With the proliferation of corpora, various syntactic analysis methodologies have been developed. However, syntactic analysis of Chinese sentences demands a theory that focuses more on word order and the interaction between content and function words, which is satisfied by pattern grammar theory. This study investigates the effectiveness of pattern…

The purpose of this study was to analyze and compare the linguistic content of the Spanish HINT and the Spanish AzBio sentence tests. The results revealed that the Spanish AzBio is linguistically more complex as compared with the Spanish HINT in terms of sentence length, complexity, and grammatical structure.

What makes some sentences more difficult to process, and why? Memory- and expectation-based theories both attempt to explain sentence processing difficulties, and decades of sentence processing literature have found evidence in support of both theories. This dissertation further investigates these theories of sentence processing by exploring…

Given its complexity, abstractness, and central role in many logics, negation might be a conceptual accomplishment. Therefore, young children's gradual acquisition of negation words might be due to their undergoing a conceptual change that is necessary to represent logical meanings. However, it's also possible that expressing negation takes time…

Eventualities have been recognized as psychologically and linguistically relevant for more than 50 years. Psychologically, eventualities are complex bundles of information derived from our perceptions of the world. The question for linguists is how much of this complexity is reflected in our eventuality-denoting lexical entries and the…

In a seminal study, Cameron-Faulkner et al. made two important observations about utterance-level constructions in English child-directed speech (CDS). First, they observed that canonical in/transitive sentences are surprisingly infrequent in child-direct speech (given that SVO word order is often thought to play a key role in the acquisition of…

Research in first-language (L1) sentence processing has found evidence that language comprehenders use binding condition A as a filter to rule out noun phrases that are binding-inaccessible before proceeding with the task of finding the correct antecedent. Sturt (2013) notes that this strategy does not appear to apply to advanced speakers of…

All communication systems rely on sets of rules that must generally be followed for successful communication to be possible; in the case of human language, these rules are given by the grammar. However, despite these rules, there is considerable variation that has been noted across the grammar. In this dissertation, I explore one understudied…

Can brief training on novel grammatical morphemes influence visual processing of nonlinguistic stimuli? If so, how deep is this effect? Here, an experimental group learned two novel morphemes highlighting the familiar concept of transitivity in sentences; a control group was exposed to the same input but with the novel morphemes used…

Purpose: Relative clauses present a well-known processing asymmetry between object-extracted and subject-extracted dependencies across both typical and atypical populations. The present study aimed at exploring the comprehension of object and subject relative clauses as conceptualized by the Relativized Minimality framework in autistic children…

The market demand for retour interpreting, especially into English as a B language, has driven training needs for B language enhancement. Interpreter trainers suggest memorising (semi-)fixed expressions in one's B language to enhance accuracy, fluency, and idiomaticity. These prefabricated multiword units ease processing effort in both language…

This article investigates the narrative skills of children acquiring Finnish Sign Language (FinSL). Producing a narrative requires vocabulary, the ability to form sentences, and cognitive skills to construct actions in a logical order for the recipient to understand the story. Research has shown that narrative skills are an excellent way of…

We investigated toddlers' understanding of the hierarchical syntactic configurations that constrain the referential meanings of reflexives and pronouns. In particular, reflexives must co-refer with the c-commanding antecedent within the local domain (Principle A) (e.g., He[subscript i] washes himself[subscript i]. John[subscript i] knows that…

Through analysis of the language, this study aimed to investigate the current practice of using songs in public library storytimes. Language interactions in 68 storytime programs involving 652 child participants were observed and transcribed. Then, textual analysis was conducted to examine the language of singing songs, focusing on how language…

This paper reports on a young Korean boy's target-like and non-target-like uses of the Korean negation marker "ani" to express various types of negation in Korean, observed approximately between the ages of 2;2 and 2;5. Besides the target-like usage of "ani" as a sentential adverb for a 'no' response, he used "ani" in…