Jacqueline Evers-Vermeul

Pronouns and Case

Abstract Subject—object distinctions in pronominal systems of languages like Dutch and English are not similar to nominative—accusative oppositions in languages with morphological case, since pronouns do not show the syntactic effects of morphological case. This does not mean that these pronominal distinctions are only relics of earlier stages with a richer inflection. In fact, they do show a fundamental distinction between what is sometimes called head marking (here: agreement) and dependency marking (here: case marking). Consequently, subjects are DPs and objects are extended with a Case Phrase. However, in languages like Dutch and English dependency marking is not morphologically specified, i.e. the head of the Case Phrase is empty. The special property of pronouns is that they are not just nouns, since they only contain functional information. They are organized in a paradigm and correspond to (or spell out) some higher, extended nominal projection. More specifically, Dutch and English object pronouns spell out the Case Phrase, whereas the subject pronouns in these languages correspond to a DP (licensed by agreement). As a result, object pronouns differ in form from subject pronouns. Ordinary nouns, containing lexical information, correspond to N. Since N can be present in subject as well as in object position, ordinary nouns can appear in both types of argument positions. Several peculiar characteristics of Dutch and English pronouns follow from this theory.

The emergence of Dutch connectives; how cumulative cognitive complexity explains the order of acquisition

ABSTRACTBefore they are three years old, most children have started to build coherent discourse. This article focuses on one important linguistic device children have to learn: connectives. The main questions are: Do connectives emerge in a fixed order? And if so, how can this order be explained? In line with Bloom et al. (1980) we propose to explain similarities in the development in terms of cumulative cognitive complexity: complex relations are acquired later than simple ones. Following a cognitive approach to coherence relations, we expect positive relations to be acquired before negatives and additives before temporals and causals. We develop a multidimensional approach to the acquisition process in order to account for the variation among children. Hypotheses were tested by analyzing data from children aged 1 ; 5-5 ; 6 on the emergence of Dutch connectives. The multidimensional approach of cognitive complexity describes both the uniformity and the diversity in the developmental sequences of Dutch-speaking and English-speaking children.

Historical and comparative perspectives on subjectification: A corpus-based analysis of Dutch and French causal connectives

Abstract In this article, we focus on the diachronic development of causal connectives and investigate whether subjectification occurs. We present the results of ongoing and previous corpus-based analyses of the diachronic development of Dutch want and omdat, and French car and parce que, all four causal connectives roughly meaning ‘because’. In addition, we try to show that “grammaticalization studies can gain from the systematic and principled use of large computerized corpora and the methods which have been developed within corpus linguistics” (Lindquist and Mair, Corpus approaches to grammaticalization in English, John Benjamins, 2004: x). Thats why we have combined two historical and two comparative corpus methods to chart the diachronic development of these four causals. Our study reveals that subjectification is not an integral part of the diachronic development of these causals: subjectification does occur in the rise of these connectives, but in the later stages of their development only parce que undergoes subjectification. Our analyses show that the four methods all have their own merits and limitations, but they are most effective when combined.

A step-wise approach to discourse annotation : Towards a reliable categorization of coherence relations

Over the last decennia, annotating discourse coherence relations has gained increasing interest of the linguistics research community. Because of the complexity of coherence relations, there is no agreement on an annotation standard. Current annotation methods often lack a systematic order of coherence relations. In this article, we investigate the usability of the cognitive approach to coherence relations, developed by Sanders et al. (1992, 1993), for discourse annotation. The theory proposes a taxonomy of coherence relations in terms of four cognitive primitives. In this paper, we first develop a systematic, step-wise annotation process. The reliability of this annotation scheme is then tested in an annotation experiment with non-trained, non-expert annotators. An implicit and explicit version of the annotation instruction was created to determine whether the type of instruction influences the annotator agreement. The results show that two of the four primitives, polarity and order of the segments, can be applied reliably by non-trained annotators. The other two primitives, basic operation and source of coherence, are more problematic. Participants using the explicit instruction show higher agreement on the primitives than participants used the implicit instruction. These results are comparable to agreement statistics of other discourse corpora annotated by trained, expert annotators. Given that non-trained, non-expert annotators show similar amounts of agreement, these results indicate that the cognitive approach to coherence relations is a promising method for annotating discourse.

The Role of Expectedness in the Implicitation and Explicitation of Discourse Relations

Translation of discourse connectives varies more in human translations than in machine translations. Building on Murray’s (1997) continuity hypothesis and Sanders’ (2005) causality-by-default hypothesis we investigate whether expectedness influences the degree of implicitation and explicitation of discourse relations. We manually analyze how source text connectives are translated, and where connectives in target texts come from. We establish whether relations are explicitly signaled in the other language as well, or whether they have to be reconstructed by inference. We demonstrate that the amount of implicitation and explicitation of connectives in translation is influenced by the expectedness of the relation a connective signals. In addition, we show that the types of connectives most often added in translation are also the ones most often deleted.

The influence of input on connective acquisition: a growth curve analysis of English because and German weil.

The current study used growth curve analysis to study the role of input during the acquisition of the English causal connective because and its German counterpart weil. The corpora of five German and five English children and their adult caretakers (age range 0;10-4;3) were analyzed for the amount as well as for the type of connective use - imitated, elicited, and independent. The growth curves showed that childrens elicited use developed faster than their independent use; imitations were rare. Adult connective input was not found to function as a scaffold of childrens connective use. Rather, the adult why/warum-questions played an important role in the acquisition of because and weil. In turn, children also used why/warum-questions to elicit causal responses from their caretakers, which shows that children were responsible for a great part of their own input.

Segmenting discourse: Incorporating interpretation into segmentation?

Abstract Discourse segmentation is an important step in the process of annotating coherence relations. Ideally, implementing segmentation rules results in text segments that correspond to the units of thought related to each other. This paper demonstrates that accurate segmentation is in part dependent on the propositional content of text fragments, and that completely separating segmentation and annotation does not always yield text segments that correspond to the text units between which a conceptual relationship holds. In addition, it argues that elements belonging to the propositional content of the discourse should necessarily be included in the segmentation, but that inclusion of other text elements, for instance stance markers, should be optional.

Usage-Based Approaches to Language Acquisition and Language Teaching

Although usage-based approaches have been successfully applied to the study of both first and second language acquisition, to monolingual and bilingual development, and to naturalistic and instructed settings, it is not common to consider these different kinds of acquisition in tandem. The present volume takes an integrative approach and shows that usage-based theories provide a much needed unified framework for the study of first, second and foreign language acquisition, in monolingual and bilingual contexts. The contributions target the acquisition of a wide range of linguistic phenomena and critically assess the applicability and explanatory power of the usage-based paradigm. The book also systematically examines a range of cognitive and linguistic factors involved in the process of language development and relates relevant findings to language teaching. Finally, this volume contributes to the assessment and refinement of empirical methods currently employed in usage-based acquisition research. This book is of interest to scholars of language acquisition, language pedagogy, developmental psychology, as well as Cognitive Linguistics and Construction Grammar.

Evidence-based adviezen voor begrijpelijk schrijven, een utopie?

Organizations and writers striving to use plain language could benefit from evidence-based pieces of writing advice. At present, recommendations for producing comprehensible texts are often based on experience with the target group and/or common-sense logic, while previous effect studies have shown that applying such recommendations does not necessarily improve texts. In this paper we show the complexity of translating research results into evidence-based advice for comprehensible writing by discussing three dilemmas. First, we discuss the selection of a reliable evidence base, with a focus on the selection of measures that objectively reflect comprehension. Second, we discuss the generalizability of research results to types of texts, tasks, modalities, and readers other than the ones actually studied. Third, we address the complexity of turning conflicting results and subtle interaction effects into valid and nuanced but still comprehensible and applicable recommendations. We will argue that, due to its complexity, this ‘translation’ needs to be made by linguists instead of laymen.

Online leren voor mensen met een afstand tot de arbeidsmarkt

SamenvattingSinds de komst van de Participatiewet moeten meer mensen met een arbeidsbeperking aan het werk bij een gewone werkgever. Zij hebben daarbij hulp nodig, maar de (opleidings)budgetten nemen af. Sociale werkbedrijven deden ervaring op met e-learning, zoals de WERK-portal van SBCM.1 Is online leren de toekomst voor lager opgeleiden?