string notationsee section

Figure Sample of puzzle mo de

Freeedit mo de

A more advanced mo de than puzzle mode is freeedit mode Figure shows an

example This mo de allows the user to cho ose the words from a random selection

Figure Screendump of freeedit mo de

of all the words in the available sentences These are placed in a column at the

right side of the screen By pushing button SCRAMBLE the user obtains a new

random selection of words Selecting a word results in the birth of a new ghost

on the playingeld with the appropriate lab els And any ghost can b e removed

from the playingeld by clicking on that ghost while the Controlkey is pressed

The new ghost will get the same partofsp eech lab el as in the example sentence

where it came from And of course as all segments with an identier it will

b e functioning as head The only problem is that it is not always certain which

root lab el should b e given as some partofsp eech lab els t into more than one

typ e of constituent For now I cho ose the ro ot lab el randomly from the list of

ro ot lab els for that partofsp eech lab el which I create automatically during the

reading of the sentence diagrams from le Not all grammatical constructions are

now present in the existing sentence diagrams So some new sentences diagrams

with the still missing grammatical constructions are needed to complete the set

of allowed segments A newly created ghost will start on an empty lo cation on

the playingeld and without limbs Whenever another ghost comes nearby a

new limb is formed by adding a segment to the lexical frame of the ghost and

redrawing the shap e This new segment consists always of a set of lab els that

is valid for the lexical frame it b elongs to If the two ghosts can b e unied the

limb will b e equipp ed with the ro ot lab el of the other ghost and with a prop er

function This choice of function is not deterministic however eg an NG ts

into many roles to a ZIN like OW LV MV etcetera Whenever this o ccurs it

is probably b est to assign a function to that segment which is not present in the

lexical frame yet Now like in puzzle mo de a hand shap e that ts onto that

head can b e attached to it With freeedit mo de and puzzle mo de the user has

all freedom to build his own sentence diagrams These schemes shall b ecome

fully op erational when I use a database to set the syntactic prop erties In the

last section I shall suggest some other p ossible extensions that can b e added to

improve this program

Conclusion

Grammar instruction is an imp ortant means to help children learning advanced

asp ects of language However there are not true satisfactory grammar instruc

tion metho ds available given the limited available time at scho ols What I b elieve

is needed are three things scaolding visualization and immediate feedback This

can probably b est b e done in combination with computers in a playful interac

tive setting The prototyp e I designed and implemented is a considerable step

towards such a system It proves that it is p ossible to actually build a useful

application for grammar instruction Sentence diagrams can b e built by link

ing lexical frames which are building blo cks that originated from psychological

mo dels The building blo cks are to b e constrained only by their grammatic prop

erties My prototyp e needs a lot of additional work yet b efore it can actually b e

used by pupils For practical use some educational material must b e develop ed

rst but the advantages and p ossibilities of interactive grammar instruction

are already clear Direct manipulation can give pupils the feeling of having con

trol over a system With lots of practise they can obtain selfcondence ab out

dealing with grammar This stands in sharp contrast with the red ink feedback

that is given by some teachers This particular design is based on construction

and visualization of sentence diagrams in which the grammatical terms can b e

hidden while a unique distinctive shap e or color remains visible This might

work out well as it has often b een observed that visual aids to memory app ear

to b e more eective than the abstract terms Grammar instruction is of

ten regarded as unattractive The b est resp onse to this probably is to present

it in the form of a game which is supp osed to b e attractive Games in gen

eral are an imp ortant way to learn coping with situations and gaining control

The more creativity is allowed the b etter I exp ect that the role of computers

in basic education will b ecome more and more imp ortant in the future and

many educational software packages are proving themselves already in several

dierent areas However not much software seems to b e available for Dutch

grammar education yet Interactive educational computer games like this pro

vide scho ols with a new generation of mo dern computer to ols in new areas With

these to ols results and progress of pupils can b e measured and compared while

frequent mistakes in sp ecic areas can b e tracked down and hop efully resolved

My present system is in Dutch but the implemented system needs not to b e

altered much for most other Westeurop ean languages It is up to psychologists

teachers and pupils to nd out whether this system provides a worthwhile im

provement up on or addition to conventional grammar education Considering

the complexity of grammar education and the limited time available at scho ols

grammar instruction can only b e successful when extensive training is combined

with eective exercises Replacing traditional grammar instruction by sentence

construction can b e a big step forward and lead to more ecient learning

Future extensions

The quality of learning pro cesses dep ends on the frequency level quality and

typ e of feedback Some additional dialog structures must b e added to ensure

this and to facilitate more ecient mental mo del building Articial Intel ligence

can b e added for smart training presenting to the student the dicult parts

that are not yet comprehended or trying to provide easier exercises to train

these tasks During playtime it may happ en that a user makes the same typ e of

mistakes It would b e an idea to extend this program with a sp ecial unit that

monitors such frequent errors Some control mo dule could then take action and

explain the things that went wrong and or present the solution to a problem by

means of a windowed dialog Something could also b e done to make the challenge

and diculty level rise for exp erienced users A frequency table as in that

contains the frequencies of used words for youth lecture under twelve could b e

used for this by starting with frequently used words and gradually pro ceed to the

less frequently ones with more syllables Another thing would b e to do rst some

explaining by sp oken text or through a dialog I for myself prefer to present the

user short dialogs during a demo of the unication of an entire sentence diagram

This to demonstrate which are the p ossible actions the reversible actions and the

mistakes In a nal pro duct it would b e b est to include a timep oint system with

p oints and a high score list for comp etition though the sp eed dep ends sometimes

on the computer on which the game is played In the prototyp e there are audio

eects coupled to events This kind of immediate feedback seems a very go o d

approach Multimo dal learning environments get hold of the attention from

b oth auditive and visual channels so there probably is less distraction p ossible

When using only visual or only auditive information an imp ortant part of the

input side of the user is neglected on which there is no control or inuence And

without necessary attention of the pupils learning probably is not as eective

as it could b e Audio eects can b e helpful in expressing rewards or p enalties

Apart from that it is an idea to send the freshly formed sentence constructions

in sp oken language to the loud sp eaker Instructions can b e given in the form

of a prerecorded message Sp eech output can b e disturbing however and it has

b een found that adult p eople can handle interfaces with textual information

faster Audio eects now are used in general as a reward when unication

is accomplished by the pupil but could easily b e done to warn the player that

he runs out of time or when something else o ccurs It shall b e very dicult

to circumvent all of the shortcomings of traditional grammar instruction but

on the other hand this can b e regarded as a challenge as well Wouldnt it

b e wonderful if it were not necessary to overow p o or p erforming pupils with

negative feedback in red ink anymore

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank all p eople who brought new ideas or contributed in any

other way esp ecially Nomi Olstho orn for her supp ort and great drawings of

what now are nice little computeranimated ghosts None of this would have

b een p ossible without the psycholinguistic mo dels develop ed by and supp ort

of Gerard Kemp en

App endix A Tables with grammatical terms

English Dutch abbreviation

main verb zelfstandig werkwo ord ZWW

auxiliary verb hulpwerkwo ord HWW

copula verb kopp elwerkwo ord KWW

zelfstandig naamwo ord ZN substantive noun

article lidwo ord LW

adjective bijvo eglijk naamwo ord BN

numeral telwo ord TW

prep osition vo orzetsel VZ

bijwo ord BW adverb

co ordinating conjunction nevenschikkend vo egwo ord NEGVGW

sub ordinating conjunction onderschikkend vo egwo ord ONDVGW

tussenwerpsel TUSSENW interjection

p ersonal pronoun p erso onlijk vo ornaamwo ord PERSVN

b ezittelijk vo ornaamwo ord BZITVN p ossessive pronoun

demonstrative pronoun aanwijzend vo ornaamwo ord AANWVN

interrogative pronoun vragend vo ornaamwo ord VRAGVN

onb epaald vo ornaamwo ord ONBEP VN indenite pronoun

reexive pronoun wederkerend vo ornaamwo ord WEDNDVN

recipro cal pronoun wederkerig vo ornaamwo ord WEDIGVN

b etrekkelijk vo ornaamwo ord BETRVN relative pronoun

Table Parts of sp eech

English Dutch abbreviation

sentence zin ZIN

noun phrase naamwo ordgro ep NG

adjectival phrase bijvo eglijknaamwo ordgro ep BNG

adverbial phrase bijwo ordgro ep BWG

vo orzetselgro ep VZG prep ositional phrase

determiner phrase determineerdergro ep DG

hulpwerkwo ordsgro ep HLP auxilary verb phrase

numeral phrase telwo ordsgro ep TWG

Table Phrasal categories

English Dutch abbreviation

sub ject onderwerp OND

direct ob ject lijdend vo orwerp LV

indirect ob ject meewerkend vo orwerp MV

prep ositional ob ject vo orzetselvo orwerp VZVW

kopp elvo orwerp KV predicate

head ho ofd HFD

auxilary hulp HLP

partikel PRT particle

sub ordinator onderschikker OS

complement CMP complement

complementer complementeerder CMPR

determiner determineerder DET

quantier teller TEL

prep ositional ob ject vo orzetselgro ep ob ject VZGOBJ

mo dier b epaling BEP

Table Syntactic functions

English Dutch

tense tijd

numb er getal

p erson p erso on

nite verb p erso onsvorm

participle deelwo ord

aanvo egende wijs sub junctive mo o d

innitive mo o d onb epaalde wijs

indicative mo o d aantonende wijs

gebiedende wijs imp erative mo o d

transitive overgankelijk

geslacht gender

deniteness wijze van b epaaldheid

case naamval

countable telbaar

diminutive form verkleinvorm

sup erlative comparative form overtreende vergelijkende trap

verbuiging inection

separable scheidbaar

Table Word prop erties

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