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Sample records for grammatical gender agreement

  1. Grammatical gender in the discourse of multilingual children's acquisition of German

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    Montanari, Elke

    2014-03-01

    Full Text Available The acquisition of grammatical gender by multilingual pre-school children (aged six was investigated by observing their narration and discourse. It emerged that only three of the 17 children actually used gender to classify nouns. Grammatical agreement is acknowledged as a key feature of gender acquisition, and it reflects developmental steps. Children growing up with mostly bilingual German input at a low proficiency level had the greatest difficulties in acquiring gender and agreement in the group investigated.

  2. Representations of abstract grammatical feature agreement in young children.

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    Melançon, Andréane; Shi, Rushen

    2015-11-01

    A fundamental question in language acquisition research is whether young children have abstract grammatical representations. We tested this question experimentally. French-learning 30-month-olds were first taught novel word-object pairs in the context of a gender-marked determiner (e.g., un MASC ravole 'a ravole'). Test trials presented the objects side-by-side while one of them was named in new phrases containing other determiners and an adjective (e.g., le MASC joli ravole MASC 'the pretty ravole'). The gender agreement between the new determiner and the non-adjacent noun was manipulated in different test trials (e.g., le MASC __ravole MASC; *la FEM __ravole MASC). We found that online comprehension of the named target was facilitated in gender-matched trials but impeded in gender-mismatched trials. That is, children assigned the determiner genders to the novel nouns during word learning. They then processed the non-adjacent gender agreement between the two categories (Det, Noun) during test. The results demonstrate abstract featural representation and grammatical productivity in young children.

  3. L1 effects on the processing of grammatical gender in L2

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Sabourin, L; Foster-Cohen, S.; Nizegorodcew, A.

    2001-01-01

    This paper explores L1 effects on the L2 off-line processing of Dutch (grammatical gender) agreement The L2 participants had either German, English or a Romance language as their L1. Non-gender agreement (finiteness and agreement) was tested to ascertain the level of proficiency of the participants

  4. Gender Attribution and Gender Agreement in French Williams Syndrome

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    Boloh, Yves; Ibernon, Laure; Royer, Stephanie; Escudier, Frederique; Danillon, Aurelia

    2009-01-01

    Previous studies on grammatical gender in French individuals with Williams syndrome (WS) have led to conflicting findings and interpretations regarding keys abilities--gender attribution and gender agreement. New production data from a larger SW sample (N = 24) showed that gender attribution scores in SW participants exactly mirrored those of…

  5. Grammatical gender affects odor cognition

    OpenAIRE

    Speed, L.J.; Majid, A.

    2016-01-01

    Language interacts with olfaction in exceptional ways. Olfaction is believed to be weakly linked with language, as demonstrated by our poor odor naming ability, yet olfaction seems to be particularly susceptible to linguistic descriptions. We tested the boundaries of the influence of language on olfaction by focusing on a non-lexical aspect of language (grammatical gender). We manipulated the grammatical gender of fragrance descriptions to test whether the congruence with fragrance gender wou...

  6. An Agent-Based Model for the Role of Short-Term Memory Enhancement in the Emergence of Grammatical Agreement.

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    Vera, Javier

    2018-01-01

    What is the influence of short-term memory enhancement on the emergence of grammatical agreement systems in multi-agent language games? Agreement systems suppose that at least two words share some features with each other, such as gender, number, or case. Previous work, within the multi-agent language-game framework, has recently proposed models stressing the hypothesis that the emergence of a grammatical agreement system arises from the minimization of semantic ambiguity. On the other hand, neurobiological evidence argues for the hypothesis that language evolution has mainly related to an increasing of short-term memory capacity, which has allowed the online manipulation of words and meanings participating particularly in grammatical agreement systems. Here, the main aim is to propose a multi-agent language game for the emergence of a grammatical agreement system, under measurable long-range relations depending on the short-term memory capacity. Computer simulations, based on a parameter that measures the amount of short-term memory capacity, suggest that agreement marker systems arise in a population of agents equipped at least with a critical short-term memory capacity.

  7. Grammatical gender vs. natural gender in French Williams syndrome.

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    Ibernon, Laure; Boloh, Yves

    2010-01-01

    This article reports grammatical gender attribution scores in French Williams participants (N=28, mean chronological age=15.1) in an experiment similar to the classic one from Karmiloff-Smith (1979) where grammatical gender was pitted against natural gender. WS participants massively opted for the masculine gender as the default one, just as MA-controls did. They differed from CA-controls, however, in that they provided fewer sex-based responses. Splitting the WS group into two subgroups did not reveal a shift to sex-based responses similar to the one found in controls. It is argued that this latter difference could plausibly be related to differences in cognitive, lexical or meta-linguistic abilities. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  8. Two sides of gender: ERP evidence for the presence of two routes during gender agreement processing.

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    Caffarra, Sendy; Janssen, Niels; Barber, Horacio A

    2014-10-01

    The present ERP study aimed at providing evidence for the existence of two routes in the brain for the processing of morphosyntactic features during language comprehension; a lexical route which retrieves grammatical properties stored in the lexicon without reliance on formal cues, and a form-based route that takes advantage of sub-lexical units strongly related to a specific grammatical class. In the experiment, we investigated grammatical gender agreement processing in Spanish article-noun word pairs using a grammaticality judgment task. Article-noun pairs either agreed or did not agree in gender. Noun transparency was manipulated such that the ending could be strongly associated with a specific gender class (i.e., transparent nouns) or not (i.e., opaque nouns). A visual half-field method was employed and ERPs were recorded in response to the target nouns in order to disentangle the initial hemisphere-specific computations of gender processing. ERP results showed that, while both hemispheres compute agreement dependencies, the left hemisphere is sensitive to the presence of formal gender cues at an early stage (i.e., 350-500 ms) indicating the presence of a form-based route. The right hemisphere showed an ERP effect of transparency, but later than the left hemisphere (i.e., 500-750 ms). These findings confirm the presence of two routes to gender, which can be differently used depending on the availability of transparent endings. In addition, the results showed hemispheric differences in the time course of the form-based route. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  9. Early Acquisition of Gender Agreement in the Spanish Noun Phrase: Starting Small

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    Mariscal, Sonia

    2009-01-01

    Nativist and constructivist accounts differ in their characterization of children's knowledge of grammatical categories. In this paper we present research on the process of acquisition of a particular grammatical system, gender agreement in the Spanish noun phrase, in children under three years of age. The design of the longitudinal study employed…

  10. Transfer effects in learning a second language grammatical gender system

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Sabourin, Laura; Stowe, Laurie A; de Haan, Ger J

    In this article second language (L2) knowledge of Dutch grammatical gender is investigated. Adult speakers of German, English and a Romance language (French, Italian or Spanish) were investigated to explore the role of transfer in learning the Dutch grammatical gender system. In the first language

  11. Grammatical Gender Trouble and Hungarian Gender[lessness]. Part I: Comparative Linguistic Gender

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    Louise O. Vasvári

    2011-01-01

    Full Text Available The aim of this study is to define linguistic gender[lessness], with particular reference in the latter part of the article to Hungarian, and to show why it is a feminist issue. I will discuss the [socio]linguistics of linguistic gender in three types of languages, those, like German and the Romance languages, among others, which possess grammatical gender, languages such as English, with only pronominal gender (sometimes misnamed ‘natural gender’, and languages such as Hungarian and other Finno-Ugric languages, as well as many other languages in the world, such as Turkish and Chinese, which have no linguistic or pronomial gender, but, like all languages, can make lexical gender distinctions. While in a narrow linguistic sense linguistic gender can be said to be afunctional, this does not take into account the ideological ramifications in gendered languages of the “leakage” between gender and sex[ism], while at the same time so-called genderless languages can express societal sexist assumptions linguistically through, for example, lexical gender, semantic derogation of women, and naming conventions. Thus, both languages with overt grammatical gender and those with gender-related asymmetries of a more covert nature show language to represent traditional cultural expectations, illustrating that linguistic gender is a feminist issue.

  12. Agent-based models of strategies for the emergence and evolution of grammatical agreement.

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    Katrien Beuls

    Full Text Available Grammatical agreement means that features associated with one linguistic unit (for example number or gender become associated with another unit and then possibly overtly expressed, typically with morphological markers. It is one of the key mechanisms used in many languages to show that certain linguistic units within an utterance grammatically depend on each other. Agreement systems are puzzling because they can be highly complex in terms of what features they use and how they are expressed. Moreover, agreement systems have undergone considerable change in the historical evolution of languages. This article presents language game models with populations of agents in order to find out for what reasons and by what cultural processes and cognitive strategies agreement systems arise. It demonstrates that agreement systems are motivated by the need to minimize combinatorial search and semantic ambiguity, and it shows, for the first time, that once a population of agents adopts a strategy to invent, acquire and coordinate meaningful markers through social learning, linguistic self-organization leads to the spontaneous emergence and cultural transmission of an agreement system. The article also demonstrates how attested grammaticalization phenomena, such as phonetic reduction and conventionalized use of agreement markers, happens as a side effect of additional economizing principles, in particular minimization of articulatory effort and reduction of the marker inventory. More generally, the article illustrates a novel approach for studying how key features of human languages might emerge.

  13. Categorizing with gender: does implicit grammatical gender affect semantic processing in 24-month-old toddlers?

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    Bobb, Susan C; Mani, Nivedita

    2013-06-01

    The current study investigated the interaction of implicit grammatical gender and semantic category knowledge during object identification. German-learning toddlers (24-month-olds) were presented with picture pairs and heard a noun (without a preceding article) labeling one of the pictures. Labels for target and distracter images either matched or mismatched in grammatical gender and either matched or mismatched in semantic category. When target and distracter overlapped in both semantic and gender information, target recognition was impaired compared with when target and distracter overlapped on only one dimension. Results suggest that by 24 months of age, German-learning toddlers are already forming not only semantic but also grammatical gender categories and that these sources of information are activated, and interact, during object identification. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  14. How Persistent Are Grammatical Gender Effects? The Case of German and Tamil

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    Sedlmeier, Peter; Tipandjan, Arun; Jänchen, Anastasia

    2016-01-01

    Does the language we speak shape the way we think? The present research concentrated on the impact of grammatical gender on cognition and examined the persistence of the grammatical gender effect by (a) concentrating on German, a three-gendered language, for which previous results have been inconsistent, (b) statistically controlling for common…

  15. No grammatical gender effect on affective ratings: evidence from Italian and German languages.

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    Montefinese, Maria; Ambrosini, Ettore; Roivainen, Eka

    2018-06-06

    In this study, we tested the linguistic relativity hypothesis by studying the effect of grammatical gender (feminine vs. masculine) on affective judgments of conceptual representation in Italian and German. In particular, we examined the within- and cross-language grammatical gender effect and its interaction with participants' demographic characteristics (such as, the raters' age and sex) on semantic differential scales (affective ratings of valence, arousal and dominance) in Italian and German speakers. We selected the stimuli and the relative affective measures from Italian and German adaptations of the ANEW (Affective Norms for English Words). Bayesian and frequentist analyses yielded evidence for the absence of within- and cross-languages effects of grammatical gender and sex- and age-dependent interactions. These results suggest that grammatical gender does not affect judgments of affective features of semantic representation in Italian and German speakers, since an overt coding of word grammar is not required. Although further research is recommended to refine the impact of the grammatical gender on properties of semantic representation, these results have implications for any strong view of the linguistic relativity hypothesis.

  16. The acquisition of grammatical gender in L2 German by learners ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    The study reported in this paper investigated the adult L2 acquisition of grammatical gender in German by first language (L1) speakers of Afrikaans, English and Italian, respectively. The aim of the study was to determine how similarities and differences between the L1 and L2 in terms of grammatical gender affect the ...

  17. Grammatical Gender and Mental Representation of Object: The Case of Musical Instruments

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    Vuksanovic, Jasmina; Bjekic, Jovana; Radivojevic, Natalija

    2015-01-01

    A body of research shows that grammatical gender, although an arbitrary category, is viewed as the system with its own meaning. However, the question remains to what extent does grammatical gender influence shaping our notions about objects when both verbal and visual information are available. Two experiments were conducted. The results obtained…

  18. Dissociable neural representations of grammatical gender in Broca's area investigated by the combination of satiation and TMS.

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    Cattaneo, Zaira; Devlin, Joseph T; Vecchi, Tomaso; Silvanto, Juha

    2009-08-15

    Along with meaning and form, words can be described on the basis of their grammatical properties. Grammatical gender is often used to investigate the latter as it is a grammatical property that is independent of meaning. The left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) has been implicated in the encoding of grammatical gender, but its causal role in this process in neurologically normal observers has not been demonstrated. Here we combined verbal satiation with transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to demonstrate that subpopulations of neurons within Broca's area respond preferentially to different classes of grammatical gender. Subjects were asked to classify Italian nouns into living and nonliving categories; half of these words were of masculine and the other half of feminine grammatical gender. Prior to each test block, a satiation paradigm (a phenomenon in which verbal repetition of a category name leads to a reduced access to that category) was used to modulate the initial state of the representations of either masculine or feminine noun categories. In the No TMS condition, subjects were slower in responding to exemplars to the satiated category relative to exemplars of the nonsatiated category, implying that the neural representations for different classes of grammatical gender are partly dissociable. The application of TMS over Broca's area removed the behavioral impact of verbal (grammatical) satiation, demonstrating the causal role of this region in the encoding of grammatical gender. These results show that the neural representations for different cases of a grammatical property within Broca's area are dissociable.

  19. Role of Grammatical Gender and Semantics in German Word Production

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    Vigliocco, Gabriella; Vinson, David P.; Indefrey, Peter; Levelt, Willem J. M.; Hellwig, Frauke

    2004-01-01

    Semantic substitution errors (e.g., saying "arm" when "leg" is intended) are among the most common types of errors occurring during spontaneous speech. It has been shown that grammatical gender of German target nouns is preserved in the errors (E. Mane, 1999). In 3 experiments, the authors explored different accounts of the grammatical gender…

  20. Incidental Learning of Gender Agreement in L2.

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    Denhovska, Nadiia; Serratrice, Ludovica

    2017-10-01

    Incidental learning of grammar has been an area of interest for many decades; nevertheless, existing research has primarily focused on artificial or semi-artificial languages. The present study examines the incidental acquisition of the grammar of a natural language by exposing adult speakers of an ungendered L1 (English) to the gender agreement patterns in Russian (a language that was novel to the learners). Both receptive and productive knowledge and the mediating role of working memory (WM) in learning were measured. Speakers of the ungendered language were able to successfully acquire receptive but not productive grammatical knowledge in a new language under incidental exposure. WM was engaged in production but not in a grammaticality judgment task in the incidental learning condition, indicating cognitive effort during knowledge retrieval.

  1. Cognitive Predictors of Generalization of Russian Grammatical Gender Categories

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    Kempe, Vera; Brooks, Patricia J.; Kharkhurin, Anatoliy

    2010-01-01

    This study explores how learners generalize grammatical categories such as noun gender. Adult native English speakers with no prior knowledge of Russian (N = 47, ages 17-55 years) were trained to categorize Russian masculine and feminine diminutive nouns according to gender. The training set was morphophonologically homogeneous due to similarities…

  2. Syntactic processes in speech production: The retrieval of grammatical gender.

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    van Berkum, J.J.A.

    1997-01-01

    Two picture-naming experiments tested the hypothesis that the speed with which native speakers of a gender-marking language retrieve the grammatical gender of a noun from their mental lexicon may depend on the recency of earlier access to that same noun's gender. Ss were 96 native speakers of Dutch.

  3. Disrupted behaviour in grammatical morphology in French speakers with autism spectrum disorders.

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    Le Normand, Marie-Thérèse; Blanc, Romuald; Caldani, Simona; Bonnet-Brilhault, Frédérique

    2018-01-18

    Mixed and inconsistent findings have been reported across languages concerning grammatical morphology in speakers with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). Some researchers argue for a selective sparing of grammar whereas others claim to have identified grammatical deficits. The present study aimed to investigate this issue in 26 participants with ASD speaking European French who were matched on age, gender and SES to 26 participants with typical development (TD). The groups were compared regarding their productivity and accuracy of syntactic and agreement categories using the French MOR part-of-speech tagger available from the CHILDES. The groups significantly differed in productivity with respect to nouns, adjectives, determiners, prepositions and gender markers. Error analysis revealed that ASD speakers exhibited a disrupted behaviour in grammatical morphology. They made gender, tense and preposition errors and they omitted determiners and pronouns in nominal and verbal contexts. ASD speakers may have a reduced sensitivity to perceiving and processing the distributional structure of syntactic categories when producing grammatical morphemes and agreement categories. The theoretical and cross-linguistic implications of these findings are discussed.

  4. Electrophysiology of subject-verb agreement mediated by speakers' gender.

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    Hanulíková, Adriana; Carreiras, Manuel

    2015-01-01

    An important property of speech is that it explicitly conveys features of a speaker's identity such as age or gender. This event-related potential (ERP) study examined the effects of social information provided by a speaker's gender, i.e., the conceptual representation of gender, on subject-verb agreement. Despite numerous studies on agreement, little is known about syntactic computations generated by speaker characteristics extracted from the acoustic signal. Slovak is well suited to investigate this issue because it is a morphologically rich language in which agreement involves features for number, case, and gender. Grammaticality of a sentence can be evaluated by checking a speaker's gender as conveyed by his/her voice. We examined how conceptual information about speaker gender, which is not syntactic but rather social and pragmatic in nature, is interpreted for the computation of agreement patterns. ERP responses to verbs disagreeing with the speaker's gender (e.g., a sentence including a masculine verbal inflection spoken by a female person 'the neighbors were upset because I (∗)stoleMASC plums') elicited a larger early posterior negativity compared to correct sentences. When the agreement was purely syntactic and did not depend on the speaker's gender, a disagreement between a formally marked subject and the verb inflection (e.g., the womanFEM (∗)stoleMASC plums) resulted in a larger P600 preceded by a larger anterior negativity compared to the control sentences. This result is in line with proposals according to which the recruitment of non-syntactic information such as the gender of the speaker results in N400-like effects, while formally marked syntactic features lead to structural integration as reflected in a LAN/P600 complex.

  5. On the semantic content of grammatical gender and its impact on the representation of human referents.

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    Irmen, Lisa; Kurovskaja, Julia

    2010-01-01

    Grammatical gender has been shown to provide natural gender information about human referents. However, due to formal and conceptual differences between masculine and feminine forms, it remains an open question whether these gender categories influence the processing of person information to the same degree. Experiment 1 compared the semantic content of masculine and feminine grammatical gender by combining masculine and feminine role names with either gender congruent or incongruent referents (e.g., Dieser Lehrer [masc.]/Diese Lehrerin [fem.] ist mein Mann/meine Frau; This teacher is my husband/my wife). Participants rated sentences in terms of correctness and customariness. In Experiment 2, in addition to ratings reading times were recorded to assess processing more directly. Both experiments were run in German. Sentences with grammatically feminine role names and gender incongruent referents were rated as less correct and less customary than those with masculine forms and incongruent referents. Combining a masculine role name with an incongruent referent slowed down reading to a greater extent than combining a feminine role name with an incongruent referent. Results thus specify the differential effects of masculine and feminine grammatical gender in denoting human referents.

  6. The acquisition of grammatical gender in L2 German by learners ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    grammatical gender in German by first language (L1) speakers of Afrikaans, English ... feminine – and the target L2 has three genders – masculine, feminine and neuter ..... L1 transfer revisited: the L2 acquisition of telicity marking in English by.

  7. Grammatical gender and the notion of default: insights from language acquisition

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Tsimpli, I.M.; Hulk, A.

    2013-01-01

    The aim of this study is to investigate the contrast in the timing of acquisition of grammatical gender attested in Dutch and Greek child learners. Greek children show precocious acquisition of neuter gender in particular, while Dutch children experience a long delay in the acquisition of neuter

  8. Electrophysiology of subject-verb agreement mediated by speakers’ gender

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    Adriana eHanulíková

    2015-09-01

    Full Text Available An important property of speech is that it explicitly conveys features of a speaker's identity such as age or gender. This event-related potential (ERP study examined the effects of social information provided by a speaker’s gender, i.e. the conceptual representation of gender, on subject-verb agreement. Despite numerous studies on agreement, little is known about syntactic computations generated by speaker characteristics extracted from the acoustic signal. Slovak is well suited to investigate this issue because it is a morphologically rich language in which agreement involves features for number, case, and gender. Grammaticality of a sentence can be evaluated by checking a speaker’s gender as conveyed by his/her voice. We examined how conceptual information about speaker gender, which is not syntactic but rather social and pragmatic in nature, is interpreted for the computation of agreement patterns. ERP responses to verbs disagreeing with the speaker's gender (e.g., a sentence including a masculine verbal inflection spoken by a female person 'the neighbours were upset because I *stoleMASC plums’ elicited a larger early posterior negativity compared to correct sentences. When the agreement was purely syntactic and did not depend on the speaker’s gender, a disagreement between a formally-marked subject and the verb inflection (e.g., the womanFEM *stoleMASC plums resulted in a larger P600 preceded by a larger anterior negativity compared to the control sentences. This result is in line with proposals according to which the recruitment of non-syntactic information such as the gender of the speaker results in N400-like effects, while formally-marked syntactic features lead to structural integration as reflected in a LAN/P600 complex.

  9. Syntactic processes in speech production: The retrieval of grammatical gender

    OpenAIRE

    Van Berkum, J.

    1997-01-01

    Jescheniak and Levelt (Jescheniak, J.-D., Levelt, W.J.M. 1994. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition 20 (4), 824–843) have suggested that the speed with which native speakers of a gender-marking language retrieve the grammatical gender of a noun from their mental lexicon may depend on the recency of earlier access to that same noun's gender, as the result of a mechanism that is dedicated to facilitate gender-marked anaphoric reference to recently introduced discou...

  10. Does Grammatical Gender Influence Perception? A Study of Polish and French Speakers

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    Haertlé Izabella

    2017-12-01

    Full Text Available Can the perception of a word be influenced by its grammatical gender? Can it happen that speakers of one language perceive an object to have masculine features, while speakers of another language perceive the same object to have feminine features? Previous studies suggest that this is the case, and also that there is some supra-language gender categorisation of objects as natural/feminine and artefact/masculine. This study was an attempt to replicate these findings on another population of subjects. This is the first Polish study of this kind, comparing the perceptions of objects by Polish- and French-speaking individuals. The results of this study show that grammatical gender may cue people to assess objects as masculine or feminine. However, the findings of some previous studies, that feminine features are more often ascribed to natural objects than artifacts, were not replicated.

  11. Role of grammatical gender and semantics in German word production

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Vigliocco, G.; Vinson, D.P.; Indefrey, P.; Levelt, W.J.M.; Hellwig, F.

    2004-01-01

    Semantic substitution errors (e.g., saying "arm" when "leg" is intended) are among the most common types of errors occurring during spontaneous speech. It has been shown that grammatical gender of German target nouns is preserved in the errors ( E. Marx, 1999). In 3 experiments, the authors explored

  12. Left fronto-temporal dynamics during agreement processing: evidence for feature-specific computations.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Molinaro, Nicola; Barber, Horacio A; Pérez, Alejandro; Parkkonen, Lauri; Carreiras, Manuel

    2013-09-01

    Grammatical agreement is a widespread language phenomenon that indicates formal syntactic relations between words; however, it also conveys basic lexical (e.g. grammatical gender) or semantic (e.g. numerosity) information about a discourse referent. In this study, we focus on the reading of Spanish noun phrases, violating either number or gender determiner-noun agreement compared to grammatical controls. Magnetoencephalographic activity time-locked to the onset of the noun in both types of violation revealed a left-lateralized brain network involving anterior temporal regions (~220 ms) and, later in time, ventro-lateral prefrontal regions (>300 ms). These activations coexist with dependency-specific effects: in an initial step (~170 ms), occipito-temporal regions are employed for fine-grained analysis of the number marking (in Spanish, presence or absence of the suffix '-s'), while anterior temporal regions show increased activation for gender mismatches compared to grammatical controls. The semantic relevance of number agreement dependencies was mainly reflected by left superior temporal increased activity around 340 ms. These findings offer a detailed perspective on the multi-level analyses involved in the initial computation of agreement dependencies, and theoretically support a derivational approach to agreement computation. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  13. L2 Grammatical Gender in a Complex Morphological System: The Case of German

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    Spinner, Patti; Juffs, Alan

    2008-01-01

    In order to determine the nature of naturalistic learners' difficulty with grammatical gender in a complex morphological system, the longitudinal production data of an early naturalistic L1-Italian and L1-Turkish learner who are acquiring German are examined in light of current theories of gender within Chomsky's (1995) Minimalist Program. After…

  14. Unlimited Gender: The Discursive Construction of the Travesti Identity Through the Manipulation of the Grammatical Gender System

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    Rodrigo Borba

    2008-05-01

    Full Text Available This study investigates Southern Brazilian traveestis’ manipulation of the Portuguese grammatical gender system. During field work, it was verified that feminine forms are the preferred choice in the group. However, ideological and bodily tensions that surround travestis seem to force them to make use of masculine forms in specific discursive contexts. Travestis use masculine forms 1 to produce narratives about the time before their body modifications took place; 2 to report speech produced by others when talking about transvestites; 3 to talk about themselves within their family relationships; and 4 to distinguish themselves from ‘other’ travestis they do not identify with. Thus, the study shows how Southern Brazilian travestis use the Brazilian Portuguese grammatical gender system as a resource to manipulate their identities and the identities of the community they belong to.

  15. Development of Abstract Grammatical Categorization in Infants

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    Cyr, Marilyn; Shi, Rushen

    2013-01-01

    This study examined abstract syntactic categorization in infants, using the case of grammatical gender. Ninety-six French-learning 14-, 17-, 20-, and 30-month-olds completed the study. In a preferential looking procedure infants were tested on their generalized knowledge of grammatical gender involving pseudonouns and gender-marking determiners.…

  16. On the Autonomy of the Grammatical Gender Systems of the Two Languages of a Bilingual

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    Costa, Albert; Kovacic, Damir; Franck, Julie; Caramazza, Alfonso

    2003-01-01

    In five experiments highly-proficient bilinguals were asked to name two sets of pictures in their L2: a) pictures whose names in the L2 and their corresponding L1 translations have the same grammatical gender value, and b) pictures whose names in the L2 and their corresponding L1 translations have different gender values. In Experiments 1, 2, and…

  17. Grammatical gender effects on cognition: implications for language learning and language use.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Vigliocco, Gabriella; Vinson, David P; Paganelli, Federica; Dworzynski, Katharina

    2005-11-01

    In 4 experiments, the authors addressed the mechanisms by which grammatical gender (in Italian and German) may come to affect meaning. In Experiments 1 (similarity judgments) and 2 (semantic substitution errors), the authors found Italian gender effects for animals but not for artifacts; Experiment 3 revealed no comparable effects in German. These results suggest that gender effects arise as a generalization from an established association between gender of nouns and sex of human referents, extending to nouns referring to sexuated entities. Across languages, such effects are found when the language allows for easy mapping between gender of nouns and sex of human referents (Italian) but not when the mapping is less transparent (German). A final experiment provided further constraints: These effects during processing arise at a lexical-semantic level rather than at a conceptual level. Copyright (c) 2005 APA, all rights reserved.

  18. A Case-based Reasoning Approach to Validate Grammatical Gender and Number Agreement in Spanish language

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    Jorge Bacca

    2013-03-01

    Full Text Available Across Latin America 420 indigenous languages are spoken. Spanish is considered a second language in indigenous communities and is progressively introduced in education. However, most of the tools to support teaching processes of a second language have been developed for the most common languages such as English, French, German, Italian, etc. As a result, only a small amount of learning objects and authoring tools have been developed for indigenous people considering the specific needs of their population. This paper introduces Multilingual–Tiny as a web authoring tool to support the virtual experience of indigenous students and teachers when they are creating learning objects in indigenous languages or in Spanish language, in particular, when they have to deal with the grammatical structures of Spanish. Multilingual–Tiny has a module based on the Case-based Reasoning technique to provide recommendations in real time when teachers and students write texts in Spanish. An experiment was performed in order to compare some local similarity functions to retrieve cases from the case library taking into account the grammatical structures. As a result we found the similarity function with the best performance

  19. The production and processing of determiner-noun agreement in child L2 Dutch

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Blom, E.; Vasić, N.

    2011-01-01

    Recent research has shown that children who learn Dutch as their second language (L2) have difficulties with Dutch grammatical gender. This study shows that six to nine year old L2 Dutch children whose first language (L1) is Turkish noticed incorrect gender agreement between determiner and noun only

  20. The role of grammatical category information in spoken word retrieval.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Duràn, Carolina Palma; Pillon, Agnesa

    2011-01-01

    We investigated the role of lexical syntactic information such as grammatical gender and category in spoken word retrieval processes by using a blocking paradigm in picture and written word naming experiments. In Experiments 1, 3, and 4, we found that the naming of target words (nouns) from pictures or written words was faster when these target words were named within a list where only words from the same grammatical category had to be produced (homogeneous category list: all nouns) than when they had to be produced within a list comprising also words from another grammatical category (heterogeneous category list: nouns and verbs). On the other hand, we detected no significant facilitation effect when the target words had to be named within a homogeneous gender list (all masculine nouns) compared to a heterogeneous gender list (both masculine and feminine nouns). In Experiment 2, using the same blocking paradigm by manipulating the semantic category of the items, we found that naming latencies were significantly slower in the semantic category homogeneous in comparison with the semantic category heterogeneous condition. Thus semantic category homogeneity caused an interference, not a facilitation effect like grammatical category homogeneity. Finally, in Experiment 5, nouns in the heterogeneous category condition had to be named just after a verb (category-switching position) or a noun (same-category position). We found a facilitation effect of category homogeneity but no significant effect of position, which showed that the effect of category homogeneity found in Experiments 1, 3, and 4 was not due to a cost of switching between grammatical categories in the heterogeneous grammatical category list. These findings supported the hypothesis that grammatical category information impacts word retrieval processes in speech production, even when words are to be produced in isolation. They are discussed within the context of extant theories of lexical production.

  1. Complexity Matters: On Gender Agreement in Heritage Scandinavian

    Science.gov (United States)

    Johannessen, Janne Bondi; Larsson, Ida

    2015-01-01

    This paper investigates aspects of the noun phrase from a Scandinavian heritage language perspective, with an emphasis on noun phrase-internal gender agreement and noun declension. Our results are somewhat surprising compared with earlier research: We find that noun phrase-internal agreement for the most part is rather stable. To the extent that we find attrition, it affects agreement in the noun phrase, but not the declension of the noun. We discuss whether this means that gender is lost and has been reduced to a pure declension class, or whether gender is retained. We argue that gender is actually retained in these heritage speakers. One argument for this is that the speakers who lack agreement in complex noun phrases, have agreement intact in simpler phrases. We have thus found that the complexity of the noun phrase is crucial for some speakers. However, among the heritage speakers we also find considerable inter-individual variation, and different speakers can have partly different systems. PMID:26733114

  2. Gender Congruency From a Neutral Point of View: The Roles of Gender Classes and Conceptual Connotations.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bender, Andrea; Beller, Sieghard; Klauer, Karl Christoph

    2018-02-01

    The question of whether language affects thought is long-standing, with grammatical gender being one of the most contended instances. Empirical evidence focuses on the gender congruency effect, according to which referents of masculine nouns are conceptualized more strongly as male and those of feminine nouns more strongly as female. While some recent studies suggest that this effect is driven by conceptual connotations rather than grammatical properties, research remains theoretically inconclusive because of the confounding of grammatical gender and conceptual connotations in gendered (masculine or feminine) nouns. Taking advantage of the fact that German also includes a neuter gender, the current study attempted to disentangle the relative contributions of grammatical properties and connotations to the emergence of the gender congruency effect. In three pairs of experiments, neuter and gendered nouns were compared in an Extrinsic Affective Simon Task based on gender associations, controlled for a possible role of gender-indicating articles. A congruency effect emerged equally strongly for neuter and gendered nouns, but disappeared when including connotations as covariate, thereby effectively excluding grammatical gender as the (only) driving force for this effect. Based on a critical discussion of these findings, we propose a possible mechanism for the emergence of the effect that also has the potential to accommodate conflicting patterns of findings from previous research. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

  3. Where syntax meets math: Right Intraparietal Sulcus activation in response to grammatical number agreement violations

    Science.gov (United States)

    Carreiras, Manuel; Carr, Lindsay; Barber, Horacio A.; Hernandez, Arturo

    2009-01-01

    Previous research has shown that the processing of words referring to actions activated motor areas. Here we show activation of the right intraparietal sulcus, an area that has been associated with quantity processing, when participants are asked to read pairs of words with number agreement violations as opposed to phrases with gender agreement violations or with no violation. In addition, we show activation in the left premotor and left inferior frontal areas when either gender or number agreement is violated. We argue that number violation automatically activates processes linked to quantity processing which are not directly related to language mechanisms. PMID:19800410

  4. Gender and Agreement Processing in Children with Developmental Language Disorder

    Science.gov (United States)

    Rakhlin, Natalia; Kornilov, Sergey A.; Grigorenko, Elena L.

    2014-01-01

    Two experiments tested whether Russian-speaking children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) are sensitive to gender agreement when performing a gender decision task. In Experiment 1, the presence of overt gender agreement between verbs and/or adjectival modifiers and postverbal subject nouns memory was varied. In Experiment 2, agreement…

  5. The interaction of morphological and stereotypical gender information in Russian

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Alan eGarnham

    2015-11-01

    Full Text Available Previous research, for example in English, French, German, and Spanish, has investigated the interplay between grammatical gender information and stereotype gender information (e.g. that secretaries are usually female, in many cultures, in the interpretation of both singular noun phrases (the secretary and plural nouns phrases, particularly so-called generic masculines – noun that have masculine grammatical gender but that should be able to refer to both groups of men and mixed groups of men and women. Since the studies have been conducted in cultures with broadly similar stereotypes, the effects generally reflect differences in the grammatical systems of the languages. Russian has a more complex grammatical gender system than the languages previously studied, and, unlike those languages frequently presents examples in which grammatical gender is marked on the predicate (in an inflection on the verb. In this study we collected stereotype norms for 160 role names in Russian, providing a useful resource for further work in this language. We also conducted a reading time study examining the interaction of grammatical and stereotype gender information in the interpretation of both Russian singular noun phrases, and plurals that were (potentially generic masculines. Our results show that, although both types of gender information are used, as available, the effects of grammatical marking on the predicate are not as strong as those.

  6. Grammatical Impairments in PPA.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Thompson, Cynthia K; Mack, Jennifer E

    2014-09-01

    Grammatical impairments are commonly observed in the agrammatic subtype of primary progressive aphasia (PPA-G), whereas grammatical processing is relatively preserved in logopenic (PPA-L) and semantic (PPA-S) subtypes. We review research on grammatical deficits in PPA and associated neural mechanisms, with discussion focused on production and comprehension of four aspects of morphosyntactic structure: grammatical morphology, functional categories, verbs and verb argument structure, and complex syntactic structures. We also address assessment of grammatical deficits in PPA, with emphasis on behavioral tests of grammatical processing. Finally, we address research examining the effects of treatment for progressive grammatical impairments. PPA-G is associated with grammatical deficits that are evident across linguistic domains in both production and comprehension. PPA-G is associated with damage to regions including the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and dorsal white matter tracts, which have been linked to impaired comprehension and production of complex sentences. Detailing grammatical deficits in PPA is important for estimating the trajectory of language decline and associated neuropathology. We, therefore, highlight several new assessment tools for examining different aspects of morphosyntactic processing in PPA. Individuals with PPA-G present with agrammatic deficit patterns distinct from those associated with PPA-L and PPA-S, but similar to those seen in agrammatism resulting from stroke, and patterns of cortical atrophy and white matter changes associated with PPA-G have been identified. Methods for clinical evaluation of agrammatism, focusing on comprehension and production of grammatical morphology, functional categories, verbs and verb argument structure, and complex syntactic structures are recommended and tools for this are emerging in the literature. Further research is needed to investigate the real-time processes underlying grammatical impairments in

  7. The Agreement between Conjoined Subjects and Predicate: Croatian Church Slavonic Corpus Analysis

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Ana Kovačević

    2017-08-01

    Full Text Available The abundance of grammatical categories in Slavonic and their overlap are particularly evident in the agreement between conjoined subjects and predicate. When they are accompanied by agreement conditions, such as word order and animacy in Slavic languages, different agreement patterns, dependent also on concrete context and speaker, are to be expected. In this paper the study of the agreement between conjoined subjects and predicate is based on an analysis of the medieval Glagolitic Croatian Church Slavonic corpus. Number, gender, and person are grammatical categories, i. e., features of conjoined noun phrases and predicate agreement. The analysis includes noun phrases conjoined by coordinating and some non-coordinating conjunctions as well as noun phrases conjoined by a gradational ‛not only [. . .] but also’ structure. Comitative and reciprocal noun phrases are included as well. The research in the given corpus shows that the conjoined noun phrases with predicate agreement can be syntactic (predicate showing agreement with one conjunct or semantic (predicate showing agreement with all conjuncts. Syntactic agreement appears as the so-called contact agreement (predicate showing agreement with the closest conjunct and as distant agreement (predicate showing agreement with the most distant conjunct. Semantic agreement is applied mostly in accordance with G. G. Corbett’s resolution rules for Slavic languages. However, the analysis shows that some resolution rules for number should be revised due to dual number. Although absent from the majority of contemporary Slavic languages, it is precisely in historical Slavic idioms that dual number reveals its identity, highlighted in agreement study as well.

  8. Correspondence between Grammatical Categories and Grammatical Functions in Chinese.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Tan, Fu

    1993-01-01

    A correspondence is shown between grammatical categories and grammatical functions in Chinese. Some syntactic properties distinguish finite verbs from nonfinite verbs, nominals from other categories, and verbs from other categories. (Contains seven references.) (LB)

  9. Grammatical workspace sharing during language production and language comprehension: Evidence from grammatical multitasking

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    van Kempen, G.; Olsthoorn, N.; Sprenger, S.

    2012-01-01

    Grammatical encoding and grammatical decoding (in sentence production and comprehension, respectively) are often portrayed as independent modalities of grammatical performance that only share declarative resources: lexicon and grammar. The processing resources subserving these modalities are

  10. Peculiarities of Grammatical Properties in Nominal Word Combinations

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Irina B. Klienkova

    2014-01-01

    Full Text Available The article examines some peculiarities if grammatical properties of nominal word combinations based on the study of German-speaking Swiss press. The accumulated experience of linguists is analyzed and certain factors influencing the choice of syntactic relations in nominal word combinations with quantitative meaning are researched. It has been established that the choice of syntactic relations in such word combinations is determined by functional style, semantics and grammatical features of nouns - first or second components in a word combination. The aforementioned factors influencing the choice of syntactic relations in quantitative nominal word combinations are studied on the material of Germanspeaking Swiss press. The research revealed a number of peculiarities. First of all, German-speaking Swiss press uses such syntactic relation as genitive subordination quite often, not only on "special occasion" and unlike its use in Germany does not produce a magniloquent, pompous impression. Secondly, it has been established that the choice of syntactic relations in word combinations of the above-mentioned type of word combinations greatly depends on the semantic meaning of the noun - the first component of the word combination - and does not always coincide with the grammatical properties in nominal combinations in Germany. Thirdly, a clear dependence of syntactic relations choice is observed. Moreover, the article highlights the importance of grammatical features of the second component. These are such features as gender, number, case accompanied by noun declension. All the afore-mentioned features help to define the type of syntactic relations, which nominal quantitative word combinations may be connected by. The results of the comparisons of grammatical properties of quantitative nominal word combinations in German and Swiss press are demonstrated in a table below.

  11. Predictable grammatical constructions

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Lucas, Sandra

    2015-01-01

    My aim in this paper is to provide evidence from diachronic linguistics for the view that some predictable units are entrenched in grammar and consequently in human cognition, in a way that makes them functionally and structurally equal to nonpredictable grammatical units, suggesting that these p......My aim in this paper is to provide evidence from diachronic linguistics for the view that some predictable units are entrenched in grammar and consequently in human cognition, in a way that makes them functionally and structurally equal to nonpredictable grammatical units, suggesting...... that these predictable units should be considered grammatical constructions on a par with the nonpredictable constructions. Frequency has usually been seen as the only possible argument speaking in favor of viewing some formally and semantically fully predictable units as grammatical constructions. However, this paper...... semantically and formally predictable. Despite this difference, [méllo INF], like the other future periphrases, seems to be highly entrenched in the cognition (and grammar) of Early Medieval Greek language users, and consequently a grammatical construction. The syntactic evidence speaking in favor of [méllo...

  12. Gender Agreement Attraction in Russian: Production and Comprehension Evidence.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Slioussar, Natalia; Malko, Anton

    2016-01-01

    Agreement attraction errors (such as the number error in the example "The key to the cabinets are rusty") have been the object of many studies in the last 20 years. So far, almost all production experiments and all comprehension experiments looked at binary features (primarily at number in Germanic, Romance, and some other languages, in several cases at gender in Romance languages). Among other things, it was noted that both in production and in comprehension, attraction effects are much stronger for some feature combinations than for the others: they can be observed in the sentences with singular heads and plural dependent nouns (e.g.,"The key to the cabinets…"), but not in the sentences with plural heads and singular dependent nouns (e.g., "The keys to the cabinet…"). Almost all proposed explanations of this asymmetry appeal to feature markedness, but existing findings do not allow teasing different approaches to markedness apart. We report the results of four experiments (one on production and three on comprehension) studying subject-verb gender agreement in Russian, a language with three genders. Firstly, we found attraction effects both in production and in comprehension, but, unlike in the case of number agreement, they were not parallel (in production, feminine gender triggered strongest effects, while neuter triggered weakest effects, while in comprehension, masculine triggered weakest effects). Secondly, in the comprehension experiments attraction was observed for all dependent noun genders, but only for a subset of head noun genders. This goes against the traditional assumption that the features of the dependent noun are crucial for attraction, showing the features of the head are more important. We demonstrate that this approach can be extended to previous findings on attraction and that there exists other evidence for it. In total, these findings let us reconsider the question which properties of features are crucial for agreement attraction in

  13. Object attraction effects during subject-verb agreement in Persian.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Feiz, Aazam; Cowles, Wind

    2018-04-01

    Subject-verb agreement provides insight into how grammatical and semantic features interact during sentence production, and prior studies have found attraction errors when an intervening local noun is grammatically part of the subject. Two major types of theories have emerged from these studies: control based and competition-based. The current study used an subject-object-verb language with optional subject-verb agreement, Persian, to test the competition-based hypothesis that intervening object nouns may also cause attraction effects, even though objects are not part of the syntactic relationship between the subject and verb. Our results, which did not require speakers to make grammatical errors, show that objects can be attractors for agreement, but this effect appears to be dependent on the type of plural marker on the object. These results support competition-based theories of agreement production, in which agreement may be influenced by attractors that are outside the scope of the subject-verb relationship.

  14. The Influence of Sex Information on Gender Word Processing.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Casado, Alba; Palma, Alfonso; Paolieri, Daniela

    2018-06-01

    Three different tasks (word repetition, lexical decision, and gender decision) were designed to explore the impact of the sex clues (sex of the speaker, sex of the addressee) and the type of gender (semantic, arbitrary) on the processing of isolated Spanish gendered words. The findings showed that the grammatical gender feature was accessed when no mandatory attentional focus was required. In addition, the results indicated that the participants organize information according to their own sex role, which provides more salience to the words that match in grammatical gender with their own sex role representation, even when the gender assignment is arbitrary. Finally, the sex of the speaker biased the lexical access and the grammatical gender selection, serving as a semantic prime when the two dimensions have a congruent relationship. Furthermore, the masculine form serves as the generic gender representing both male and female figures.

  15. Selective impairment of masculine gender processing: evidence from a German aphasic.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Seyboth, Margret; Blanken, Gerhard; Ehmann, Daniela; Schwarz, Falke; Bormann, Tobias

    2011-12-01

    The present single case study describes the performance of the German aphasic E.M. who exhibited a severe impairment of grammatical gender processing in masculine nouns but relatively spared performance regarding feminine and neuter ones. This error pattern was assessed with tests of gender assignment to orally or visually presented words, with oral or written responses, and with tests of gender congruency decision on noun phrases. The pattern occurred across tasks and modalities, thus suggesting a gender-specific impairment at a modality-independent level of processing. It was sensitive to frequency, thus supporting the assumption that access to gender features as part of grammatical processing is frequency sensitive. Besides being the first description of a gender-specific impairment in an aphasic subject, the data therefore have implications regarding the modelling of representation and processing of grammatical gender information within the mental lexicon.

  16. Agreement processing and attraction errors in aging: evidence from subject-verb agreement in German.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Reifegerste, Jana; Hauer, Franziska; Felser, Claudia

    2017-11-01

    Effects of aging on lexical processing are well attested, but the picture is less clear for grammatical processing. Where age differences emerge, these are usually ascribed to working-memory (WM) decline. Previous studies on the influence of WM on agreement computation have yielded inconclusive results, and work on aging and subject-verb agreement processing is lacking. In two experiments (Experiment 1: timed grammaticality judgment, Experiment 2: self-paced reading + WM test), we investigated older (OA) and younger (YA) adults' susceptibility to agreement attraction errors. We found longer reading latencies and judgment reaction times (RTs) for OAs. Further, OAs, particularly those with low WM scores, were more accepting of sentences with attraction errors than YAs. OAs showed longer reading latencies for ungrammatical sentences, again modulated by WM, than YAs. Our results indicate that OAs have greater difficulty blocking intervening nouns from interfering with the computation of agreement dependencies. WM can modulate this effect.

  17. Grammatical Relations and Grammatical Categories in Malay; the Indonesian Prefix MeN- Revisited

    OpenAIRE

    Tjia, Johnny

    2015-01-01

    The lexical roots of Malay are flexible with regard to their grammatical categories, which presents a problem in providing grammatical evidence for their category determination. This paper attempts to propose the use of affixes as one way to deal with the issue. Data from Indonesian and Ambon (Malay) language are among others given for clarification. The grammatical evidence from Indonesian active meN-, together with other affixes, are revisited as they can contribute to our understanding of ...

  18. Cues, quantification, and agreement in language comprehension.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Tanner, Darren; Bulkes, Nyssa Z

    2015-12-01

    We investigated factors that affect the comprehension of subject-verb agreement in English, using quantification as a window into the relationship between morphosyntactic processes in language production and comprehension. Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded while participants read sentences with grammatical and ungrammatical verbs, in which the plurality of the subject noun phrase was either doubly marked (via overt plural quantification and morphological marking on the noun) or singly marked (via only plural morphology on the noun). Both acceptability judgments and the ERP data showed heightened sensitivity to agreement violations when quantification provided an additional cue to the grammatical number of the subject noun phrase, over and above plural morphology. This is consistent with models of grammatical comprehension that emphasize feature prediction in tandem with cue-based memory retrieval. Our results additionally contrast with those of prior studies that showed no effects of plural quantification on agreement in language production. These findings therefore highlight some nontrivial divergences in the cues and mechanisms supporting morphosyntactic processing in language production and comprehension.

  19. Grammatical relations and grammatical categories in Malay; The Indonesian prefix meN- revisited

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Johnny Tjia

    2015-04-01

    Full Text Available The lexical roots of Malay are flexible with regard to their grammatical categories, which presents a problem in providing grammatical evidence for their category determination. This paper attempts to propose the use of affixes as one way to deal with the issue. Data from Indonesian and Ambon (Malay language are among others given for clarification. The grammatical evidence from Indonesian active meN-, together with other affixes, are revisited as they can contribute to our understanding of the matter.

  20. Grammatical Deviations in the Spoken and Written Language of Hebrew-Speaking Children With Hearing Impairments.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Tur-Kaspa, Hana; Dromi, Esther

    2001-04-01

    The present study reports a detailed analysis of written and spoken language samples of Hebrew-speaking children aged 11-13 years who are deaf. It focuses on the description of various grammatical deviations in the two modalities. Participants were 13 students with hearing impairments (HI) attending special classrooms integrated into two elementary schools in Tel Aviv, Israel, and 9 students with normal hearing (NH) in regular classes in these same schools. Spoken and written language samples were collected from all participants using the same five preplanned elicitation probes. Students with HI were found to display significantly more grammatical deviations than their NH peers in both their spoken and written language samples. Most importantly, between-modality differences were noted. The participants with HI exhibited significantly more grammatical deviations in their written language samples than in their spoken samples. However, the distribution of grammatical deviations across categories was similar in the two modalities. The most common grammatical deviations in order of their frequency were failure to supply obligatory morphological markers, failure to mark grammatical agreement, and the omission of a major syntactic constituent in a sentence. Word order violations were rarely recorded in the Hebrew samples. Performance differences in the two modalities encourage clinicians and teachers to facilitate target linguistic forms in diverse communication contexts. Furthermore, the identification of linguistic targets for intervention must be based on the unique grammatical structure of the target language.

  1. Lady Liberty and Godfather Death as candidates for linguistic relativity? Scrutinizing the gender congruency effect on personified allegories with explicit and implicit measures.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bender, Andrea; Beller, Sieghard; Klauer, Karl Christoph

    2016-01-01

    Linguistic relativity--the idea that language affects thought by way of its grammatical categorizations--has been controversially debated for decades. One of the contested cases is the grammatical gender of nouns, which is claimed to affect how their referents are conceptualized (i.e., as rather female or male in congruence with the grammatical gender of the noun), especially when used allegorically. But is this association strong enough to be detected in implicit measures, and, if so, can we disentangle effects of grammatical gender and allegorical association? Three experiments with native speakers of German tackled these questions. They revealed a gender congruency effect on allegorically used nouns, but this effect was stronger with an explicit measure (assignment of biological sex) than with an implicit measure (Extrinsic Affective Simon Task) and disappeared in the implicit measure when grammatical gender and allegorical associations were set into contrast. Taken together, these findings indicate that the observed congruency effect was driven by the association of nouns with personifications rather than by their grammatical gender. In conclusion, we also discuss implications of these findings for linguistic relativity.

  2. Sentence processing and grammaticality in functional linguistics

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Poulsen, Mads

    finding from research on sentence processing that sentences are processed incrementally. Empirical methods for establishing grammaticality status are discussed and applied in relation to non-WH extraction phenomena in Danish. In Chapter 2, I discuss the use of the notions of grammaticality......The dissertation presents a functional linguistic model of grammaticality and investigates methods for applying this notion in empirical work. The use of the notion of grammaticality in generative grammar has been criticized by functionalists (Harder, 1996; Lakoff & Johnson, 1999), but attempts...... grammaticality. It is concluded that the intuitions of linguists should in principle be considered hypotheses of grammaticality, and that such hypotheses need to be tested with independent data. Such data can for example take the form of corpus data or acceptability judgment experiments. It is furthermore argued...

  3. Error-Related Activity and Correlates of Grammatical Plasticity

    Science.gov (United States)

    Davidson, Doug J.; Indefrey, Peter

    2011-01-01

    Cognitive control involves not only the ability to manage competing task demands, but also the ability to adapt task performance during learning. This study investigated how violation-, response-, and feedback-related electrophysiological (EEG) activity changes over time during language learning. Twenty-two Dutch learners of German classified short prepositional phrases presented serially as text. The phrases were initially presented without feedback during a pre-test phase, and then with feedback in a training phase on two separate days spaced 1 week apart. The stimuli included grammatically correct phrases, as well as grammatical violations of gender and declension. Without feedback, participants’ classification was near chance and did not improve over trials. During training with feedback, behavioral classification improved and violation responses appeared to both types of violation in the form of a P600. Feedback-related negative and positive components were also present from the first day of training. The results show changes in the electrophysiological responses in concert with improving behavioral discrimination, suggesting that the activity is related to grammar learning. PMID:21960979

  4. Grammatical constraints on phonological encoding in speech production.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Heller, Jordana R; Goldrick, Matthew

    2014-12-01

    To better understand the influence of grammatical encoding on the retrieval and encoding of phonological word-form information during speech production, we examine how grammatical class constraints influence the activation of phonological neighbors (words phonologically related to the target--e.g., MOON, TWO for target TUNE). Specifically, we compare how neighbors that share a target's grammatical category (here, nouns) influence its planning and retrieval, assessed by picture naming latencies, and phonetic encoding, assessed by word productions in picture names, when grammatical constraints are strong (in sentence contexts) versus weak (bare naming). Within-category (noun) neighbors influenced planning time and phonetic encoding more strongly in sentence contexts. This suggests that grammatical encoding constrains phonological processing; the influence of phonological neighbors is grammatically dependent. Moreover, effects on planning times could not fully account for phonetic effects, suggesting that phonological interaction affects articulation after speech onset. These results support production theories integrating grammatical, phonological, and phonetic processes.

  5. Grammatical Constructions as Relational Categories.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Goldwater, Micah B

    2017-07-01

    This paper argues that grammatical constructions, specifically argument structure constructions that determine the "who did what to whom" part of sentence meaning and how this meaning is expressed syntactically, can be considered a kind of relational category. That is, grammatical constructions are represented as the abstraction of the syntactic and semantic relations of the exemplar utterances that are expressed in that construction, and it enables the generation of novel exemplars. To support this argument, I review evidence that there are parallel behavioral patterns between how children learn relational categories generally and how they learn grammatical constructions specifically. Then, I discuss computational simulations of how grammatical constructions are abstracted from exemplar sentences using a domain-general relational cognitive architecture. Last, I review evidence from adult language processing that shows parallel behavioral patterns with expert behavior from other cognitive domains. After reviewing the evidence, I consider how to integrate this account with other theories of language development. Copyright © 2017 Cognitive Science Society, Inc.

  6. Modeling of the Case Grammatical Meaning

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Алексей Львович Новиков

    2014-12-01

    Full Text Available The article raises the problem of constructing a semantic model to describe the meaning of the grammatical category of case in the languages of different types. The main objective of this publication - to provide an overview of different points of view on the semantic structure of the category of case and to compare different models of case semantics. Initial impulse to the development of problems of case semantics became the grammar and typological ideas of A.A. Potebnya and R. Jakobson. The basis of these models, which differ from each other in the number and nature of the allocation of features is the idea of the possibility of representing grammatical meaning as a structured set of semantic features. The analysis shows that the construction of formal models of grammatical categories is impossible without referring to the content of the dominant semantic features in the structure of grammatical meaning. Despite all the difficulties of modeling grammatical semantics, to construct a semantic model of case is an interesting and promising task of general morphology and typological linguistics.

  7. Grammatical number processing and anticipatory eye movements are not tightly coordinated in English spoken language comprehension

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Brian eRiordan

    2015-05-01

    Full Text Available Recent studies of eye movements in world-situated language comprehension have demonstrated that rapid processing of morphosyntactic information – e.g., grammatical gender and number marking – can produce anticipatory eye movements to referents in the visual scene. We investigated how type of morphosyntactic information and the goals of language users in comprehension affected eye movements, focusing on the processing of grammatical number morphology in English-speaking adults. Participants’ eye movements were recorded as they listened to simple English declarative (There are the lions. and interrogative (Where are the lions? sentences. In Experiment 1, no differences were observed in speed to fixate target referents when grammatical number information was informative relative to when it was not. The same result was obtained in a speeded task (Experiment 2 and in a task using mixed sentence types (Experiment 3. We conclude that grammatical number processing in English and eye movements to potential referents are not tightly coordinated. These results suggest limits on the role of predictive eye movements in concurrent linguistic and scene processing. We discuss how these results can inform and constrain predictive approaches to language processing.

  8. NON-GRAMMATICAL APOPHONY IN ENGLISH.

    Science.gov (United States)

    WESCOTT, ROGER W.

    AN APOPHONE MAY BE DEFINED GENERALLY AS A POLYSYLLABIC VOWEL SEQUENCE SUCH THAT EACH CONTAINED VOWEL IS LOWER OR MORE RETRACTED THAN THE VOWEL WHICH PRECEDES IT --"SING, SANG, SUNG," AND "CLINK, CLANK, CLUNK" ARE EXAMPLES IN ENGLISH. FOR NEARLY EVERY CASE OF GRAMMATICAL APOPHONY IN ENGLISH THERE IS A NON-GRAMMATICAL (YET…

  9. Can Colors, Voices, and Images Help Learners Acquire the Grammatical Gender of German Nouns?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Dias de Oliveira Santos, Victor

    2015-01-01

    Knowledge of lexical items is arguably the most essential aspect of being able to communicate in a foreign language (Richards, 2000). Many studies have examined effective strategies for retaining the meaning of foreign words, but studies investigating the effectiveness of different methods for the retention of essential grammatical features of…

  10. Forms and effects of the humanists' grammatical metadiscourse

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Horster, Camilla

    2016-01-01

    Taking clauses with quia as an example, this article addresses the relationship between grammatical metadiscourse on how one should compose in Latin and actual practice among humanist writers in order to shed light on the workings of grammatical metadiscourse. The investigation compares quantitat......Taking clauses with quia as an example, this article addresses the relationship between grammatical metadiscourse on how one should compose in Latin and actual practice among humanist writers in order to shed light on the workings of grammatical metadiscourse. The investigation compares...

  11. Information theory and artificial grammar learning: inferring grammaticality from redundancy.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jamieson, Randall K; Nevzorova, Uliana; Lee, Graham; Mewhort, D J K

    2016-03-01

    In artificial grammar learning experiments, participants study strings of letters constructed using a grammar and then sort novel grammatical test exemplars from novel ungrammatical ones. The ability to distinguish grammatical from ungrammatical strings is often taken as evidence that the participants have induced the rules of the grammar. We show that judgements of grammaticality are predicted by the local redundancy of the test strings, not by grammaticality itself. The prediction holds in a transfer test in which test strings involve different letters than the training strings. Local redundancy is usually confounded with grammaticality in stimuli widely used in the literature. The confounding explains why the ability to distinguish grammatical from ungrammatical strings has popularized the idea that participants have induced the rules of the grammar, when they have not. We discuss the judgement of grammaticality task in terms of attribute substitution and pattern goodness. When asked to judge grammaticality (an inaccessible attribute), participants answer an easier question about pattern goodness (an accessible attribute).

  12. Grammatical category dissociation in multilingual aphasia.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Faroqi-Shah, Yasmeen; Waked, Arifi N

    2010-03-01

    Word retrieval deficits for specific grammatical categories, such as verbs versus nouns, occur as a consequence of brain damage. Such deficits are informative about the nature of lexical organization in the human brain. This study examined retrieval of grammatical categories across three languages in a trilingual person with aphasia who spoke Arabic, French, and English. In order to delineate the nature of word production difficulty, comprehension was tested, and a variety of concomitant lexical-semantic variables were analysed. The patient demonstrated a consistent noun-verb dissociation in picture naming and narrative speech, with severely impaired production of verbs across all three languages. The cross-linguistically similar noun-verb dissociation, coupled with little evidence of semantic impairment, suggests that (a) the patient has a true "nonsemantic" grammatical category specific deficit, and (b) lexical organization in multilingual speakers shares grammatical class information between languages. The findings of this study contribute to our understanding of the architecture of lexical organization in bilinguals.

  13. The negotiation of collective agreements in France: Challenges and characteristics of negotiating gender equality

    OpenAIRE

    Coron , Clotilde

    2016-01-01

    International audience; The negotiation of corporate agreements in France, the cornerstone of labor relations, has been the subject of much research. However, few address the issue of the process of the negotiation of a company agreement on gender equality, a theme that has been mandatory since the Génisson 2001 Act. This issue presents certain particularities (the transversal nature of gender equality across various Human Resource areas, legal framework obligations, etc.) that may affect the...

  14. Keeping it simple: Studying grammatical encoding with lexically-reduced item sets

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Alma eVeenstra

    2014-07-01

    Full Text Available Compared to the large body of work on lexical access, little research has been done on grammatical encoding in language production. An exception is the generation of subject-verb agreement. Here, two key findings have been reported: (1 Speakers make more agreement errors when the head and local noun of a phrase mismatch in number than when they match (e.g., the key to the cabinet(s; and (2 this attraction effect is asymmetric, with stronger attraction for singular than for plural head nouns. Although these findings are robust, the cognitive processes leading to agreement errors and their significance for the generation of correct agreement are not fully understood. We propose that future studies of agreement, and grammatical encoding in general, may benefit from using paradigms that tightly control the variability of the lexical content of the material.We report two experiments illustrating this approach. In both of them, the experimental items featured combinations of four nouns, four color adjectives, and two prepositions. In Experiment 1, native speakers of Dutch described pictures in sentences such as the circle next to the stars is blue. In Experiment 2, they carried out a forced-choice task, where they read subject noun phrases (e.g., the circle next to the stars and selected the correct verb-phrase (is blue or are blue with a button press. Both experiments showed an attraction effect, with more errors after subject phrases with mismatching, compared to matching head and local nouns. This effect was stronger for singular than plural heads, replicating the attraction asymmetry. In contrast, the response times recorded in Experiment 2 showed similar attraction effects for singular and plural head nouns. These results demonstrate that critical agreement phenomena can be elicited reliably in lexically-reduced contexts. We discuss the theoretical implications of the findings and the potential and limitations of studies using lexically simple

  15. The Influence of Sex Information on Gender Word Processing

    Science.gov (United States)

    Casado, Alba; Palma, Alfonso; Paolieri, Daniela

    2018-01-01

    Three different tasks (word repetition, lexical decision, and gender decision) were designed to explore the impact of the sex clues (sex of the speaker, sex of the addressee) and the type of gender (semantic, arbitrary) on the processing of isolated Spanish gendered words. The findings showed that the grammatical gender feature was accessed when…

  16. ‘Right now, Sophie *swims in the pool?!’: Brain potentials of grammatical aspect processing

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Monique eFlecken

    2015-11-01

    Full Text Available We investigated whether brain potentials of grammatical aspect processing resemble semantic or morpho-syntactic processing, or whether they instead are characterized by an entirely distinct pattern in the same individuals. We studied aspect from the perspective of agreement between the temporal information in the context (temporal adverbials, e.g., Right now and a morpho-syntactic marker of grammatical aspect (e.g., progressive is swimming. Participants read questions providing a temporal context that was progressive (What is Sophie doing in the pool right now? or habitual (What does Sophie do in the pool every Monday?. Following a lead-in sentence context such as Right now, Sophie…, we measured ERPs time-locked to verb phrases in four different conditions, e.g., (a is swimming (control; (b *is cooking (semantic violation; (c *are swimming (morpho-syntactic violation; or (d?swims (aspect mismatch; …in the pool. The collected ERPs show typical N400 and P600 effects for semantics and morpho-syntax, while aspect processing elicited an Early Negativity (250-350 ms. The aspect-related Negativity was short-lived and had a central scalp distribution with an anterior onset. This differentiates it not only from the semantic N400 effect, but also from the typical (LAN (Left Anterior Negativity, that is frequently reported for various types of agreement processing. Moreover, aspect processing was not accompanied by a clear P600 modulation.We argue that the specific context for each item in this experiment provided a trigger for agreement checking with temporal information encoded on the verb, i.e., morphological aspect marking. The aspect-related Negativity obtained for aspect agreement mismatches reflects a violated expectation concerning verbal inflection (in the example above, the expected verb phrase was Sophie is X-ing rather than Sophie X-s in condition d. The absence of an additional P600 for aspect processing suggests that the mismatch did not

  17. Stereotype or grammar? The representation of gender when two-year-old and three-year-old French-speaking toddlers listen to role nouns.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lévy, Arik; Gygax, Pascal; Gabriel, Ute; Zesiger, Pascal

    2016-11-01

    Using a preferential looking paradigm, the current study examined the role that grammatical gender plays when preschool French-speaking toddlers process role nouns in the masculine form (e.g., chanteurs masculine 'singers'). While being auditorily prompted with "Look at the 'a role noun'!", two- and three-year-olds were presented with two pictures of two characters ('boy-boy' versus 'girl-boy') with attributes of the given role noun (e.g., singers with microphone and music notes). All role nouns were presented in the masculine plural form, which, despite its use to refer to mixed-gender groups, can be interpreted as referring to men. We expected toddlers to be biased by stereotypes, yet when non-stereotypical role nouns were presented, toddlers were not influenced by grammatical gender, but by their own sex (even more so for three-year-old toddlers). The absence of sensitivity to grammatical cues for either age group is discussed in terms of the developmental awareness of grammatical gender.

  18. REMARKS ON GENDER – EXPRESSING GENDER IN ENGLISH, AND SOME OF THE MAIN ISSUES THAT LEARNERS (AND TEACHERS HAVE TO COPE WITH

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Constantin Manea

    2011-11-01

    Full Text Available The present paper focuses on a number of specific issues (most of which are in fact challenges, misconceptions and rough ideas that are subject to what is generally called the feminist approach to linguistics. It presents some (strictly marginal contrastive notes on expressing gender in English and Romanian, among which: genderization and gender neutrality, the problems posed by the usual definitions of gender (cf. sex, etc., the existence of the epicenes in English, the idea of neutralization of grammatical oppositions (cf. also the idea of “language economy”, the possible existence of the “0 gender” (cf. the 0 / ø article in English. Illustrative examples are given with respect to the alleged “sexist tradition” – as perceived by feminist lingustics –, followed by a set of prominent counterexamples (amply provided mainly by lexicography, fallacies and inconsistencies. The actual existence of gender-oriented languages (vs. “gender-neutral” languages is then addressed, as well as a group of issues relating to usage and language didactics, mainly idiosyncrasies, grammatical and miscellaneous problems.

  19. Grammatical inference algorithms, routines and applications

    CERN Document Server

    Wieczorek, Wojciech

    2017-01-01

    This book focuses on grammatical inference, presenting classic and modern methods of grammatical inference from the perspective of practitioners. To do so, it employs the Python programming language to present all of the methods discussed. Grammatical inference is a field that lies at the intersection of multiple disciplines, with contributions from computational linguistics, pattern recognition, machine learning, computational biology, formal learning theory and many others. Though the book is largely practical, it also includes elements of learning theory, combinatorics on words, the theory of automata and formal languages, plus references to real-world problems. The listings presented here can be directly copied and pasted into other programs, thus making the book a valuable source of ready recipes for students, academic researchers, and programmers alike, as well as an inspiration for their further development.>.

  20. The grammatical function, morphological status and hierarchical ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    The aim of this article is to investigate the different types of grammatical status of the Northern Sotho form ka and its multiple functions in language contexts. The various ranks that ka occupies in the taxonomy of Northern Sotho verb forms are identified and described. Grammatical descriptions by some prominent ...

  1. The lexicographical handling of grammatical equivalence: the case ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    Lexicographers compiling translating dictionaries are not exclusively concerned with semantic equivalence when selecting translating equivalents for lemmata, but often include also grammatical information in illustrative examples when the lexical item to be translated does not have an exact grammatical counterpart in the ...

  2. Rara and grammatical theory

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Rijkhoff, Jan

    2010-01-01

    This paper argues that grammatical theorizing and linguistic typologizing must go hand in hand and that rare typological features play a central role in the interaction of typology and theory. The paper is organized as follows. Section 2 discusses a sampling method that (compared to other samplin...... Functional (Discourse) Grammar and sections 4 and 5 are concerned with the crucial role of rara both in theory driven data collection and in data driven theory building.......This paper argues that grammatical theorizing and linguistic typologizing must go hand in hand and that rare typological features play a central role in the interaction of typology and theory. The paper is organized as follows. Section 2 discusses a sampling method that (compared to other sampling...

  3. The representation of grammatical categories in the brain.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Shapiro, Kevin; Caramazza, Alfonso

    2003-05-01

    Language relies on the rule-based combination of words with different grammatical properties, such as nouns and verbs. Yet most research on the problem of word retrieval has focused on the production of concrete nouns, leaving open a crucial question: how is knowledge about different grammatical categories represented in the brain, and what components of the language production system make use of it? Drawing on evidence from neuropsychology, electrophysiology and neuroimaging, we argue that information about a word's grammatical category might be represented independently of its meaning at the levels of word form and morphological computation.

  4. Planning and production of grammatical and lexical verbs in multi-word messages.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Violaine Michel Lange

    Full Text Available Grammatical words represent the part of grammar that can be most directly contrasted with the lexicon. Aphasiological studies, linguistic theories and psycholinguistic studies suggest that their processing is operated at different stages in speech production. Models of sentence production propose that at the formulation stage, lexical words are processed at the functional level while grammatical words are processed at a later positional level. In this study we consider proposals made by linguistic theories and psycholinguistic models to derive two predictions for the processing of grammatical words compared to lexical words. First, based on the assumption that grammatical words are less crucial for communication and therefore paid less attention to, it is predicted that they show shorter articulation times and/or higher error rates than lexical words. Second, based on the assumption that grammatical words differ from lexical words in being dependent on a lexical host, it is hypothesized that the retrieval of a grammatical word has to be put on hold until its lexical host is available, and it is predicted that this is reflected in longer reaction times (RTs for grammatical compared to lexical words. We investigated these predictions by comparing fully homonymous sentences with only a difference in verb status (grammatical vs. lexical elicited by a specific context. We measured RTs, duration and accuracy rate. No difference in duration was observed. Longer RTs and a lower accuracy rate for grammatical words were reported, successfully reflecting grammatical word properties as defined by linguistic theories and psycholinguistic models. Importantly, this study provides insight into the span of encoding and grammatical encoding processes in speech production.

  5. Planning and production of grammatical and lexical verbs in multi-word messages

    Science.gov (United States)

    Messerschmidt, Maria; Harder, Peter; Siebner, Hartwig Roman; Boye, Kasper

    2017-01-01

    Grammatical words represent the part of grammar that can be most directly contrasted with the lexicon. Aphasiological studies, linguistic theories and psycholinguistic studies suggest that their processing is operated at different stages in speech production. Models of sentence production propose that at the formulation stage, lexical words are processed at the functional level while grammatical words are processed at a later positional level. In this study we consider proposals made by linguistic theories and psycholinguistic models to derive two predictions for the processing of grammatical words compared to lexical words. First, based on the assumption that grammatical words are less crucial for communication and therefore paid less attention to, it is predicted that they show shorter articulation times and/or higher error rates than lexical words. Second, based on the assumption that grammatical words differ from lexical words in being dependent on a lexical host, it is hypothesized that the retrieval of a grammatical word has to be put on hold until its lexical host is available, and it is predicted that this is reflected in longer reaction times (RTs) for grammatical compared to lexical words. We investigated these predictions by comparing fully homonymous sentences with only a difference in verb status (grammatical vs. lexical) elicited by a specific context. We measured RTs, duration and accuracy rate. No difference in duration was observed. Longer RTs and a lower accuracy rate for grammatical words were reported, successfully reflecting grammatical word properties as defined by linguistic theories and psycholinguistic models. Importantly, this study provides insight into the span of encoding and grammatical encoding processes in speech production. PMID:29091940

  6. Planning and production of grammatical and lexical verbs in multi-word messages.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Michel Lange, Violaine; Messerschmidt, Maria; Harder, Peter; Siebner, Hartwig Roman; Boye, Kasper

    2017-01-01

    Grammatical words represent the part of grammar that can be most directly contrasted with the lexicon. Aphasiological studies, linguistic theories and psycholinguistic studies suggest that their processing is operated at different stages in speech production. Models of sentence production propose that at the formulation stage, lexical words are processed at the functional level while grammatical words are processed at a later positional level. In this study we consider proposals made by linguistic theories and psycholinguistic models to derive two predictions for the processing of grammatical words compared to lexical words. First, based on the assumption that grammatical words are less crucial for communication and therefore paid less attention to, it is predicted that they show shorter articulation times and/or higher error rates than lexical words. Second, based on the assumption that grammatical words differ from lexical words in being dependent on a lexical host, it is hypothesized that the retrieval of a grammatical word has to be put on hold until its lexical host is available, and it is predicted that this is reflected in longer reaction times (RTs) for grammatical compared to lexical words. We investigated these predictions by comparing fully homonymous sentences with only a difference in verb status (grammatical vs. lexical) elicited by a specific context. We measured RTs, duration and accuracy rate. No difference in duration was observed. Longer RTs and a lower accuracy rate for grammatical words were reported, successfully reflecting grammatical word properties as defined by linguistic theories and psycholinguistic models. Importantly, this study provides insight into the span of encoding and grammatical encoding processes in speech production.

  7. Grammatical competence of ESL teachers

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Mafisa, Palesa J.

    2002-12-01

    Full Text Available The aim of this article is to report on a study investigating the grammatical competence of English Second Language teachers in secondary schools. This study came about as a result of the widespread concern that these teachers may not always be competent enough in English. We determined the teachers’ familiarity with standard English grammar as well as their acceptance of Black South African English features. The findings indicate that teachers had problems with the grammatical structures tested and accepted some Black South African English grammatical features as correct usage. Die doel van hierdie artikel is om verslag te doen oor ‘n studie wat die grammatikale vermoë van onderwysers van Engels Tweedetaal-onderwysers in sekondêre skole gemeet het. Die studie is gedoen na aanleiding van ‘n wydverspreide besorgdheid dat onderwysers van Engels nie altyd vaardig genoeg in Engels is nie. Ons het die onderwysers se bekendheid met standaard-Engels grammatika vasgestel asook hul aanvaarding van Swart Suid-Afrikaanse Engelse grammatikale verskynsels. Die bevindinge dui aan dat onderwysers probleme het met die grammatikale strukture wat getoets is en dat hulle sekere Swart Suid-Afrikaanse Engelse grammatikale verskynsels as korrek aanvaar.

  8. Double dissociation between syntactic gender and picture naming processing: a brain stimulation mapping study.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Vidorreta, Jose Garbizu; Garcia, Roser; Moritz-Gasser, Sylvie; Duffau, Hugues

    2011-03-01

    Neural foundations of syntactic gender processing remain poorly understood. We used electrostimulation mapping in nine right-handed awake patients during surgery for a glioma within the left hemisphere, to study whether the cortico-subcortical structures involved in naming versus syntactic gender processing are common or distinct. In French, the article determines the grammatical gender. Thus, the patient was asked to perform a picture naming task and to give the appropriate article for each picture, with and without stimulation. Cortical stimulation elicited reproducible syntactic gender disturbances in six patients, in the inferior frontal gyrus (three cases), and in the posterior middle temporal gyrus (three cases). Interestingly, no naming disorders were generated during stimulation of the syntactic sites, while cortical areas inducing naming disturbances never elicited grammatical gender errors when stimulated. Moreover, at the subcortical level, stimulation of the white matter lateral to the caudate nucleus induced gender errors in three patients, with no naming disorders. Using cortico-subcortical electrical mapping in awake patients, we demonstrate for the first time (1) a double dissociation between syntactic gender and naming processing, supporting independent network model rather than serial theory, (2) the involvement of the left inferior frontal gyrus, especially the pars triangularis, and the posterior left middle temporal gyrus in grammatical gender processing, (3) the existence of white matter pathways, likely a sub-part of the left superior longitudinal fasciculus, underlying a large-scale distributed cortico-subcortical circuit which might selectively sub-serve syntactic gender processing, even if interconnected with parallel sub-networks involved in naming (semantic and phonological) processing. Copyright © 2010 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

  9. Linguistic gender marking and its international business ramifications

    OpenAIRE

    Estefania Santacreu-Vasut; Oded Shenkar; Amir Shoham

    2014-01-01

    We analyze the impact of language-based gender distinctions within languages’ grammatical structures on women’s corporate presence. Using four different data sets, we find that countries where the dominant language marks gender more intensely have significantly lower female participation on boards of directors and in senior management, as well as smaller female-led corporate teams. We also find that the gender marking of the language used in the headquarters’ home country impacts female prese...

  10. The grammatical structure of Sowetan tsotsitaal | Gunnink | Southern ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    Tsotsitaal is a language variety widely spoken in South Africa. It is recognisable by its distinct lexicon, which is usually combined with the grammar of another language. In this paper I present data of a tsotsitaal variety spoken in Soweto that uses the grammatical structure of Sowetan Zulu, as well as certain grammatical ...

  11. Planning and production of grammatical and lexical verbs in multi-word messages

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Lange, Violaine Michel; Messerschmidt, Maria; Harder, Peter

    2017-01-01

    to lexical words. First, based on the assumption that grammatical words are less crucial for communication and therefore paid less attention to, it is predicted that they show shorter articulation times and/or higher error rates than lexical words. Second, based on the assumption that grammatical words...... were reported, successfully reflecting grammatical word properties as defined by linguistic theories and psycholinguistic models. Importantly, this study provides insight into the span of encoding and grammatical encoding processes in speech production....

  12. Effects of Instructions on Theme Grading: Grammatical vs. Holistic

    Science.gov (United States)

    Follman, John; And Others

    1971-01-01

    Twelve college seniors in an English methods course were assigned to three treatment groups, Grammatical, Holistic, and Both. Each group received different instructions but graded the same 10 themes. Themes graded for grammatical errors received lower grades than the same themes graded holistically. (NH)

  13. Grounding grammatical categories: attention bias in hand space influences grammatical congruency judgment of Chinese nominal classifiers.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lobben, Marit; D'Ascenzo, Stefania

    2015-01-01

    Embodied cognitive theories predict that linguistic conceptual representations are grounded and continually represented in real world, sensorimotor experiences. However, there is an on-going debate on whether this also holds for abstract concepts. Grammar is the archetype of abstract knowledge, and therefore constitutes a test case against embodied theories of language representation. Former studies have largely focussed on lexical-level embodied representations. In the present study we take the grounding-by-modality idea a step further by using reaction time (RT) data from the linguistic processing of nominal classifiers in Chinese. We take advantage of an independent body of research, which shows that attention in hand space is biased. Specifically, objects near the hand consistently yield shorter RTs as a function of readiness for action on graspable objects within reaching space, and the same biased attention inhibits attentional disengagement. We predicted that this attention bias would equally apply to the graspable object classifier but not to the big object classifier. Chinese speakers (N = 22) judged grammatical congruency of classifier-noun combinations in two conditions: graspable object classifier and big object classifier. We found that RTs for the graspable object classifier were significantly faster in congruent combinations, and significantly slower in incongruent combinations, than the big object classifier. There was no main effect on grammatical violations, but rather an interaction effect of classifier type. Thus, we demonstrate here grammatical category-specific effects pertaining to the semantic content and by extension the visual and tactile modality of acquisition underlying the acquisition of these categories. We conclude that abstract grammatical categories are subjected to the same mechanisms as general cognitive and neurophysiological processes and may therefore be grounded.

  14. Representing number in the real-time processing of agreement: Self-paced reading evidence from Arabic

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Matthew A. Tucker

    2015-04-01

    Full Text Available In the processing of subject-verb agreement, non-subject plural nouns following a singular subject sometimes attract the agreement with the verb, despite not being grammatically licensed to do so. This phenomenon generates agreement errors in production and an increased tendency to fail to notice such errors in comprehension, thereby providing a window into the representation of grammatical number in working memory during sentence processing. Research in this topic, however, is primarily done in related languages with similar agreement systems. In order to increase the cross-linguistic coverage of the processing of agreement, we conducted a self-paced reading study in Modern Standard Arabic. We report robust agreement attraction errors in relative clauses, a configuration not particularly conducive to the generation of such errors for all possible lexicalizations. In particular, we examined the speed with which readers retrieve a subject controller for both grammatical and ungrammatical agreeing verbs in sentences where verbs are preceded by two NPs, one of which is a local non-subject NP that can act as a distractor for the successful resolution of subject-verb agreement. Our results suggest that the frequency of errors is modulated by the kind of plural formation strategy used on the attractor noun: nouns which form plurals by suffixation condition high rates of attraction, whereas nouns which form their plurals by internal vowel change (ablaut generate lower rates of errors and reading-time attraction effects of smaller magnitudes. Furthermore, we show some evidence that these agreement attraction effects are mostly contained in the right tail of reaction time distributions. We also present modeling data in the ACT-R framework which supports a view of these ablauting patterns wherein they are differentially specified for number and evaluate the consequences of possible representations for theories of grammar and parsing.

  15. Switching Between Noun and Verb Agreement Rules Comes at a Cost: Cross-Sectional and Interventional Studies in a Developmental Sample

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Van Reybroeck Marie

    2014-11-01

    Full Text Available This study clarifies the impact of switching context between noun and verb number agreement rules in written language production. In Experiment 1, children from grade 3 to 6 were asked to fill in sentences with nouns and verbs in either a switching condition (noun followed by verb or a repeating condition (noun followed by noun. The results showed that third- and fourth-grade children produced more erroneous agreements in the switching condition than in the repeating condition, showing that switching between rules comes at a cost, whereas fifth- and sixth-grade participants’ performance was not affected by the switching context. Based on these findings, Experiment 2 aimed to assess whether a switching treatment offers a greater opportunity to improve the acquisition of grammatical agreement production, as compared to a simple treatment. Teachers from grade 3 gave either a switching treatment (mixed noun and verb exercises or a simple treatment (noun exercises followed by verb exercises. The results show that children learned better from the switching treatment than from the simple treatment. These findings highlight the cost of switching between noun and verb agreement rules during the acquisition of grammatical number agreement and also how grammatical spelling acquisition can be improved at school.

  16. The neural correlates of grammatical gender decisions in Spanish.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hernandez, Arturo E; Kotz, Sonja A; Hofmann, Juliane; Valentin, Vivian V; Dapretto, Mirella; Bookheimer, Susan Y

    2004-04-09

    In the current study, nine participants were asked to make gender decisions for a set of Spanish nouns while being scanned with functional MRI (fMRI). Words were chosen in which a direct mapping between ending and gender ("transparent" items such as carro(fem) or casa(masc)) is present and those in which there is not a direct relationship ("opaque" items such as fuente(fem) or arroz(masc)). Direct comparisons between opaque and transparent words revealed increased activity in left BA44/45, and BA44/6 as well as bilateral activation near BA 47/insula and the anterior cingulate gyrus. These results reveal activity in areas previously found to be devoted to articulation of the determiner and to morphological processing. Taken together they support the notion that gender decisions for opaque items requires deeper and more effortful processing during the retrieval of lexical and syntactic information.

  17. Aging and the statistical learning of grammatical form classes.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Schwab, Jessica F; Schuler, Kathryn D; Stillman, Chelsea M; Newport, Elissa L; Howard, James H; Howard, Darlene V

    2016-08-01

    Language learners must place unfamiliar words into categories, often with few explicit indicators about when and how that word can be used grammatically. Reeder, Newport, and Aslin (2013) showed that college students can learn grammatical form classes from an artificial language by relying solely on distributional information (i.e., contextual cues in the input). Here, 2 experiments revealed that healthy older adults also show such statistical learning, though they are poorer than young at distinguishing grammatical from ungrammatical strings. This finding expands knowledge of which aspects of learning vary with aging, with potential implications for second language learning in late adulthood. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).

  18. Grammatical distinctions in the left frontal cortex.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Shapiro, K A; Pascual-Leone, A; Mottaghy, F M; Gangitano, M; Caramazza, A

    2001-08-15

    Selective deficits in producing verbs relative to nouns in speech are well documented in neuropsychology and have been associated with left hemisphere frontal cortical lesions resulting from stroke and other neurological disorders. The basis for these impairments is unresolved: Do they arise because of differences in the way grammatical categories of words are organized in the brain, or because of differences in the neural representation of actions and objects? We used repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) to suppress the excitability of a portion of left prefrontal cortex and to assess its role in producing nouns and verbs. In one experiment subjects generated real words; in a second, they produced pseudowords as nouns or verbs. In both experiments, response latencies increased for verbs but were unaffected for nouns following rTMS. These results demonstrate that grammatical categories have a neuroanatomical basis and that the left prefrontal cortex is selectively engaged in processing verbs as grammatical objects.

  19. Grammatical Errors Produced by English Majors: The Translation Task

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mohaghegh, Hamid; Zarandi, Fatemeh Mahmoudi; Shariati, Mohammad

    2011-01-01

    This study investigated the frequency of the grammatical errors related to the four categories of preposition, relative pronoun, article, and tense using the translation task. In addition, the frequencies of these grammatical errors in different categories and in each category were examined. The quantitative component of the study further looked…

  20. Individual differences in adult foreign language learning: the mediating effect of metalinguistic awareness.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Brooks, Patricia J; Kempe, Vera

    2013-02-01

    In this study, we sought to identify cognitive predictors of individual differences in adult foreign-language learning and to test whether metalinguistic awareness mediated the observed relationships. Using a miniature language-learning paradigm, adults (N = 77) learned Russian vocabulary and grammar (gender agreement and case marking) over six 1-h sessions, completing tasks that encouraged attention to phrases without explicitly teaching grammatical rules. The participants' ability to describe the Russian gender and case-marking patterns mediated the effects of nonverbal intelligence and auditory sequence learning on grammar learning and generalization. Hence, even under implicit-learning conditions, individual differences stemmed from explicit metalinguistic awareness of the underlying grammar, which, in turn, was linked to nonverbal intelligence and auditory sequence learning. Prior knowledge of languages with grammatical gender (predominantly Spanish) predicted learning of gender agreement. Transfer of knowledge of gender from other languages to Russian was not mediated by awareness, which suggests that transfer operates through an implicit process akin to structural priming.

  1. Gênero ilimitado: a construção discursiva da identidade travesti através da manipulação do sistema de gênero gramatical Unlimited gender: the discursive construction of the travesti identity through the manipulation of the grammatical gender system

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Rodrigo Borba

    2008-08-01

    Full Text Available Este estudo investiga a manipulação do sistema de gênero gramatical entre travestis profissionais do sexo do Sul do Brasil. Verificou-se que há uma preferência êmica do grupo por formas gramaticais femininas. Porém, as tensões ideológicas e corporais que circundam as travestis forçam-nas a utilizar o masculino em contextos específicos. As travestis empregam o masculino gramatical para 1 produzir narrativas sobre o período anterior às suas transformações corporais; 2 reportar discursos produzidos por outros ao falar de travestis; 3 falar de si em suas relações familiares; e 4 distinguir-se de outras travestis com as quais as falantes não se identificam. Assim, o estudo demonstra como essas travestis usam o gênero gramatical do Português como um recurso lingüístico para manipular suas identidades e as identidades da comunidade a que pertencem.This study investigates Southern Brazilian traveestis' manipulation of the Portuguese grammatical gender system. During field work, it was verified that feminine forms are the preferred choice in the group. However, ideological and bodily tensions that surround travestis seem to force them to make use of masculine forms in specific discursive contexts. Travestis use masculine forms 1 to produce narratives about the time before their body modifications took place; 2 to report speech produced by others when talking about transvestites; 3 to talk about themselves within their family relationships; and 4 to distinguish themselves from 'other' travestis they do not identify with. Thus, the study shows how Southern Brazilian travestis use the Brazilian Portuguese grammatical gender system as a resource to manipulate their identities and the identities of the community they belong to.

  2. Grammatical complexity for two-dimensional maps

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Hagiwara, Ryouichi; Shudo, Akira

    2004-01-01

    We calculate the grammatical complexity of the symbol sequences generated from the Henon map and the Lozi map using the recently developed methods to construct the pruning front. When the map is hyperbolic, the language of symbol sequences is regular in the sense of the Chomsky hierarchy and the corresponding grammatical complexity takes finite values. It is found that the complexity exhibits a self-similar structure as a function of the system parameter, and the similarity of the pruning fronts is discussed as an origin of such self-similarity. For non-hyperbolic cases, it is observed that the complexity monotonically increases as we increase the resolution of the pruning front

  3. Grammatical complexity for two-dimensional maps

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Hagiwara, Ryouichi; Shudo, Akira [Department of Physics, Tokyo Metropolitan University, Minami-Ohsawa, Hachioji, Tokyo 192-0397 (Japan)

    2004-11-05

    We calculate the grammatical complexity of the symbol sequences generated from the Henon map and the Lozi map using the recently developed methods to construct the pruning front. When the map is hyperbolic, the language of symbol sequences is regular in the sense of the Chomsky hierarchy and the corresponding grammatical complexity takes finite values. It is found that the complexity exhibits a self-similar structure as a function of the system parameter, and the similarity of the pruning fronts is discussed as an origin of such self-similarity. For non-hyperbolic cases, it is observed that the complexity monotonically increases as we increase the resolution of the pruning front.

  4. Grammatical complexity for two-dimensional maps

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hagiwara, Ryouichi; Shudo, Akira

    2004-11-01

    We calculate the grammatical complexity of the symbol sequences generated from the Hénon map and the Lozi map using the recently developed methods to construct the pruning front. When the map is hyperbolic, the language of symbol sequences is regular in the sense of the Chomsky hierarchy and the corresponding grammatical complexity takes finite values. It is found that the complexity exhibits a self-similar structure as a function of the system parameter, and the similarity of the pruning fronts is discussed as an origin of such self-similarity. For non-hyperbolic cases, it is observed that the complexity monotonically increases as we increase the resolution of the pruning front.

  5. Gender agreement in interface contexts in the oral production of heritage speakers of Spanish in the Netherlands

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    van Osch, B.; Hulk, A.; Sleeman, P.; Irizarri van Suchtelen, P.

    2014-01-01

    In this paper we present an analysis of Spanish heritage speakers’ oral production of gender agreement outside the DP as an innovative source of support for the Interface Hypothesis (Sorace & Filiaci 2006). We demonstrate that, besides commonly known factors such as the gender, animacy and

  6. Analisis Kontrastif Perspektif Bahasa dan Budaya terhadap Distingsi Gender Maskulin Versus Feminin dalam Bahasa Arab dan Bahasa Indonesia

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    Tajudin Nur

    2012-08-01

    Full Text Available This paper discusses the reflection of gender in Arabic and Indonesian languages and then connects it to their each cultural contexts. Gender in Arabic grammar is important subcategory that distinguishes between masculine and feminine in almost every part of speech, whereas gender in Indonesian is not an important subcategory. After data analysis through comparison and elaboration phases obtained the following results: (1 the gender markers in Arabic are dominated by the grammatical markers, while the gender markers in Indonesian are dominated by the lexical markers and if it not significant the gender markers in Indonesian are not presented, and (2 Arabic strictly applies the gender system and is closely related to the rules of concord (agreement, while Indonesian loosely does it and does not own the rules of conformity. The distinction of gender system between the two languages shows the different of cultural system also. Based on social structure system, the Arab society emphasizes the gender segregation like man versus woman, while the society of Indonesia emphasizes the age and status distinctions. Based on genetic relationship system, the Arab people tend to be individual, while the Indonesian people tend to have mutual cooperation and collectiveness. Based on cultural system, the Arab people applying strict patriarchy, while the Indonesian people applying loose patriarchy.

  7. The Use of Grammatical Morphemes by Mandarin-Speaking Children with High Functioning Autism

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zhou, Peng; Crain, Stephen; Gao, Liqun; Tang, Ye; Jia, Meixiang

    2015-01-01

    The present study investigated the production of grammatical morphemes by Mandarin-speaking children with high functioning autism. Previous research found that a subgroup of English-speaking children with autism exhibit deficits in the use of grammatical morphemes that mark tense. In order to see whether this impairment in grammatical morphology…

  8. Cross-Cultural Agreement in Facial Attractiveness Preferences: The Role of Ethnicity and Gender

    Science.gov (United States)

    Coetzee, Vinet; Greeff, Jaco M.; Stephen, Ian D.; Perrett, David I.

    2014-01-01

    Previous work showed high agreement in facial attractiveness preferences within and across cultures. The aims of the current study were twofold. First, we tested cross-cultural agreement in the attractiveness judgements of White Scottish and Black South African students for own- and other-ethnicity faces. Results showed significant agreement between White Scottish and Black South African observers' attractiveness judgements, providing further evidence of strong cross-cultural agreement in facial attractiveness preferences. Second, we tested whether cross-cultural agreement is influenced by the ethnicity and/or the gender of the target group. White Scottish and Black South African observers showed significantly higher agreement for Scottish than for African faces, presumably because both groups are familiar with White European facial features, but the Scottish group are less familiar with Black African facial features. Further work investigating this discordance in cross-cultural attractiveness preferences for African faces show that Black South African observers rely more heavily on colour cues when judging African female faces for attractiveness, while White Scottish observers rely more heavily on shape cues. Results also show higher cross-cultural agreement for female, compared to male faces, albeit not significantly higher. The findings shed new light on the factors that influence cross-cultural agreement in attractiveness preferences. PMID:24988325

  9. Cross-cultural agreement in facial attractiveness preferences: the role of ethnicity and gender.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Vinet Coetzee

    Full Text Available Previous work showed high agreement in facial attractiveness preferences within and across cultures. The aims of the current study were twofold. First, we tested cross-cultural agreement in the attractiveness judgements of White Scottish and Black South African students for own- and other-ethnicity faces. Results showed significant agreement between White Scottish and Black South African observers' attractiveness judgements, providing further evidence of strong cross-cultural agreement in facial attractiveness preferences. Second, we tested whether cross-cultural agreement is influenced by the ethnicity and/or the gender of the target group. White Scottish and Black South African observers showed significantly higher agreement for Scottish than for African faces, presumably because both groups are familiar with White European facial features, but the Scottish group are less familiar with Black African facial features. Further work investigating this discordance in cross-cultural attractiveness preferences for African faces show that Black South African observers rely more heavily on colour cues when judging African female faces for attractiveness, while White Scottish observers rely more heavily on shape cues. Results also show higher cross-cultural agreement for female, compared to male faces, albeit not significantly higher. The findings shed new light on the factors that influence cross-cultural agreement in attractiveness preferences.

  10. Sensitivity to subject-verb agreement in spoken language in children with developmental dyslexia

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Rispens, J; Roeleven, S; Koster, C

    The principle aim of this paper was to investigate sensitivity to subject-verb agreement morphology in children with developmental dyslexia. An auditory grammaticality judgement task was used to compare morphosyntactic abilities of primary school dyslexic children relative to normally developing

  11. Beyond Gender Stereotypes in Language Comprehension: Self Sex-Role Descriptions Affect the Brain's Potentials Associated with Agreement Processing.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Canal, Paolo; Garnham, Alan; Oakhill, Jane

    2015-01-01

    We recorded Event-Related Potentials to investigate differences in the use of gender information during the processing of reflexive pronouns. Pronouns either matched the gender provided by role nouns (such as "king" or "engineer") or did not. We compared two types of gender information, definitional information, which is semantic in nature (a mother is female), or stereotypical (a nurse is likely to be female). When they followed definitional role-nouns, gender-mismatching pronouns elicited a P600 effect reflecting a failure in the agreement process. When instead the gender violation occurred after stereotypical role-nouns the Event Related Potential response was biphasic, being positive in parietal electrodes and negative in anterior left electrodes. The use of a correlational approach showed that those participants with more "feminine" or "expressive" self sex-role descriptions showed a P600 response for stereotype violations, suggesting that they experienced the mismatch as an agreement violation; whereas less "expressive" participants showed an Nref effect, indicating more effort spent in linking the pronouns with the possible, although less likely, counter-stereotypical referent.

  12. Beyond gender stereotypes in language comprehension: self sex-role descriptions affect the brain's potentials associated with agreement processing

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    Paolo eCanal

    2015-12-01

    Full Text Available We recorded Event-Related Potentials to investigate differences in the use of gender information during the processing of reflexive pronouns. Pronouns either matched the gender provided by role nouns (such as king or engineer or did not. We compared two types of gender information, definitional information, which is semantic in nature (a mother is female, or stereotypical (a nurse is likely to be female. When they followed definitional role-nouns, gender-mismatching pronouns elicited a P600 effect reflecting a failure in the agreement process. When instead the gender violation occurred after stereotypical role-nouns the ERP response was biphasic, being positive in parietal electrodes and negative in anterior left electrodes. The use of a correlational approach showed that those participants with more feminine or expressive self sex-role descriptions showed a P600 response for stereotype violations, suggesting that they experienced the mismatch as an agreement violation; whereas less expressive participants showed an Nref effect, indicating more effort spent in linking the pronouns with the possible, although less likely, counter-stereotypical referent.

  13. GRAMMATICAL SYLLABUS AND EFL TEXTBOOKS: THE NEED FOR CONSCIOUSNESS-RAISING ACTIVITIES

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    Sasan Baleghizadeh

    2012-09-01

    Full Text Available In this paper, the role of the grammatical syllabus in EFL settings is examined. To this end, the grammatical syllabus and its shortcomings are first explored. It is then argued that the grammatical syllabus is perhaps the best channel through which grammar instruction can take shape, and hence the importance of grammar instruction is discussed. Finally, the concept of consciousness-raising activities is introduced and it is suggested that the explicit presentation of grammar in traditional EFL textbooks still used in certain settings be replaced by consciousness-raising activities.

  14. Subject-Verb Agreement in Children and Adults: Serial or Hierarchical Processing?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Negro, Isabelle; Chanquoy, Lucile; Fayol, Michel; Louis-Sidney, Maryse

    2005-01-01

    Two processes, serial and hierarchical, are generally opposed to account for grammatical encoding in language production. In a developmental perspective, the question addressed here is whether the subject-verb agreement during writing is computed serially, once the words are linearly ordered in the sentence, or hierarchically, as soon as the…

  15. Grammatical Means of Temporality Expression in Translation

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    Tulegen Asylbekovich Merkibayev

    2016-11-01

    Full Text Available Creation problem of model of grammatical means of temporality expression in translation from English into Kazakh and Russian languages is considered in the article. At a choice of translation of transformations of aspectual-temporal categories of a verb from English into Kazakh and Russian languages it is considered not only grammatical compliance of categories of tense, but also the contextual use of a functional and semantic field of verbs, comparison of lexical temporality with positions of concepts, specific to each language world picture, with positions of modern philosophy and logic of language. Authors come to a conclusion that productive use of analytical forms in the Kazakh and English languages is the result of structural features of categories of tense and a type of English and Kazakh languages. Comparison of a phase of actions of a verb in English and Kazakh languages allows creation of reference model of grammatical means of expression of temporality in translation from English into Kazakh and Russian languages on the basis of a functional and semantic field of verbs, comparison of lexical temporality from positions specific on each language picture of the world.

  16. Can Translation Improve EFL Students' Grammatical Accuracy? [

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    Carol Ebbert-Hübner

    2018-01-01

    Full Text Available This report focuses on research results from a project completed at Trier University in December 2015 that provides insight into whether a monolingual group of learners can improve their grammatical accuracy and reduce interference mistakes in their English via contrastive analysis and translation instruction and activities. Contrastive analysis and translation (CAT instruction in this setting focusses on comparing grammatical differences between students’ dominant language (German and English, and practice activities where sentences or short texts are translated from German into English. The results of a pre- and post-test administered in the first and final week of a translation class were compared to two other class types: a grammar class which consisted of form-focused instruction but not translation, and a process-approach essay writing class where students received feedback on their written work throughout the semester. The results of our study indicate that with C1 level EAP students, more improvement in grammatical accuracy is seen through teaching with CAT than in explicit grammar instruction or through language feedback on written work alone. These results indicate that CAT does indeed have a place in modern language classes.

  17. Internal Grammar and Children's Grammatical Creativity against Poor Inputs

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    Adriana Belletti

    2017-12-01

    Full Text Available This article is about the unexpected linguistic behavior that young children sometimes display by producing structures that are only marginally present in the adult language in a constrained way, and that adults do not adopt in the same experimental conditions. It is argued here that children's capacity to overextend the use of given syntactic structures thereby resulting in a grammatical creative behavior is the sign of an internal grammatical pressure which manifests itself given appropriate discourse conditions and factors of grammatical complexity and which does not necessarily require a rich input to be put into work. This poverty of the stimulus type situation is illustrated here through the overextended use of a-Topics and reflexive-causative passives by young Italian speaking children when answering eliciting questions concerning the direct object of the clause.

  18. Grammatical Templates: Improving Text Difficulty Evaluation for Language Learners

    OpenAIRE

    Wang, Shuhan; Andersen, Erik

    2016-01-01

    Language students are most engaged while reading texts at an appropriate difficulty level. However, existing methods of evaluating text difficulty focus mainly on vocabulary and do not prioritize grammatical features, hence they do not work well for language learners with limited knowledge of grammar. In this paper, we introduce grammatical templates, the expert-identified units of grammar that students learn from class, as an important feature of text difficulty evaluation. Experimental clas...

  19. Locative inversion and agreement syntax in Brazilian Portuguese

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    Juanito Ornelas de Avelar

    2009-12-01

    Full Text Available Adopting the Minimalist Program framework (CHOMSKY 2000, 2001, this paper suggests that, in Brazilian Portuguese, sentences with a locative prepositional phrase in preverbal position can be characterized as instances of locative inversion in which prepositional constituents occupy the grammatical subject position. It will be proposed that particularities involving the patterns of locative inversion in Brazilian Portuguese derive from properties of the subject-verb agreement in this language.

  20. The Differential Role of Phonological and Distributional Cues in Grammatical Categorisation

    Science.gov (United States)

    Monaghan, P.; Chater, N.; Christiansen, M.H.

    2005-01-01

    Recognising the grammatical categories of words is a necessary skill for the acquisition of syntax and for on-line sentence processing. The syntactic and semantic context of the word contribute as cues for grammatical category assignment, but phonological cues, too, have been implicated as important sources of information. The value of…

  1. Attraction Effects in Honorific Agreement in Korean.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kwon, Nayoung; Sturt, Patrick

    2016-01-01

    Previous studies have suggested that sentence processing is mediated by content-addressable direct retrieval processes (McElree, 2000; McElree et al., 2003). However, the memory retrieval processes may differ as a function of the type of dependency. For example, while many studies have reported facilitatory intrusion effects associated with a structurally illicit antecedent during the processing of subject-verb number or person agreement and negative polarity items (Pearlmutter et al., 1999; Xiang et al., 2009; Dillon et al., 2013), studies investigating reflexives have not found consistent evidence of intrusion effects (Parker et al., 2015; Sturt and Kwon, 2015; cf. Nicol and Swinney, 1989; Sturt, 2003). Similarly, the memory retrieval processes could be also sensitive to cross-linguistic differences (cf. Lago et al., 2015). We report one self-paced reading experiment and one eye-tracking experiment that examine the processing of subject-verb honorific agreement, a dependency that is different from those that have been studied to date, in Korean, a typologically different language from those previously studied. The overall results suggest that the retrieval processes underlying the processing of subject-verb honorific agreement in Korean are susceptible to facilitatory intrusion effects from a structurally illicit but feature-matching subject, with a pattern that is similar to subject-verb agreement in English. In addition, the attraction effect was not limited to the ungrammatical sentences but was also found in grammatical sentences. The clear attraction effect in the grammatical sentences suggest that the attraction effect does not solely arise as the result of an error-driven process (cf. Wagers et al., 2009), but is likely also to result from general mechanisms of retrieval processes of activating of potential items in memory (Vasishth et al., 2008).

  2. Interaction between lexical and grammatical language systems in the brain

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ardila, Alfredo

    2012-06-01

    This review concentrates on two different language dimensions: lexical/semantic and grammatical. This distinction between a lexical/semantic system and a grammatical system is well known in linguistics, but in cognitive neurosciences it has been obscured by the assumption that there are several forms of language disturbances associated with focal brain damage and hence language includes a diversity of functions (phoneme discrimination, lexical memory, grammar, repetition, language initiation ability, etc.), each one associated with the activity of a specific brain area. The clinical observation of patients with cerebral pathology shows that there are indeed only two different forms of language disturbances (disturbances in the lexical/semantic system and disturbances in the grammatical system); these two language dimensions are supported by different brain areas (temporal and frontal) in the left hemisphere. Furthermore, these two aspects of the language are developed at different ages during child's language acquisition, and they probably appeared at different historical moments during human evolution. Mechanisms of learning are different for both language systems: whereas the lexical/semantic knowledge is based in a declarative memory, grammatical knowledge corresponds to a procedural type of memory. Recognizing these two language dimensions can be crucial in understanding language evolution and human cognition.

  3. FURTHER ASPECTS OF GENDER MARKING IN ENGLISH AND ROMANIAN

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    Constantin MANEA

    2011-01-01

    Full Text Available The paper reverts to some of the main issues posed by the expression of the grammatical and conceptual notion of gender in English and Romanian. It revisits some aspects of defining gender and gender classes (including the epicene, common gender and neuter gender, neutralization, the idea of fuzziness in treating gender, and some of the errors and inconsistencies linked with the expression of gender in the light of the more recent linguistic approaches flawed by excessive feminism. The existence of the epicenes in the two languages compared, and the (provable existence of a Common Gender in Romanian, as well (e.g. abonat, alegător, bolnav, creştin, pacient, zoolog are also dealt with. A number of inconsistencies of usage, idiosyncrasies and cases of actual solecism are addressed, with illustrations inspired by the author’s didactic experience.

  4. Understanding Disorder Within Variation: Production of English Grammatical Forms by English Language Learners.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bedore, Lisa M; Peña, Elizabeth D; Anaya, Jissel B; Nieto, Ricardo; Lugo-Neris, Mirza J; Baron, Alisa

    2018-04-05

    This study examines English performance on a set of 11 grammatical forms in Spanish-English bilingual, school-age children in order to understand how item difficulty of grammatical constructions helps correctly classify language impairment (LI) from expected variability in second language acquisition when taking into account linguistic experience and exposure. Three hundred seventy-eight children's scores on the Bilingual English-Spanish Assessment-Middle Extension (Peña, Bedore, Gutiérrez-Clellen, Iglesias, & Goldstein, 2008) morphosyntax cloze task were analyzed by bilingual experience groups (high Spanish experience, balanced English-Spanish experience, high English experience, ability (typically developing [TD] vs. LI), and grammatical form. Classification accuracy was calculated for the forms that best differentiated TD and LI groups. Children with LI scored lower than TD children across all bilingual experience groups. There were differences by grammatical form across bilingual experience and ability groups. Children from high English experience and balanced English-Spanish experience groups could be accurately classified on the basis of all the English grammatical forms tested except for prepositions. For bilinguals with high Spanish experience, it was possible to rule out LI on the basis of grammatical production but not rule in LI. It is possible to accurately identify LI in English language learners once they use English 40% of the time or more. However, for children with high Spanish experience, more information about development and patterns of impairment is needed to positively identify LI.

  5. FUNCTIONAL INTERACTION OF LEXICAL AND GRAMMATICAL FACTORS IN THE ENGLISH VERB SYSTEM

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    Nina Sergeevna Kotova

    2017-03-01

    Full Text Available Purpose. The purpose of the research conducted is revealing the peculiarities of lexical paradigmatics influence upon the usage of aspect and temporal verb forms and the opposite impact as well, i.e. the influence of aspect and temporal verb forms upon the lexical meaning of this verb groups under specific conditions of functioning. The lexical paradigmatics is considered as the system of mutually contrasted semantic features of particular verb groups. In this case, we analyze the paradigmatics in the middle language hierarchy for each language level separately. Methodology. The research is conducted synchronically on the material of the contemporary English verb system. Interaction of lexical and grammatical factors in the English verb system is examined in a functional aspect. Such consideration gives a possibility to differentiate the intrasystem phenomena and phenomena of pragmatic character and expose the system-structural mutual relations of lexical and grammatical factors. The research material is the verb as massive word group. From the point of view of interaction of lexical and grammatical factors in the functional and semantic field representing aspectuality, we get interested in the meaning which realizes in the opposition ofatelicity – telicity(telicity correlates the action with the limit, and atelicity demotes the action irrespectively to its limit. The technique applied to the analysis of lexical and grammatical factors in the English verb system is complex combining descriptive and comparative and functional methods. Results. Interrelations and interdependency of lexical and grammatical paradigmatics create particular sustainability in using the lexical unit of this paradigm with aspect and temporal verb forms. In this case, the tendencies of the language sign developing and changing are expressed in the process of the mutual substitution and interpenetration of grammatical forms primarily under the influence of paradigmatic

  6. Grammatical production deficits in PPA: Relating narrative and structured task performance

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    Elena Barbieri

    2015-05-01

    Full Text Available Introduction Grammatical production impairments in primary progressive aphasia (PPA have been investigated using structured language tasks and analysis of narrative language samples (for review see Thompson & Mack, 2014; Wilson et al., 2012. However, little research has examined the relationship between them in PPA. Whereas structured tasks often assess production accuracy at different levels of syntactic complexity (e.g., Thompson et al., 2013, narrative measures typically assess overall lexical and grammatical usage (e.g., % grammatical sentences; noun-to-verb ratio, with lesser emphasis on complexity. The present study investigated the relationship between narrative measures of grammatical production and performance on structured language tests in the domains of syntax, verb morphology, and verb-argument structure (VAS. Materials and methods Data from 101 individuals with PPA were included. Participants completed a test battery including the Northwestern Assessment of Verbs and Sentences (NAVS, Thompson, 2011, the Northwestern Assessment of Verb Inflection (NAVI, Lee & Thompson, experimental version and the Northwestern Anagram Test (NAT, Thompson, Weintraub, & Mesulam, 2012. Grammatical production deficits were quantified as follows: for syntax, accuracy of non-canonical sentence production on the NAVS Sentence Production Priming Test (SPPT and the NAT; for morphology, the accuracy on finite verbs on the NAVI; for VAS, the accuracy of sentences produced with 2- and 3-argument verbs on the NAVS Argument Structure Production Test (ASPT. Cinderella narrative samples were analyzed using the Northwestern Narrative Language Analysis system (e.g., Thompson et al., 2012. For syntax, complexity was measured by the ratio of syntactically complex to simple sentences produced, whereas accuracy was indexed by computing the proportion of words with a locally grammatical lexical category. Morphological complexity was measured by mean number of verb

  7. A universal cue for grammatical categories in the input to children: Frequent frames.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Moran, Steven; Blasi, Damián E; Schikowski, Robert; Küntay, Aylin C; Pfeiler, Barbara; Allen, Shanley; Stoll, Sabine

    2018-06-01

    How does a child map words to grammatical categories when words are not overtly marked either lexically or prosodically? Recent language acquisition theories have proposed that distributional information encoded in sequences of words or morphemes might play a central role in forming grammatical classes. To test this proposal, we analyze child-directed speech from seven typologically diverse languages to simulate maximum variation in the structures of the world's languages. We ask whether the input to children contains cues for assigning syntactic categories in frequent frames, which are frequently occurring nonadjacent sequences of words or morphemes. In accord with aggregated results from previous studies on individual languages, we find that frequent word frames do not provide a robust distributional pattern for accurately predicting grammatical categories. However, our results show that frames are extremely accurate cues cross-linguistically at the morpheme level. We theorize that the nonadjacent dependency pattern captured by frequent frames is a universal anchor point for learners on the morphological level to detect and categorize grammatical categories. Whether frames also play a role on higher linguistic levels such as words is determined by grammatical features of the individual language. Copyright © 2018 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  8. Simultaneous Treatment of Grammatical and Speech-Comprehensibility Deficits in Children with Down Syndrome

    Science.gov (United States)

    Camarata, Stephen; Yoder, Paul; Camarata, Mary

    2006-01-01

    Children with Down syndrome often display speech-comprehensibility and grammatical deficits beyond what would be predicted based upon general mental age. Historically, speech-comprehensibility has often been treated using traditional articulation therapy and oral-motor training so there may be little or no coordination of grammatical and…

  9. Morpho-Syntactic Load in Judging Adjective Plural Agreement: Comparing Adults with and without ADHD

    Science.gov (United States)

    Schiff, Rachel; Ravid, Dorit; Gur, Adi

    2015-01-01

    The study examined the impact of two grammatical factors on marking Hebrew adjectives in agreement with plural nouns in adults with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) compared with peers without ADHD. Participants were 36 adult speakers of Hebrew, who were administered a judgment test of 144 sentences, each containing an adjective in…

  10. Symbolic Dynamics and Grammatical Complexity

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hao, Bai-Lin; Zheng, Wei-Mou

    The following sections are included: * Formal Languages and Their Complexity * Formal Language * Chomsky Hierarchy of Grammatical Complexity * The L-System * Regular Language and Finite Automaton * Finite Automaton * Regular Language * Stefan Matrix as Transfer Function for Automaton * Beyond Regular Languages * Feigenbaum and Generalized Feigenbaum Limiting Sets * Even and Odd Fibonacci Sequences * Odd Maximal Primitive Prefixes and Kneading Map * Even Maximal Primitive Prefixes and Distinct Excluded Blocks * Summary of Results

  11. Ammonius Hermiae and the grammatical aspects in Aristotle’s logic

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    Garin Sergey Vyacheslavovich

    2016-12-01

    Full Text Available The article deals with logical and grammatical aspects of Aristotle’s “Categories” within the framework of the anonymous “Commentary” attributed to Ammonius Herminae. Grammatical backgrounds for Aristotelian doctrine of homonyms are revealed. The paper describes the phenomenon of Attic figures (σχῆμα Ἀττικόν and Attic syntax (Αττική Σύνταξη in terms of relationship between subject and predicate considered by Ammonius in his “Commentary”.

  12. AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE GAP BETWEEN KOREAN UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ GRAMMATICAL AWARENESS AND PERCEPTION

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    Kyung-Im Han

    2017-05-01

    Full Text Available Despite the consistent emphasis on grammar instruction in English classrooms in South Korea, studies regarding grammar instruction have not yet been extensively conducted. The present study aims to discover the gap between learners’ grammatical awareness and their perception of major grammatical items. A total of 60 EFL learners from two local universities in South Korea participated in the study and were divided into two groups, a high-level and a low-level group. A set of tests was utilized to examine learners’ grammatical awareness and their perception of six major grammatical items—tense, prepositions, articles, voices, morphology, and vocabulary. The results demonstrated that there was a significant difference in the scores of tense, article, and voice for grammatical awareness between the high-level and the low-level group. Also, both groups scored high for the category of voice while they received low scores for vocabulary and morphology. In addition, they showed a significant difference in the scores for the perceived difficulty of articles and voice. The high-level group perceived voice as the most difficult, whereas the low-level group perceived articles as the most difficult. These findings demonstrate a gap between the learners’ grammar awareness and perception and highlight a need to design an individualized curriculum for the effectiveness of teaching as well as self-initiated studying.

  13. Description and grammatical analysis of Persian to Persian teaching series of Jame’at al-Mostafa al-‘alamiye books

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    Nafise Raisi

    2016-02-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Persian as the second language of the world of Islam is closely related to the teachings of this divine religion, so learning Persian besides Islamic and Shia teachings would be helpful for Islamic scholars. In this regard, Jame’at al-Mostafa al-‘alamiye in the context of the Persian language tries to train Islamic scholars, translators and missioners. Center of language education and Islamic teachings which is the subset of Jame’at al-Mostafa, has formulated a collection of eight books named Persian to Persian teaching which is taught in different centers of Jame’at al-Mostafa inside and outside of the country. High goals of this Shia association represents the importance of authoring and analyzing education books. So their accuracy needs more attention and research. This essay aimed at describing and grammatical analyzing of this educational series. The present study deals with the importance and methods of teaching grammar to non-Persian speakers after introducing the Jame’at al-Mostafa al-‘alamiye; also, besides introducing the required grammatical issues, it describes eight volumes books of teaching Persian-to-Persian grammatically. Then the grammatical difficulties of these books are investigated in ten separate sections with giving some examples. The study ends with providing some strategies to improve the grammatical issues of this educational set and other books of teaching Persian language to non-Persian speakers. In the early years after the Islamic revolution, some foreign students came to Iran to study Islamic studies so the supervisory board of non-Iranian students was established to answer and to organize their educational and livelihood status in 1979. “Jame’at al-Mostafa al-‘alamiye” was founded in Qom and other cities after the continuous changes in 2007. This center tries to grow the Islamic scholar, translator, and missionary by teaching Persian language; in this way, center of language and

  14. Effects of stress typicality during speeded grammatical classification.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Arciuli, Joanne; Cupples, Linda

    2003-01-01

    The experiments reported here were designed to investigate the influence of stress typicality during speeded grammatical classification of disyllabic English words by native and non-native speakers. Trochaic nouns and iambic gram verbs were considered to be typically stressed, whereas iambic nouns and trochaic verbs were considered to be atypically stressed. Experiments 1a and 2a showed that while native speakers classified typically stressed words individual more quickly and more accurately than atypically stressed words during differences reading, there were no overall effects during classification of spoken stimuli. However, a subgroup of native speakers with high error rates did show a significant effect during classification of spoken stimuli. Experiments 1b and 2b showed that non-native speakers classified typically stressed words more quickly and more accurately than atypically stressed words during reading. Typically stressed words were classified more accurately than atypically stressed words when the stimuli were spoken. Importantly, there was a significant relationship between error rates, vocabulary size and the size of the stress typicality effect in each experiment. We conclude that participants use information about lexical stress to help them distinguish between disyllabic nouns and verbs during speeded grammatical classification. This is especially so for individuals with a limited vocabulary who lack other knowledge (e.g., semantic knowledge) about the differences between these grammatical categories.

  15. On projecting grammatical persons into social neurocognition: a view from linguistics.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Evans, Nicholas

    2013-08-01

    Though it draws on the grammatical metaphor of person (first, third, second) in terms of representations, Schilbach et al.'s target article does not consider an orthogonal line of evidence for the centrality of interaction to social cognition: the many grammatical phenomena, some widespread cross-linguistically and some only being discovered, which are geared to supporting real-time interaction. My commentary reviews these, and the contribution linguistic evidence can make to a fuller account of social cognition.

  16. The gender congruency effect during bilingual spoken-word recognition

    Science.gov (United States)

    Morales, Luis; Paolieri, Daniela; Dussias, Paola E.; Valdés kroff, Jorge R.; Gerfen, Chip; Bajo, María Teresa

    2016-01-01

    We investigate the ‘gender-congruency’ effect during a spoken-word recognition task using the visual world paradigm. Eye movements of Italian–Spanish bilinguals and Spanish monolinguals were monitored while they viewed a pair of objects on a computer screen. Participants listened to instructions in Spanish (encuentra la bufanda / ‘find the scarf’) and clicked on the object named in the instruction. Grammatical gender of the objects’ name was manipulated so that pairs of objects had the same (congruent) or different (incongruent) gender in Italian, but gender in Spanish was always congruent. Results showed that bilinguals, but not monolinguals, looked at target objects less when they were incongruent in gender, suggesting a between-language gender competition effect. In addition, bilinguals looked at target objects more when the definite article in the spoken instructions provided a valid cue to anticipate its selection (different-gender condition). The temporal dynamics of gender processing and cross-language activation in bilinguals are discussed. PMID:28018132

  17. A Study of the Use of the Weak Forms of English Grammatical Words ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    Nekky Umera

    than not, strong vowels from the mother tongue were substituted for the weak sound / ə / which is the commonest vowel found in the weak forms of English grammatical words. Elision, which often occurs to English grammatical words, was also found not to manifest remarkably in this 'geo-tribal' variety of Nigerian English.

  18. Grammatical polysemy and grammaticalization in cognitive and ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    Cognitive and generative approaches to linguistics have taken a different perspective on grammatical polysemy and grammaticalization. While the former see polysemy as a core characteristic of language and a necessary result of grammaticalization within idiolects, the latter see it as a less interesting phenomenon ...

  19. Persistent grammatical difficulties in Specific Language Impairment : Deficits in knowledge or in knowledge implementation?

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Duinmeijer, I.

    2017-01-01

    This study examines the grammatical abilities of children and adolescents with Specific Language Impairment (SLI). There were two research goals. Firstly, the persistence of grammatical problems over time was examined by comparing a younger group of children with SLI and an older group of

  20. Newborn infants' sensitivity to perceptual cues to lexical and grammatical words.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Shi, R; Werker, J F; Morgan, J L

    1999-09-30

    In our study newborn infants were presented with lists of lexical and grammatical words prepared from natural maternal speech. The results show that newborns are able to categorically discriminate these sets of words based on a constellation of perceptual cues that distinguish them. This general ability to detect and categorically discriminate sets of words on the basis of multiple acoustic and phonological cues may provide a perceptual base that can help older infants bootstrap into the acquisition of grammatical categories and syntactic structure.

  1. Lexicographic presentation of grammatical divergence in Sesotho ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    Relying on existing insights from the field of theoretical lexicography this article gives an innovative application to the relation of divergence by introducing the notion of grammatical divergence. In bilingual dictionaries with English and Sesotho sa Leboa as language pair lexicographers are confronted with a real challenge ...

  2. Some Dictionary Descriptions of Grammatical Structure | Branford ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    This paper examines some points in the treatment of grammatical structure in four recent dictionaries of English as Ll. These are viewed against the background concepts of "Iexicogrammar" (Halliday 1978) and of the interdependence of lexicographical and syntactic descriptions of language. Its scope is necessari1y ...

  3. Grammatical Aspect and Gesture in French: A kinesiological approach

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    Доминик Бутэ

    2016-12-01

    Full Text Available In this paper, we defend the idea that research on Gesture with Speech can provide ways of studying speakers’ conceptualization of grammatical notions as they are speaking. Expressing an idea involves a dynamic interplay between our construal, shaped by the sensori-motoric and interactive experiences linked to that idea, the plurisemiotic means at our disposal for expressing it, and the linguistic category available for its expression in our language. By analyzing the expression of aspect in Speech with Gesture (GeSp in semi-guided oral interactions, we would like to make a new contribution to the field of aspect by exploring how speakers’ construal of aspectual differences grammaticalized in their language, may be enacted and visible in gesture. More specifically we want to see the degree to which event structure differences expressed in different grammatical aspects (perfective and imperfective correlate with kinesiological features of the gestures. To this end, we will focus on the speed and flow of the movements as well as on the segments involved (fingers, hand, forearm, arm, shoulder. A kinesiological approach to gestures enables us to analyze the movements of human bodies according to a biomechanical point of view that includes physiological features. This study is the first contribution focused on the links between speech and gesture in French in the domain of grammatical aspect. Grammatical aspect was defined by Comrie (1976 [1989] as involving the internal unfurling of the process, «[...] tense is a deictic category, i.e. locates situations in time, usually with reference to the present moment [...]. Aspect is not concerned with relating time of the situation to any other time-point, but rather with the internal temporal constituency of the one situation; one could state the difference as one between situation-internal time (aspect and situation-external time (tense » (Comrie, 1976 [1989]: 5. Can kinesic features express and make

  4. Grammatical-gender effects in noun-noun compound production: Evidence from German.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lorenz, Antje; Mädebach, Andreas; Jescheniak, Jörg D

    2018-05-01

    We examined how noun-noun compounds and their syntactic properties are lexically stored and processed in speech production. Using gender-marked determiner primes ( der masc , die fem , das neut [the]) in a picture naming task, we tested for specific effects from determiners congruent with either the modifier or the head of the compound target (e.g., Tee masc kanne fem [teapot]) to examine whether the constituents are processed independently at the syntactic level. Experiment 1 assessed effects of auditory gender-marked determiner primes in bare noun picture naming, and Experiment 2 assessed effects of visual gender-marked determiner primes in determiner-noun picture naming. Three prime conditions were implemented: (a) head-congruent determiner (e.g., die fem ), (b) modifier-congruent determiner (e.g., der masc ), and (c) incongruent determiner (e.g., das neuter ). We observed a facilitation effect of head congruency but no effect of modifier congruency. In Experiment 3, participants produced novel noun-noun compounds in response to two pictures, demanding independent processing of head and modifier at the syntactic level. Now, head and modifier congruency effects were obtained, demonstrating the general sensitivity of our task. Our data support the notion of a single-lemma representation of lexically stored compound nouns in the German production lexicon.

  5. L2 Chinese: Grammatical Development and Processing

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mai, Ziyin

    2016-01-01

    Two recent books (Jiang, 2014, "Advances in Chinese as a second language"; Wang, 2013, "Grammatical development of Chinese among non-native speakers") provide new resources for exploring the role of processing in acquiring Chinese as a second language (L2). This review article summarizes, assesses and compares some of the…

  6. Aligning Grammatical Theories and Language Processing Models

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lewis, Shevaun; Phillips, Colin

    2015-01-01

    We address two important questions about the relationship between theoretical linguistics and psycholinguistics. First, do grammatical theories and language processing models describe separate cognitive systems, or are they accounts of different aspects of the same system? We argue that most evidence is consistent with the one-system view. Second,…

  7. Toddlers' Verb Lexicon Diversity and Grammatical Outcomes

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hadley, Pamela A.; Rispoli, Matthew; Hsu, Ning

    2016-01-01

    Purpose: The goals of this study were to quantify longitudinal expectations for verb lexicon growth and to determine whether verb lexicon measures were better predictors of later grammatical outcomes than noun lexicon measures. Method: Longitudinal parent-report measures from the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory (Fenson et al.,…

  8. Grammatical Constructions in Typical Developing Children: Effects of Explicit Reinforcement, Automatic Reinforcement and Parity

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ostvik, Leni; Eikeseth, Svein; Klintwall, Lars

    2012-01-01

    This study replicated and extended Wright (2006) and Whitehurst, Ironsmith, and Goldfein (1974) by examining whether preschool aged children would increase their use of passive grammatical voice rather than using the more age-appropriate active grammatical construction when the former was modeled by an adult. Results showed that 5 of the 6…

  9. Gender Ideologies in English and Slovene: A Contrastive View

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Katja Plemenitaš

    2014-05-01

    Full Text Available The article deals with the concept of linguistic sexism in the cross-cultural context. It compares the generally accepted guidelines for avoiding linguistic sexism in English and Slovene, exemplified by two guides on non-sexist use of English. It is argued that in English non-sexist language strives for gender neutrality, whereas in Slovene it strives for gender specificity. The reasons for the differences between the perceptions of sexism in English and Slovene are examined by taking into account the linguistic expression of gender and the cultural and historical context in which both languages have developed. The use of semantic gender in English, as opposed to the use of grammatical gender in Slovene, is treated as one of the factors influencing the approach to the non-sexist use of language in both languages. Strategies for non-sexist expression and their rebuttals are discussed in the context of predominant cultural ideologies about gender and presuppositions regarding the link between social change and linguistic reform.

  10. Effects of Grammatical Categories on Children's Visual Language Processing: Evidence from Event-Related Brain Potentials

    Science.gov (United States)

    Weber-Fox, Christine; Hart, Laura J.; Spruill, John E., III

    2006-01-01

    This study examined how school-aged children process different grammatical categories. Event-related brain potentials elicited by words in visually presented sentences were analyzed according to seven grammatical categories with naturally varying characteristics of linguistic functions, semantic features, and quantitative attributes of length and…

  11. Extending research on the influence of grammatical gender on object classification: A cross-linguistic study comparing Estonian, Italian and Lithuanian native speakers

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Luca Vernich

    2017-05-01

    Full Text Available Using different experimental tasks, researchers have pointed to a possible correlation between grammatical gender and classification behaviour. Such effects, however, have been found comparing speakers of a relatively small set of languages. Therefore, it’s not clear whether evidence gathered can be generalized and extended to languages that are typologically different from those studied so far. To the best of our knowledge, Baltic and Finno-Ugric languages have never been examined in this respect. While most previous studies have used English as an example of gender-free languages, we chose Estonian because – contrary to English and like all Finno-Ugric languages – it does not use gendered pronouns (‘he’ vs. ‘she’ and is therefore more suitable as a baseline. We chose Lithuanian because the gender system of Baltic languages is interestingly different from the system of Romance and German languages tested so far. Taken together, our results support and extend previous findings and suggest that they are not restricted to a small group of languages. "Grammatiline sugu objektide kategoriseerimise mõjutajana: eesti, itaalia ja leedu keele võrdlev uurimus" Eri tüüpi eksperimente kasutades on uurijad osutanud grammatilise soo ja objektide klassifitseerimise võimalikele seostele. Senised tulemused on saadud siiski suhteliselt väheste keelte andmete võrdlemisel. Seetõttu ei ole teada, kas need järeldused on üldistatavad ka nendele keeltele, mille struktuur erineb siiani uuritud keeltest. Probleemi uurimiseks laiendasime vaadeldavate keelte hulka ja tegime grammatilise soo ja objektide kategoriseerimise seoste katse läbi balti ja soome-ugri keelte hulka kuuvate keeltega, mida ei ole kõnealusest vaatenurgast uuritud. Enamik seniseid uuringuid on seadnud nn lähtepunktiks ehk grammatilise soota keeleks inglise keele. Siinses uuringus valisime aga selliseks lähtepunktiks hoopis eesti keele, kus erinevalt inglise keelest ei ole ka

  12. Gender in nature, grammar and society

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Radić Jovanka

    2010-01-01

    Full Text Available This paper discusses the process of meaning deconstruction of the noun gender, a notion which has a special role in classification of natural and grammatical entities. The analysis is based on sources from the two Serbian dictionaries, one from the middle of 19th century (Srpski rječnik by V. S. Karadzic, and the other based on sources from the middle of 19th and 20th century (Rečnik srpskohrvatskog književnog jezika. The research focused on basic meanings of the notion gender in classification of physical entities and 'names' in Antique, foremost in Aristotle's logical opus. The analysis points out to the wrong contemporary inter­pretation of gender in modern gramatography and subsequent baseless feministic intervention within the language. Furthermore, the analysis reveals that after initial rigid differentiation and classification of names and nonlinguistic entities on genders and kinds, there followed an admixture of nature of names with nature of other nonlinguistic entities, including threeparticle logical structure. Moreover, this paper point out to logically unfounded division of humans into genders, as well as on to unjustified switch of political-legal expression of equality of sexes to gender equality.

  13. Structural Facilitation: Mere Exposure Effects for Grammatical Acceptability as Evidence for Syntactic Priming in Comprehension

    Science.gov (United States)

    Luka, B.J.; Barsalou, L.W.

    2005-01-01

    In five experiments, participants first read grammatical sentences of English and later rated identical, structurally similar, or novel sentences for grammatical acceptability. The experimental method was modeled after ''mere exposure'' and artificial grammar learning paradigms in which preference ratings are enhanced by prior experience with the…

  14. Self-other agreement of personality judgments in job interviews: exploring the effects of trait, gender, age and social desirability.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Nederström, Mikael; Salmela-Aro, Katariina

    2014-10-01

    The article investigated agreement between self-reports and stranger ratings of personality. A sample of 139 real-life job applicants was interviewed by expert psychologists upon entrance to the assessment center. The applicants provided self-descriptions on 15 personality factors, and the psychologists rated the same traits of each target based on their impressions in the interview. The results demonstrated that professional judges can reach a substantial self-other agreement (SOA) on several traits even when the targets are strangers, and that the trait being judged, the target's gender, age and social desirability have an effect on the level of agreement. © 2014 Scandinavian Psychological Associations and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

  15. Teachers and Peers as Communication Models to Teach Grammatical Forms to Preschoolers with Hearing Loss

    Science.gov (United States)

    Richels, Corrin G.; Bobzien, Jonna L.; Schwartz, Kathryn S.; Raver, Sharon A.; Browning, Ellen L.; Hester, Peggy P.

    2016-01-01

    Structured input from both teachers and peers maximizes the opportunities for preschoolers to learn grammatical forms. The purpose of this pilot study was to evaluate the effectiveness of using a teacher and a peer with typical hearing and language skills to model grammatically correct verbal responses to action "wh-" questions…

  16. Using sound to solve syntactic problems: the role of phonology in grammatical category assignments.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kelly, M H

    1992-04-01

    One ubiquitous problem in language processing involves the assignment of words to the correct grammatical category, such as noun or verb. In general, semantic and syntactic cues have been cited as the principal information for grammatical category assignment, to the neglect of possible phonological cues. This neglect is unwarranted, and the following claims are made: (a) Numerous correlations between phonology and grammatical class exist, (b) some of these correlations are large and can pervade the entire lexicon of a language and hence can involve thousands of words, (c) experiments have repeatedly found that adults and children have learned these correlations, and (d) explanations for how these correlations arose can be proposed and evaluated. Implications of these phenomena for language representation and processing are discussed.

  17. Processing of Gender and Number Agreement in Russian as a Second Language: The Devil Is in the Details

    Science.gov (United States)

    Romanova, Natalia; Gor, Kira

    2017-01-01

    The study investigated the processing of Russian gender and number agreement by native (n = 36) and nonnative (n = 36) participants using a visual lexical decision task with priming. The design included a baseline condition that helped dissociate the underlying components of priming (facilitation and inhibition). The results showed no differences…

  18. THE UKRAINIAN ELEMENT IN THE GRAMMATICAL WORKS OF JURAJ KRIZANIĆ

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    Jevgenij Paščenko

    2007-01-01

    Full Text Available Grammatical works of Juraj Križanić which were written in Russia, are observed from the viewpoint of their connection with the Ukrainian philology of the 17th century. Concrete examples show significant knowledge that this Croatian scientist had of the contemporary East-Slavic lexicographic and grammatical tradition. The challenge to create a grammatical vision of «the Slavic language» came to Križanić from the work of Meletija Smotry'ckyj, an eminent representative of Ukrainian philology. However, the Croatian author used the Ukrainian folk language to a great extent, which, unfortunately, hasn’t been recognized enough in the past extensive Križanićology. His connections to the Ukraine have traditionally been identified with the ones with Russia, and that is the consequence of a kind of inertia in distinguishing the Ukrainian from the Russian element on the East-Slavic territory. This work uses concrete examples to show the presence of various forms of the Ukrainian language culture in the works of the Croatian author. These works make Križanić the founder of the Croatian Ukrainian school. Through Križanić’s work Croatian philology enters the Ukrainian baroque linguistic culture.

  19. Lexical and Grammatical Collocations in Writing Production of EFL Learners

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    Maryam Bahardoust

    2012-05-01

    Full Text Available Lewis (1993 recognized significance of word combinations including collocations by presenting lexical approach. Because of the crucial role of collocation in vocabulary acquisition, this research set out to evaluate the rate of collocations in Iranian EFL learners' writing production across L1 and L2. In addition, L1 interference with L2 collocational use in the learner' writing samples was studied. To achieve this goal, 200 Persian EFL learners at BA level were selected. These participants were taking paragraph writing and essay writing courses in two successive semesters. As for the data analysis, mid-term, final exam, and also the assignments of L2 learners were evaluated. Because of the nominal nature of the data, chi-square test was utilized for data analysis. Then, the rate of lexical and grammatical collocations was calculated. Results showed that the lexical collocations outnumbered the grammatical collocations. Different categories of lexical collocations were also compared with regard to their frequencies in EFL writing production. The rate of the verb-noun and adjective-noun collocations appeared to be the highest and noun-verb collocations the lowest. The results also showed that L1 had both positive and negative effect on the occurrence of both grammatical and lexical collocations.

  20. The role of age of onset and input in early child bilingualism in Greek and Dutch

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Unsworth, S.; Argyri, F.; Cornips, L.; Hulk, A.; Sorace, A.; Tsimpli, I.

    2014-01-01

    The focus of this study is the acquisition of grammatical gender in Greek and Dutch by bilingual children whose other language is English. Although grammatical gender languages share the property of noun classification in terms of grammatical gender, there are important differences between the

  1. Role descriptions induce gender mismatch effects in eye movements during reading

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    Chiara eReali

    2015-11-01

    Full Text Available The present eye-tracking study investigates the effect of gender typicality on the resolution of anaphoric personal pronouns in English. Participants read descriptions of a person performing a typically male, typically female or gender-neutral occupational activity. The description was followed by an anaphoric reference (he or she which revealed the referent's gender. The first experiment presented roles which were highly typical for men (e.g., blacksmith or for women (e.g., beautician, the second experiment presented role descriptions with a moderate degree of gender typicality (e.g., psychologist, lawyer. Results revealed a gender mismatch effect in early and late measures in the first experiment and in an early measure in the second experiment. Moreover, eye-movement data for highly typical roles correlated with explicit typicality ratings. The results are discussed from a cross-linguistic perspective, comparing natural gender languages and grammatical gender languages. An interpretation of the cognitive representation of typicality beliefs is proposed.

  2. On the relation between grammatical number and cardinal numbers in development.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sarnecka, Barbara W

    2014-01-01

    This mini-review focuses on the question of how the grammatical number system of a child's language may help the child learn the meanings of cardinal number words (e.g., "one" and "two"). Evidence from young children learning English, Russian, Japanese, Mandarin, Slovenian, or Saudi Arabic suggests that trajectories of number-word learning differ for children learning different languages. Children learning English, which distinguishes between singular and plural, seem to learn the meaning of the cardinal number "one" earlier than children learning Japanese or Mandarin, which have very little singular/plural marking. Similarly, children whose languages have a singular/dual/plural system (Slovenian and Saudi Arabic) learn the meaning of "two" earlier than English-speaking children. This relation between grammatical and cardinal number may shed light on how humans acquire cardinal-number concepts. There is an ongoing debate about whether mental symbols for small cardinalities (concepts for "oneness," "twoness," etc.) are innate or learned. Although an effect of grammatical number on number-word learning does not rule out nativist accounts, it seems more consistent with constructivist accounts, which portray the number-learning process as one that requires significant conceptual change.

  3. Event-related potentials to event-related words: grammatical class and semantic attributes in the representation of knowledge.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Barber, Horacio A; Kousta, Stavroula-Thaleia; Otten, Leun J; Vigliocco, Gabriella

    2010-05-21

    A number of recent studies have provided contradictory evidence on the question of whether grammatical class plays a role in the neural representation of lexical knowledge. Most of the previous studies comparing the processing of nouns and verbs, however, confounded word meaning and grammatical class by comparing verbs referring to actions with nouns referring to objects. Here, we recorded electrical brain activity from native Italian speakers reading single words all referring to events (e.g., corsa [the run]; correre [to run]), thus avoiding confounding nouns and verbs with objects and actions. We manipulated grammatical class (noun versus verb) as well as semantic attributes (motor versus sensory events). Activity between 300 and 450ms was more negative for nouns than verbs, and for sensory than motor words, over posterior scalp sites. These grammatical class and semantic effects were not dissociable in terms of latency, duration, or scalp distribution. In a later time window (450-110ms) and at frontal regions, grammatical class and semantic effects interacted; motor verbs were more positive than the other three word categories. We suggest that the lack of a temporal and topographical dissociation between grammatical class and semantic effects in the time range of the N400 component is compatible with an account in which both effects reflect the same underlying process related to meaning retrieval, and we link the later effect with working memory operations associated to the experimental task. Copyright 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  4. Grammatical Planning Units during Real-Time Sentence Production in Speakers with Agrammatic Aphasia and Healthy Speakers

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lee, Jiyeon; Yoshida, Masaya; Thompson, Cynthia K.

    2015-01-01

    Purpose: Grammatical encoding (GE) is impaired in agrammatic aphasia; however, the nature of such deficits remains unclear. We examined grammatical planning units during real-time sentence production in speakers with agrammatic aphasia and control speakers, testing two competing models of GE. We queried whether speakers with agrammatic aphasia…

  5. Grammatical realization of Russian etiquette speech genres: The ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    The article is devoted to the issue of grammatical approach application during the teaching of Russian etiquette speech for foreigners. In the practice of teaching Russian as a foreign language, the issues related to the development of etiquette speech genres arise at all stages of language learning, beginning with the first ...

  6. Lexical and grammatical skills in toddlers on the autism spectrum compared to late talking toddlers.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ellis Weismer, Susan; Gernsbacher, Morton Ann; Stronach, Sheri; Karasinski, Courtney; Eernisse, Elizabeth R; Venker, Courtney E; Sindberg, Heidi

    2011-08-01

    This study compared language development in 30-month-old toddlers on the autism spectrum and 25- month-old late talking toddlers without autism. Groups were matched on overall productive vocabulary (and nonverbal cognition was controlled) in order to compare language acquisition patterns related to vocabulary composition and early lexical–grammatical relationships. Findings revealed that semantic categories of words— including psychological state terms—used by toddlers on the autism spectrum were very similar to those of late talkers. Both groups were equivalent with respect to grammatical complexity and proportion of toddlers combining words, though late talkers displayed a relatively stronger association between lexical–grammatical abilities. These tentative findings are consistent with a dimensional account of early, core linguistic abilities across different populations of children with language delay.

  7. A three-dimensional approach to the gender/sex of nouns in Biblical Hebrew

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    J. H. Kroeze

    1994-05-01

    Full Text Available The phenomenon of the gender/sex of nouns is normally handled two-dimensionally. Two levels are distinguished: (grammatical gender and sex. Gender refers to the morphological and syntactic features of the noun, sex to the extralingual reality. This use of the term gender rests on the assumption that the morphological and syntactic features o f a noun are normally consistent. This assumption is tested and the results show that a three-dimensional approach would he better. In the relevant literature, there are indications of such a three-dimensional differentiation, where gender is used to indicate only the syntactic features of a noun. In this article it is proposed that morphological gender, syntactic gender and semantic gender (sex should be distinguished consistently. A list of 23 different combinations were found among nouns occurring most frequently. These combinations are illustrated with examples. Morphological, syntactic and semantic statistics are also given which illustrate the unique characteristics of the three levels.

  8. A net presentation of Lithuanian sentences containing verbal forms with the grammatical suffix -dav-

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    Danuta Roszko

    2014-09-01

    Full Text Available A net presentation of Lithuanian sentences containing verbal forms with the grammatical suffix -dav- In the article the authors make an attempt to present the meaning of Lithuanian sentences containing verbal forms with the grammatical suffix -dav- (the so-called iterative past tense forms by means of Petri nets. The authors gradually develop the net to such complexity that it makes it possible to avoid interpretative similarities to other Lithuanian verbal forms.

  9. Flexible word classes in linguistic typology and grammatical theory

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    van Lier, Eva; Rijkhoff, Jan

    2013-01-01

    Currently one of the most controversial topics in linguistic typology and grammatical theory concerns the existence of FLEXIBLE LANGUAGES, i.e. languages with a word class whose members cover functions that are typically associated with two or more of the traditional word classes (verb, noun...

  10. A usage-based theory of grammatical status and grammaticalization

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Harder, Peter; Boye, Kasper

    2012-01-01

    of hitherto disparate phenomena into a motivated relationship, while certain well-entrenched criteria (such as ‘closed paradigms’) are shown to be incidental to grammatical status and grammaticalization. The central idea is that grammar is constituted by expressions that by linguistic convention are ancillary...

  11. On the Relation Between Grammatical Number and Cardinal Numbers in Development

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Barbara W Sarnecka

    2014-10-01

    Full Text Available This mini-review focuses on the question of how the grammatical number system of a child’s language may help the child learn the meanings of cardinal number words (e.g., ‘one’ and ‘two’. Evidence from young children learning English, Russian, Japanese, Mandarin, Slovenian or Saudi Arabic suggests that trajectories of number-word learning differ for children learning different languages. Children learning English, which distinguishes between singular and plural, seem to learn the meaning of the cardinal number ‘one’ earlier than children learning Japanese or Mandarin, which have very little singular/plural marking. Similarly, children whose languages have a singular/dual/plural system (Slovenian and Saudi Arabic learn the meaning of ‘two’ earlier than English-speaking children. This relation between grammatical and cardinal number may shed light on how humans acquire cardinal-number concepts. There is an ongoing debate about whether mental symbols for small cardinalities (concepts for ‘oneness,’ ‘twoness,’ etc. are innate or learned. Although an effect of grammatical number on number-word learning does not rule out nativist accounts, it seems more consistent with constructivist accounts, which portray the number-learning process as one that requires significant conceptual change.

  12. LEXICAL AND GRAMMATICAL POTENTIAL OF THE VERB LASSEN IN MODERN GERMAN

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    Rogozhnikova Irina Nikolaevna

    2014-12-01

    Full Text Available A solution to the problem of verbal meaning identity is offered with the support of semantic analysis of the verb lassen and determination of grammatical construction types with it. Studies of dictionary definitions helped to reveal formal and conceptual asymmetry of semantic meanings of the verb lassen, which is presented in correlation between homonymy and polysemy. The author characterizes three homonymous verbs: lassen I with the meaning "to get free, separate", lassen II with the meaning "to perform a volition act towards another person", lassen III with the meaning "to cause something". The semantic structure of every homonym is considered as a distinct system of individual meanings tied with chained polysemy relations. The data collected on the homonyms' usage in various texts laid the basis for the typology of grammatical constructions with respect to a functional and semantic factor, indicated coordination between a grammar construction and a certain meaning of the verb lassen. It is stated that the particle sich if joined to the verb lassen may perform two grammatical functions: mainly it is an independent predicate, but in some cases when it is added to the verb lassen II ('to have opportunity to perform some activity' it is transferred into a constituent of a predicate.

  13. Competition between Word Order and Case-Marking in Interpreting Grammatical Relations: A Case Study in Multilingual Acquisition

    Science.gov (United States)

    O'Shannessy, Carmel

    2011-01-01

    The study examines strategies multilingual children use to interpret grammatical relations, focusing on their two primary languages, Lajamanu Warlpiri and Light Warlpiri. Both languages use mixed systems for indicating grammatical relations. In both languages ergative-absolutive case-marking indicates core arguments, but to different extents in…

  14. Subject Agreement-Dependency of Accusative Case in Turkish or Jump-starting Grammatical Machinery

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Keskin, C.

    2009-01-01

    A work which argues that there is a link between the presence of subject agreement in a construction and the availability of accusative case in that construction. The empirical domain is various types of nominalization in Turkish. Adopts a cross-linguistic perspective to a certain degree, studying

  15. Collocations and Grammatical Patterns in a Multilingual Online Term ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    This article considers the importance of including various types of collocations in a terminological database, with the aim of making this information available to the user via the user interface. We refer specifically to the inclusion of empirical and phraseological collocations, and information on grammatical patterning.

  16. Representation of grammatical categories of words in the brain.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hillis, A E; Caramazza, A

    1995-01-01

    We report the performance of a patient who, as a consequence of left frontal and temporoparietal strokes, makes far more errors on nouns than on verbs in spoken output tasks, but makes far more errors on verbs than on nouns in written input tasks. This double dissociation within a single patient with respect to grammatical category provides evidence for the hypothesis that phonological and orthographic representations of nouns and verbs are processed by independent neural mechanisms. Furthermore, the opposite dissociation in the verbal output modality, an advantage for nouns over verbs in spoken tasks, by a different patient using the same stimuli has also been reported (Caramazza & Hillis, 1991). This double dissociation across patients on the same task indicates that results cannot be ascribed to "greater difficulty" with one type of stimulus, and provides further evidence for the view that grammatical category information is an important organizational principle of lexical knowledge in the brain.

  17. Variation in the pattern of omissions and substitutions of grammatical morphemes in the spontaneous speech of so-called agrammatic patients.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Miceli, G; Silveri, M C; Romani, C; Caramazza, A

    1989-04-01

    We describe the patterns of omissions (and substitutions) of freestanding grammatical morphemes and the patterns of substitutions of bound grammatical morphemes in 20 so-called agrammatic patients. Extreme variation was observed in the patterns of omissions and substitutions of grammatical morphemes, both in terms of the distribution of errors for different grammatical morphemes as well as in terms of the distribution of omissions versus substitutions. Results are discussed in the context of current debates concerning the possibility of a theoretically motivated distinction between the clinical categories of agrammatism and paragrammatism and, more generally, concerning the theoretical usefulness of any clinical category. The conclusion is reached that the observed heterogeneity in the production of grammatical morphemes among putatively agrammatic patients renders the clinical category of agrammatism, and by extension all other clinical categories from the classical classification scheme (e.g., Broca's aphasia, Wernicke's aphasia, and so forth) to more recent classificatory attempts (e.g., surface dyslexia, deep dysgraphia, and so forth), theoretically useless.

  18. The effectiveness of linguistic plays on the grammatical skills of hearing-impaired children with hearing aids

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    Sahar Mohammad Esmaeilzadeh

    2014-12-01

    Full Text Available Background and Aim: Grammatical skills development of hearing-impaired children depends on using appropriate educational rehabilitation programs. This study aims to investigate the effectiveness of linguistic plays on the grammatical skills in hearing-impaired children with hearing aids.Methods: Ten hearing-impaired children with hearing aids, aged between 5 and 7, were randomly assigned to two groups (5 children in each group. Each treatment group received 12 sessions on linguistic plays. The grammatical skills of these children were evaluated via the TOLD-P: 3 (Persian version; in addition, their level of intelligence was assessed by the Raven test.Results: The difference between the scores of both control and treatment groups revealed a statistically significant difference in grammatical skills (t=7.61, p=0.001 and three subskills of the children who participated in the linguistic plays. These subskills include syntactic understanding (t=3.16, p=0.013, sentence imitation (t=1.71, p=0.006, and morphological completion (t=6.55, p=0.001. In other words, the findings suggest that linguistic plays have a significant impact on the improvement of the aforementioned skills in hearing-impaired children.Conclusion: Results suggest that it would be beneficial to include linguistic plays as part of routine rehabilitation programs as a means of improving the grammatical difficulties of children. After partaking in linguistic plays, children significantly improved their ability to comprehend the meaning of sentences and also to recognize, understand, and use common Persian morphological forms.

  19. Sleep promotes the extraction of grammatical rules.

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    Ingrid L C Nieuwenhuis

    Full Text Available Grammar acquisition is a high level cognitive function that requires the extraction of complex rules. While it has been proposed that offline time might benefit this type of rule extraction, this remains to be tested. Here, we addressed this question using an artificial grammar learning paradigm. During a short-term memory cover task, eighty-one human participants were exposed to letter sequences generated according to an unknown artificial grammar. Following a time delay of 15 min, 12 h (wake or sleep or 24 h, participants classified novel test sequences as Grammatical or Non-Grammatical. Previous behavioral and functional neuroimaging work has shown that classification can be guided by two distinct underlying processes: (1 the holistic abstraction of the underlying grammar rules and (2 the detection of sequence chunks that appear at varying frequencies during exposure. Here, we show that classification performance improved after sleep. Moreover, this improvement was due to an enhancement of rule abstraction, while the effect of chunk frequency was unaltered by sleep. These findings suggest that sleep plays a critical role in extracting complex structure from separate but related items during integrative memory processing. Our findings stress the importance of alternating periods of learning with sleep in settings in which complex information must be acquired.

  20. Obligatory Grammatical Categories and the Expression of Temporal Events

    Science.gov (United States)

    Winskel, Heather; Luksaneeyanawin, Sudaporn

    2009-01-01

    Thai has imperfective aspectual morphemes that are not obligatory in usage, whereas English has obligatory grammaticized imperfective aspectual marking on the verb. Furthermore, Thai has verb final deictic-path verbs that form a closed class set. The current study investigated if obligatoriness of these grammatical categories in Thai and English…

  1. Description and grammatical analysis of Persian to Persian teaching series of Jame’at al-Mostafa al-‘alamiye books

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    Nafise Raisi

    2016-01-01

    Full Text Available  Abstract Persian as the second language of the world of Islam is closely related to the teachings of this divine religion, so learning Persian besides Islamic and Shia teachings would be helpful for Islamic scholars. In this regard, Jame’at al-Mostafa al-‘alamiye in the context of the Persian language tries to train Islamic scholars, translators and missioners. Center of language education and Islamic teachings which is the subset of Jame’at al-Mostafa, has formulated a collection of eight books named Persian to Persian teaching which is taught in different centers of Jame’at al-Mostafa inside and outside of the country. High goals of this Shia association represents the importance of authoring and analyzing education books. So their accuracy needs more attention and research. This essay aimed at describing and grammatical analyzing of this educational series. The present study deals with the importance and methods of teaching grammar to non-Persian speakers after introducing the Jame’at al-Mostafa al-‘alamiye; also, besides introducing the required grammatical issues, it describes eight volumes books of teaching Persian-to-Persian grammatically. Then the grammatical difficulties of these books are investigated in ten separate sections with giving some examples. The study ends with providing some strategies to improve the grammatical issues of this educational set and other books of teaching Persian language to non-Persian speakers. In the early years after the Islamic revolution, some foreign students came to Iran to study Islamic studies so the supervisory board of non-Iranian students was established to answer and to organize their educational and livelihood status in 1979. “Jame’at al-Mostafa al-‘alamiye” was founded in Qom and other cities after the continuous changes in 2007. This center tries to grow the Islamic scholar, translator, and missionary by teaching Persian

  2. Eye movements during listening reveal spontaneous grammatical processing.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Huette, Stephanie; Winter, Bodo; Matlock, Teenie; Ardell, David H; Spivey, Michael

    2014-01-01

    Recent research using eye-tracking typically relies on constrained visual contexts in particular goal-oriented contexts, viewing a small array of objects on a computer screen and performing some overt decision or identification. Eyetracking paradigms that use pictures as a measure of word or sentence comprehension are sometimes touted as ecologically invalid because pictures and explicit tasks are not always present during language comprehension. This study compared the comprehension of sentences with two different grammatical forms: the past progressive (e.g., was walking), which emphasizes the ongoing nature of actions, and the simple past (e.g., walked), which emphasizes the end-state of an action. The results showed that the distribution and timing of eye movements mirrors the underlying conceptual structure of this linguistic difference in the absence of any visual stimuli or task constraint: Fixations were shorter and saccades were more dispersed across the screen, as if thinking about more dynamic events when listening to the past progressive stories. Thus, eye movement data suggest that visual inputs or an explicit task are unnecessary to solicit analog representations of features such as movement, that could be a key perceptual component to grammatical comprehension.

  3. Eye movements during listening reveal spontaneous grammatical processing

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Stephanie eHuette

    2014-05-01

    Full Text Available Recent research using eye-tracking typically relies on constrained visual contexts in particular goal-oriented contexts, viewing a small array of objects on a computer screen and performing some overt decision or identification. Eyetracking paradigms that use pictures as a measure of word or sentence comprehension are sometimes touted as ecologically invalid because pictures and explicit tasks are not always present during language comprehension. This study compared the comprehension of sentences with two different grammatical forms: the past progressive (e.g., was walking, which emphasizes the ongoing nature of actions, and the simple past (e.g., walked, which emphasizes the end-state of an action. The results showed that the distribution and timing of eye movements mirrors the underlying conceptual structure of this linguistic difference in the absence of any visual stimuli or task constraint: Fixations were shorter and saccades were more dispersed across the screen, as if thinking about more dynamic events when listening to the past progressive stories. Thus, eye movement data suggest that visual inputs or an explicit task are unnecessary to solicit analogue representations of features such as movement, that could be a key perceptual component to grammatical comprehension.

  4. The Effect of Incidental Focus on Form on EFL Learners’ Grammatical Accuracy

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    Somaieh Abdollahzadeh

    2015-10-01

    Full Text Available Focus on form instruction is a kind of instruction that draws students, attention to linguistic elements as they arise incidentally in meaning based instruction.  There are different types of focus on form instruction. The present study was designed to investigate the effect of incidental focus on form on grammatical accuracy among Iranian L2 learners. Eighty learners from Sahand language Institute in Miandoab after taking grammatical judgment test which was administered to homogenize them, were placed in two control and experimental groups. Learners in experimental group received feedback through recasting during retelling the reading passage according to principles of Jigsaw task. But learners in control group did not receive any feedback. After treatment, which lasted for eight sessions, post-test was given to both control and experimental groups to observe the difference resulted from the treatment. To be sure about the significance of the difference between post-test means of both groups, a t-test was used. The results at the end supported the hypotheses of the study and positive effect of incidental focus on form on grammatical accuracy of L2 learners. After that, for the purpose of analyzing the effect of incidental focus on form on accuracy of pronouns, tenses, articles and propositions separately, other tests (pronoun, article, tense, proposition tests was given to the learners in both control and experimental groups. The data collected was computed through t-test which revealed that the effect of incidental focus on form on grammatical accuracy of articles is greater than pronouns and tenses but incidental focus on form didn’t have any effect on accuracy of propositions. Pedagogical implications have been discussed. Keywords:  Focus on form, Incidental focus on form, recast, task, Accuracy

  5. Evolving Personalized Content for Super Mario Bros Using Grammatical Evolution

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Shaker, Noor; Yannakakis, Georgios N.; Togelius, Julian

    2012-01-01

    -adapted content by employing an adaptation mechanism as a fitness function in grammatical evolution to optimize the player experience of three emotional states: engagement, frustration and challenge. The fitness functions used are models of player experience constructed in our previous work from crowd...

  6. What's in the input? Frequent frames in child-directed speech offer distributional cues to grammatical categories in Spanish and English.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Weisleder, Adriana; Waxman, Sandra R

    2010-11-01

    Recent analyses have revealed that child-directed speech contains distributional regularities that could, in principle, support young children's discovery of distinct grammatical categories (noun, verb, adjective). In particular, a distributional unit known as the frequent frame appears to be especially informative (Mintz, 2003). However, analyses have focused almost exclusively on the distributional information available in English. Because languages differ considerably in how the grammatical forms are marked within utterances, the scarcity of cross-linguistic evidence represents an unfortunate gap. We therefore advance the developmental evidence by analyzing the distributional information available in frequent frames across two languages (Spanish and English), across sentence positions (phrase medial and phrase final), and across grammatical forms (noun, verb, adjective). We selected six parent-child corpora from the CHILDES database (three English; three Spanish), and analyzed the input when children were aged 2 ; 6 or younger. In each language, frequent frames did indeed offer systematic cues to grammatical category assignment. We also identify differences in the accuracy of these frames across languages, sentences positions and grammatical classes.

  7. Grammatical Conception of Yuriy Shevel'ov: Nominative ↔ Vocative in the System of Substantial Categoriality

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    Anatoliy Zahnitko

    2016-08-01

    Full Text Available Background. Analysis of Yuriy Shevel'ov’s approaches to the interpretation of the morphological tier of language, as well as his examination of particular phenomena of this level – substantiality, verbality, and others – reflects not only the author's understanding itself of all the grammatical system as a whole, and morphological one in particular, but also represents the features of modification of scientific approaches in the history of linguistic thought of mid-twentieth century, its strengthening in the studies of the XX – XXI century. The researcher’s definition of nominative and vocative cases as interrelated within the categorical substantiality is of particular importance. Purpose: to determine the main components of interpretation of the status dimension of the nominative and vocative cases within morpho-substantial categoriality of Yuriy Shevel'ov with the definition of theoretical foundations and practical principles, revealing the patterns of establishing internal sentence dimension of the nominative and vocative cases. Results: In the case theory with reliance on the sequence of forms of dependencies in the internal sentence space Yuriy Shevel'ov distinguishes five cases: genitive, dative, accusative, ablative, locative. In the statement about the nominative as grammatically independent case the scientist relies on sentence. Two-dimensionality of grammatically independent case opposes to the one-dimensional grammatically dependent nominative that is traceable in syntactic positions of predicate and apposition. Yuriy Shevel'ov did not consider addressing that is not grammatically linked to the sentence with a specific expression as an individual case. The forms of vocative case show functional three-componentity, because in its functional-semantic paradigm it covers the function of the addressee – potential subject of action (primary function that is represented in formal grammar sentence structure by the main element of

  8. Toy Talk: Simple Strategies to Create Richer Grammatical Input

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hadley, Pamela A.; Walsh, Kathleen M.

    2014-01-01

    Purpose: The purpose of this initial feasibility study was to determine whether brief instruction in toy talk would change grammatical properties of adult language, specifically 3rd person lexical noun phrase (NP) subjects. Method: Eighteen college students participated in the study. The use of 3rd person subjects was examined before and after…

  9. A Bibliography of Generative-Based Grammatical Analyses of Spanish.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Nuessel, Frank H.

    One hundred sixty-eight books, articles, and dissertations written between 1960 and 1973 are listed in this bibliography of linguistic studies of the Spanish language within the grammatical theory originated by Noam Chomsky in his "Syntactic Structures" (1957). The present work is divided into two general categories: (1) phonology and (2) syntax…

  10. Identifying the null subject: evidence from event-related brain potentials.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Demestre, J; Meltzer, S; García-Albea, J E; Vigil, A

    1999-05-01

    Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded during spoken language comprehension to study the on-line effects of gender agreement violations in controlled infinitival complements. Spanish sentences were constructed in which the complement clause contained a predicate adjective marked for syntactic gender. By manipulating the gender of the antecedent (i.e., the controller) of the implicit subject while holding constant the gender of the adjective, pairs of grammatical and ungrammatical sentences were created. The detection of such a gender agreement violation would indicate that the parser had established the coreference relation between the null subject and its antecedent. The results showed a complex biphasic ERP (i.e., an early negativity with prominence at anterior and central sites, followed by a centroparietal positivity) in the violating condition as compared to the non-violating conditions. The brain reacts to NP-adjective gender agreement violations within a few hundred milliseconds of their occurrence. The data imply that the parser has properly coindexed the null subject of an infinitive clause with its antecedent.

  11. Use of a Novel Grammatical Inference Approach in Classification of Amyloidogenic Hexapeptides

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    Wojciech Wieczorek

    2016-01-01

    Full Text Available The present paper is a novel contribution to the field of bioinformatics by using grammatical inference in the analysis of data. We developed an algorithm for generating star-free regular expressions which turned out to be good recommendation tools, as they are characterized by a relatively high correlation coefficient between the observed and predicted binary classifications. The experiments have been performed for three datasets of amyloidogenic hexapeptides, and our results are compared with those obtained using the graph approaches, the current state-of-the-art methods in heuristic automata induction, and the support vector machine. The results showed the superior performance of the new grammatical inference algorithm on fixed-length amyloid datasets.

  12. Grammatical Adaptation of English Loanwords of Gaming Industry in the Russian Language

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    Semen V. Gornostaev

    2017-03-01

    Full Text Available The article is devoted to the grammatical adaptation of borrowed from the English lexems in the sphere of the interactive entertainment industry. It has been given also other processes of development of language units of the thematic groups: phonetic, lexical, semantic. Nominations were taken by continuous sampling of periodicals (magazine «Gambling», various Internet sources and lively conversation, presented on Internet forums. The subject of the analysis is one-component substantive derivative and nonderivative nomination. During the study the following results were obtained. 1. The leading features of grammatical adaptation of anglicisms in the sphere of the gaming industry are: a the appearance of declinability, stabilization of generic relatedness (not only animated, but also inanimate nouns, b expansion of the capacity of the diversion, which is manifested in the formation of word-forming nest of three types - nest-pairs, nest-bundles and nest-chains. 2. Derivative words included in their composition, may belong to different parts of speech (nouns and verbs and formed by affix (suffixes and prefixing and non-affix (abbriviation, clipping, adding ways. 3. There are units in the language-recipient that have not undergone the process of grammatical adaptation: blotches and immutable acronyms.

  13. The influence of rTMS over prefrontal and motor areas in a morphological task: grammatical vs. semantic effects.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gerfo, Emanuele Lo; Oliveri, Massimiliano; Torriero, Sara; Salerno, Silvia; Koch, Giacomo; Caltagirone, Carlo

    2008-01-31

    We investigated the differential role of two frontal regions in the processing of grammatical and semantic knowledge. Given the documented specificity of the prefrontal cortex for the grammatical class of verbs, and of the primary motor cortex for the semantic class of action words, we sought to investigate whether the prefrontal cortex is also sensitive to semantic effects, and whether the motor cortex is also sensitive to grammatical class effects. We used repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) to suppress the excitability of a portion of left prefontal cortex (first experiment) and of the motor area (second experiment). In the first experiment we found that rTMS applied to the left prefrontal cortex delays the processing of action verbs' retrieval, but is not critical for retrieval of state verbs and state nouns. In the second experiment we found that rTMS applied to the left motor cortex delays the processing of action words, both name and verbs, while it is not critical for the processing of state words. These results support the notion that left prefrontal and motor cortex are involved in the process of action word retrieval. Left prefrontal cortex subserves processing of both grammatical and semantic information, whereas motor cortex contributes to the processing of semantic representation of action words without any involvement in the representation of grammatical categories.

  14. Grammatical Aspect in uences Event Duration Estimations: Evidence from Dutch

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Flecken, M.E.P.; Gerwien, J.; Knauff, M.; Pauen, M.; Sebanz, N.; Wachsmuth, I.

    2013-01-01

    This study investigates the effect of grammatical aspect marking in Dutch sentences, on speakers’ estimations of the duration of highly familiar, everyday events. We first established the ‘inherent’ or natural duration of different events (Exp. 1). This was then used for the manipulation of aspect

  15. A Program Based on the Pragmatic Theory to Develop Grammatical Structure Comprehension Skills for Foreign Learners of Arabic

    Science.gov (United States)

    Elsamman, Marwan

    2014-01-01

    This study aimed at designing a program based on the Pragmatic theory to develop grammatical structure comprehension skills for foreign learners of Arabic and examining its effectiveness. Hence, the problem of the study has been summarized in the weakness of grammatical structure comprehension skills for foreign learners of Arabic and in the need…

  16. Morphological structure mediates the notional meaning of gender marking: Evidence from the gender-congruency effect in Hebrew speech production.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Deutsch, Avital; Dank, Maya

    2018-02-01

    This study investigated the gender-congruency effect of animate nouns in Hebrew. The Picture-Word Interference paradigm was used to manipulate gender congruency between target pictures and spoken distractors. Naming latency revealed an inhibitory gender-congruency effect, as naming the pictures took longer in the presence of a gender-congruent distractor than with a distractor from a different gender category. The inhibitory effect was demonstrated for feminine (morphologically marked) nouns, across two stimulus-onset asynchronies (SOAs) (Experiments 1a and 1b), and masculine (morphologically unmarked) nouns (Experiment 2). The same pattern was observed when participants had to produce bare nouns (Experiment 1) or gender-marked noun phrases (Experiment 3). The inhibitory pattern of the effect resembles previous findings of bare nouns in a subset of Romance languages, including Italian and Spanish. These findings add to previous research which investigated the gender-congruency effect of inanimate nouns, where no effect of gender-congruent words was found. The results are discussed in relation to the null effect previously found for inanimate nouns. The comparison of the present and previous studies is motivated by a common linguistic distinction between animate and inanimate nouns in Hebrew, which ascribes grammatical gender specifications to derivational structures (for inanimate nouns) versus inflectional structures (for animate nouns). Given the difference in the notional meaning of gender specification for animate and inanimate nouns, the case of Hebrew exemplifies how language-specific characteristics, such as rich morphological structures, can be used by the linguistic system to express conceptual distinctions at the form-word level.

  17. Using Language Sample Analysis in Clinical Practice: Measures of Grammatical Accuracy for Identifying Language Impairment in Preschool and School-Aged Children.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Eisenberg, Sarita; Guo, Ling-Yu

    2016-05-01

    This article reviews the existing literature on the diagnostic accuracy of two grammatical accuracy measures for differentiating children with and without language impairment (LI) at preschool and early school age based on language samples. The first measure, the finite verb morphology composite (FVMC), is a narrow grammatical measure that computes children's overall accuracy of four verb tense morphemes. The second measure, percent grammatical utterances (PGU), is a broader grammatical measure that computes children's accuracy in producing grammatical utterances. The extant studies show that FVMC demonstrates acceptable (i.e., 80 to 89% accurate) to good (i.e., 90% accurate or higher) diagnostic accuracy for children between 4;0 (years;months) and 6;11 in conversational or narrative samples. In contrast, PGU yields acceptable to good diagnostic accuracy for children between 3;0 and 8;11 regardless of sample types. Given the diagnostic accuracy shown in the literature, we suggest that FVMC and PGU can be used as one piece of evidence for identifying children with LI in assessment when appropriate. However, FVMC or PGU should not be used as therapy goals directly. Instead, when children are low in FVMC or PGU, we suggest that follow-up analyses should be conducted to determine the verb tense morphemes or grammatical structures that children have difficulty with. Thieme Medical Publishers 333 Seventh Avenue, New York, NY 10001, USA.

  18. Grammaticality, Acceptability, and Probability: A Probabilistic View of Linguistic Knowledge.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lau, Jey Han; Clark, Alexander; Lappin, Shalom

    2017-07-01

    The question of whether humans represent grammatical knowledge as a binary condition on membership in a set of well-formed sentences, or as a probabilistic property has been the subject of debate among linguists, psychologists, and cognitive scientists for many decades. Acceptability judgments present a serious problem for both classical binary and probabilistic theories of grammaticality. These judgements are gradient in nature, and so cannot be directly accommodated in a binary formal grammar. However, it is also not possible to simply reduce acceptability to probability. The acceptability of a sentence is not the same as the likelihood of its occurrence, which is, in part, determined by factors like sentence length and lexical frequency. In this paper, we present the results of a set of large-scale experiments using crowd-sourced acceptability judgments that demonstrate gradience to be a pervasive feature in acceptability judgments. We then show how one can predict acceptability judgments on the basis of probability by augmenting probabilistic language models with an acceptability measure. This is a function that normalizes probability values to eliminate the confounding factors of length and lexical frequency. We describe a sequence of modeling experiments with unsupervised language models drawn from state-of-the-art machine learning methods in natural language processing. Several of these models achieve very encouraging levels of accuracy in the acceptability prediction task, as measured by the correlation between the acceptability measure scores and mean human acceptability values. We consider the relevance of these results to the debate on the nature of grammatical competence, and we argue that they support the view that linguistic knowledge can be intrinsically probabilistic. Copyright © 2016 Cognitive Science Society, Inc.

  19. Sensorimotor Behaviour Reflects Lexical and Grammatical Aspect in Czech: An Eye Tracking Study

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Michal Kořenář

    2016-11-01

    Full Text Available Thinking and speaking about events is a process tightly connected with time perception. We can express when an event has occurred with respect to other events, whether it was a durative or a one-time event, whether it was an ongoing or already finished event, etc. Every human language has its own way and extent to which this complex temporal structure of experienced events is expressed. Upon hearing a story we construct a mental representation of the communicated event (e.g. Givón 1992. Some studies show that this construction already evolves during online processing, thanks to instantly accessible language processing cues (Altman and Kamide 1999, Ferretti, McRae and Hatherell 2001, McRae, Ferretti and Amyote 1997. These cues are employed to capture the intricate temporal structure of the story, for instance. They arise from the interplay of the three basic linguistic components (structure, meaning and function and as such are consistent with a constructional view of language (e.g. Fillmore 1988. Even subtle changes of any of the linguistic cues may lead to a different mental representation. Examples of the sources of grammatical markers and lexical categories from which the linguistic cues arise are grammatical and lexical aspect. In the linguistic field, a lot of attention has been paid to analyses of how those sources of temporal cues function within a language system. However, there is a lack of empirical data on how grammatical and lexical aspect interact, and what the effects of such an interaction are. The present study aims to investigate the link between the complex system of temporal cues and sensorimotor representation in Czech speakers, with specific focus on grammatical verb aspect and so-called event telicity, i.e. lexical aspect, all of which will be further described below.

  20. A cross-linguistic study of real-word and non-word repetition as predictors of grammatical competence in children with typical language development

    Science.gov (United States)

    Dispaldro, Marco; Deevy, Patricia; Altoe, Gianmarco; Benelli, Beatrice; Leonard Purdue, Laurence B.

    2013-01-01

    Background Although relationships among non-word repetition, real-word repetition and grammatical ability have been documented, it is important to study whether the specific nature of these relationships is tied to the characteristics of a given language. Aims The aim of this study is to explore the potential cross-linguistic differences (Italian and English) in the relationship among non-word repetition, real-word repetition, and grammatical ability in three- and four-year-old children with typical language development. Methods & Procedures To reach this goal, two repetition tasks (one real-word list and one non-word list for each language) were used. In Italian the grammatical categories were the third person plural inflection and the direct-object clitic pronouns, while in English they were the third person singular present tense inflection and the past tense in regular and irregular forms. Outcomes & Results A cross-linguistic comparison showed that in both Italian and English, non-word repetition was a significant predictor of grammatical ability. However, performance on real-word repetition explained children’s grammatical ability in Italian but not in English. Conclusions & Implications Abilities underlying non-word repetition performance (e.g., the processing and/or storage of phonological material) play an important role in the development of children’s grammatical abilities in both languages. Lexical ability (indexed by real-word repetition) showed a close relationship to grammatical ability in Italian but not in English. Implications of the findings are discussed in terms of cross-linguistic differences, genetic research, clinical intervention and methodological issues. PMID:21899673

  1. A cross-linguistic study of real-word and non-word repetition as predictors of grammatical competence in children with typical language development.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Dispaldro, Marco; Deevy, Patricia; Altoé, Gianmarco; Benelli, Beatrice; Leonard, Laurence B

    2011-01-01

    Although relationships among non-word repetition, real-word repetition and grammatical ability have been documented, it is important to study whether the specific nature of these relationships is tied to the characteristics of a given language. The aim of this study is to explore the potential cross-linguistic differences (Italian and English) in the relationship among non-word repetition, real-word repetition, and grammatical ability in three-and four-year-old children with typical language development. To reach this goal, two repetition tasks (one real-word list and one non-word list for each language) were used. In Italian the grammatical categories were the third person plural inflection and the direct-object clitic pronouns, while in English they were the third person singular present tense inflection and the past tense in regular and irregular forms. A cross-linguistic comparison showed that in both Italian and English, non-word repetition was a significant predictor of grammatical ability. However, performance on real-word repetition explained children's grammatical ability in Italian but not in English. Abilities underlying non-word repetition performance (e.g., the processing and/or storage of phonological material) play an important role in the development of children's grammatical abilities in both languages. Lexical ability (indexed by real-word repetition) showed a close relationship to grammatical ability in Italian but not in English. Implications of the findings are discussed in terms of cross-linguistic differences, genetic research, clinical intervention and methodological issues. © 2011 Royal College of Speech & Language Therapists.

  2. A comparative evaluation of deep and shallow approaches to the automatic detection of common grammatical errors

    OpenAIRE

    Wagner, Joachim; Foster, Jennifer; van Genabith, Josef

    2007-01-01

    This paper compares a deep and a shallow processing approach to the problem of classifying a sentence as grammatically wellformed or ill-formed. The deep processing approach uses the XLE LFG parser and English grammar: two versions are presented, one which uses the XLE directly to perform the classification, and another one which uses a decision tree trained on features consisting of the XLE’s output statistics. The shallow processing approach predicts grammaticality based on n-gram freque...

  3. TEACHING GRAMMAR-IN-CONTEXT AND ITS IMPACT IN MINIMIZING STUDENTS’ GRAMMATICAL ERRORS

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Yadhi Nur Amin

    2015-11-01

    Full Text Available This study is conducted to determine the effectiveness of teaching grammar-in-context to minimize students‘ grammatical errors in writing. The design of the study was a quasi-experimental with a non-randomized pretest-posttest control group. The samples of the study were taken from the population of the tenth-grade students. The control group was taught by conventional grammar which was separately given with writing skills. Likewise, the experimental one was treated by teaching grammar-in-context. The results of the study showed that the mean score in the post-test was higher than that in the pretest; and the mean score of experimental group increased 16.20 point after the treatment. This result indicated that teaching grammarin-context is considered to be effective in minimizing students‘ grammatical errors in writing.

  4. A database for semantic, grammatical, and frequency properties of the first words acquired by Italian children.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Rinaldi, Pasquale; Barca, Laura; Burani, Cristina

    2004-08-01

    The CFVlexvar.xls database includes imageability, frequency, and grammatical properties of the first words acquired by Italian children. For each of 519 words that are known by children 18-30 months of age (taken from Caselli & Casadio's, 1995, Italian version of the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory), new values of imageability are provided and values for age of acquisition, child written frequency, and adult written and spoken frequency are included. In this article, correlations among the variables are discussed and the words are grouped into grammatical categories. The results show that words acquired early have imageable referents, are frequently used in the texts read and written by elementary school children, and are frequent in adult written and spoken language. Nouns are acquired earlier and are more imageable than both verbs and adjectives. The composition in grammatical categories of the child's first vocabulary reflects the composition of adult vocabulary. The full set of these norms can be downloaded from www.psychonomic.org/archive/.

  5. Attentional Requirements for the Selection of Words from Different Grammatical Categories

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ayora, Pauline; Janssen, Niels; Dell'Acqua, Roberto; Alario, F.-Xavier

    2009-01-01

    Two grammatical classes are commonly distinguished in psycholinguistic research. The open-class includes content words such as nouns, whereas the closed-class includes function words such as determiners. A standing issue is to identify whether these words are retrieved through similar or distinct selection mechanisms. We report a comparative…

  6. Basic lexical and grammatical transformations in translation of German print advertising

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Артур Нарманович Мамедов

    2014-12-01

    Full Text Available The article presents basic lexical and grammatical transformations, which contribute to preserving the semantic and syntactic structure of a German advertising text and reproducing the image of the advertised product. This shows that the translation has the same communicative effect as that achieved by the source text.

  7. The usefulness of the grammaticality-acceptability distinction in functional approaches to language

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Poulsen, Mads

    2013-01-01

    between competence and performance, rather than on a distinction between syntax and meaning. The basic rationale for having such a distinction is that much of linguistics is concerned with describing relatively stable grammatical knowledge, rather than the psycholinguistic dynamics of language use...

  8. Effects of statistical learning on the acquisition of grammatical categories through Qur'anic memorization: A natural experiment.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zuhurudeen, Fathima Manaar; Huang, Yi Ting

    2016-03-01

    Empirical evidence for statistical learning comes from artificial language tasks, but it is unclear how these effects scale up outside of the lab. The current study turns to a real-world test case of statistical learning where native English speakers encounter the syntactic regularities of Arabic through memorization of the Qur'an. This unique input provides extended exposure to the complexity of a natural language, with minimal semantic cues. Memorizers were asked to distinguish unfamiliar nouns and verbs based on their co-occurrence with familiar pronouns in an Arabic language sample. Their performance was compared to that of classroom learners who had explicit knowledge of pronoun meanings and grammatical functions. Grammatical judgments were more accurate in memorizers compared to non-memorizers. No effects of classroom experience were found. These results demonstrate that real-world exposure to the statistical properties of a natural language facilitates the acquisition of grammatical categories. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  9. Gender shift in translation from English into Arabic and all that aggro

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Mohammad Ahmad Thawabteh

    2017-12-01

    Full Text Available The present article examines how English grammatical gender is handled in Arabic translation as can be illustrated in a gender-loaded English text taken from the Gulf News English website. To diversify and corroborate our argument, the text was given to a group of forty students enrolled on Translation Studies course for the academic year 2017/2018 at Sultan Qaboos University. The article shows that the translation students fall victim to several problems, most likely attributed to the linguistic reality of the masculine and feminine genders in both Arabic and English. The article reveals that three strategies in translating a gender-loaded text are employed: (1 Source Language (SL gender-free items are translated into masculine gender in Target Language (TL in view of the fact that they are contextually determined or that they are closely bound up with unequivocal patriarchal domination in the Arab culture; (2 SL gender-bound items usually observed by complex genders (i.e., the addition of a gender lexical item to a gender-free item are translated by means of explicitation whereby a that-clause or an astute feminine lexical item is utilised; and (3 the dormancy of a viable computer-aided translation (CAT strategy is called upon, very frequently, when Strategy 1 and Strategy 2 are to no avail.

  10. Exploring the longitudinal relationships between the use of grammar in text messaging and performance on grammatical tasks.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wood, Clare; Kemp, Nenagh; Waldron, Sam

    2014-11-01

    Research has demonstrated that use of texting slang (textisms) when text messaging does not appear to impact negatively on children's literacy outcomes and may even benefit children's spelling attainment. However, less attention has been paid to the impact of text messaging on the development of children's and young people's understanding of grammar. This study therefore examined the interrelationships between children's and young adults' tendency to make grammatical violations when texting and their performance on formal assessments of spoken and written grammatical understanding, orthographic processing and spelling ability over the course of 1 year. Zero-order correlations showed patterns consistent with previous research on textism use and spelling, and there was no evidence of any negative associations between the development of the children's performance on the grammar tasks and their use of grammatical violations when texting. Adults' tendency to use ungrammatical word forms ('does you') was positively related to performance on the test of written grammar. Grammatical violations were found to be positively associated with growth in spelling for secondary school children. However, not all forms of violation were observed to be consistently used in samples of text messages taken 12 months apart or were characteristic of typical text messages. The need to differentiate between genuine errors and deliberate violation of rules is discussed, as are the educational implications of these findings. © 2014 The Authors. British Journal of Developmental Psychology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of British Psychological Society.

  11. Complex syntax in the isolated right hemisphere: Receptive grammatical abilities after cerebral hemispherectomy.

    Science.gov (United States)

    de Bode, Stella; Smets, Lieselotte; Mathern, Gary W; Dubinsky, Stanley

    2015-10-01

    In this study, we explored the syntactic competence of the right hemisphere (RH) after left cerebral hemispherectomy, on the premise that it (syntactic competence) is known to be one of the most strongly left-lateralized language functions. As basic syntactic development for individuals in this subject pool has already been extensively explored, we focused instead on the investigation of complex syntactic constructions that are normally acquired later in childhood, i.e., between 7 and 9years of age. Grammatical competence in 10 participants who had undergone left cerebral hemispherectomy was compared to that of a group of normally developing children, with the two groups matched by the size of their vocabulary. The two tests we used for this research were created by the 1st language acquisition linguists and were designed to test sets of constructions categorized and differentiated by the order in which they are normally acquired and by the type of grammatical competence that they involve. We found that both groups followed the same developmental sequence of syntactic development with five (50%) postsurgical participants (all with prenatal etiologies) reaching nearly mature command of sentence grammar. Seizures negatively impacted performance on all tests. The isolated RH has the potential to support the complex grammatical categories that emerge relatively late in the normal acquisition of English by native speakers. Successful performance may be related to the timing of the initial insult and seizure control following hemispherectomy. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  12. AN ANALYSIS OF ACEHNESE EFL STUDENTS’ GRAMMATICAL ERRORS IN WRITING RECOUNT TEXTS

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Qudwatin Nisak M. Isa

    2017-11-01

    Full Text Available This study aims at finding empirical evidence of the most common types of grammatical errors and sources of errors in recount texts written by the first-year students of SMAS Babul Maghfirah, Aceh Besar. The subject of the study was a collection of students’ personal writing documents of recount texts about their lives experience. The students’ recount texts were analyzed by referring to Betty S. Azar classification and Richard’s theory on sources of errors. The findings showed that the total number of error is 436. Two frequent types of grammatical errors were Verb Tense and Word Choice. The major sources of error were Intralingual Error, Interference Error and Developmental Error respectively. Furthermore, the findings suggest that it is necessary for EFL teachers to apply appropriate techniques and strategies in teaching recount texts, which focus on past tense and language features of the text in order to reduce the possible errors to be made by the students.

  13. Effects of parallel planning on agreement production.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Veenstra, Alma; Meyer, Antje S; Acheson, Daniel J

    2015-11-01

    An important issue in current psycholinguistics is how the time course of utterance planning affects the generation of grammatical structures. The current study investigated the influence of parallel activation of the components of complex noun phrases on the generation of subject-verb agreement. Specifically, the lexical interference account (Gillespie & Pearlmutter, 2011b; Solomon & Pearlmutter, 2004) predicts more agreement errors (i.e., attraction) for subject phrases in which the head and local noun mismatch in number (e.g., the apple next to the pears) when nouns are planned in parallel than when they are planned in sequence. We used a speeded picture description task that yielded sentences such as the apple next to the pears is red. The objects mentioned in the noun phrase were either semantically related or unrelated. To induce agreement errors, pictures sometimes mismatched in number. In order to manipulate the likelihood of parallel processing of the objects and to test the hypothesized relationship between parallel processing and the rate of agreement errors, the pictures were either placed close together or far apart. Analyses of the participants' eye movements and speech onset latencies indicated slower processing of the first object and stronger interference from the related (compared to the unrelated) second object in the close than in the far condition. Analyses of the agreement errors yielded an attraction effect, with more errors in mismatching than in matching conditions. However, the magnitude of the attraction effect did not differ across the close and far conditions. Thus, spatial proximity encouraged parallel processing of the pictures, which led to interference of the associated conceptual and/or lexical representation, but, contrary to the prediction, it did not lead to more attraction errors. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  14. Gauging the impact of gender grammaticization in different languages: Application of a linguistic-visual paradigm

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Sayaka eSato

    2016-02-01

    Full Text Available Employing a linguistic-visual paradigm, we investigated whether the grammaticization of gender information impacts readers’ gender representations. French and German were taken as comparative languages, taking into account the male gender bias associated to both languages, as well as the comparative gender biases associated to their plural determiners (French: les [generic] vs. German: die [morphologically feminine]. Bilingual speakers of French and German had to judge whether a pair of facial images representing two men or a man and a woman could represent a gender stereotypical role noun prime (e.g., nurses. The prime was presented in the masculine plural form with or without a plural determiner. Results indicated that the overt grammaticization of the male gender in the masculine form dominated the representation of the role nouns (though interpretable as generic. However, the effect of the determiner was not found, indicating that only gender information associated to a human reference role noun had impacted readers’ representations. The results, discussed in the framework of the thinking-for-speaking hypothesis, demonstrated that linguistic-visual paradigms are well-suited to gauge the impact of both stereotype information and grammaticization when processing role nouns.Keywords: gender representation, gender stereotypes, grammatical gender, generic masculine, thinking-for-speaking hypothesis, bilingualism

  15. Distributional Cues to Grammatical Categorization: Acquiring Categories in a Miniature Artificial Grammar

    Science.gov (United States)

    Reeder, Patricia A.

    2010-01-01

    A crucial component of language acquisition involves organizing words into grammatical categories and discovering relations between them. The organization of words into categories, and the generalization of patterns from some seen word combinations to novel ones, account for important aspects of the expansion of linguistic knowledge in the early…

  16. Frequent Frames as a Cue for Grammatical Categories in Child Directed Speech

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mintz, Toben H.

    2003-01-01

    This paper introduces the notion of frequent frames, distributional patterns based on co-occurrence patterns of words in sentences, then investigates the usefulness of this information in grammatical categorization. A frame is defined as two jointly occurring words with one word intervening. Qualitative and quantitative results from distributional…

  17. Enfocando la competencia linguistica: concienciacion gramatical (Focusing on Linguistic Competence: Grammatical Consciousness).

    Science.gov (United States)

    Melles, Gavin

    1997-01-01

    Argues that communicative competence in Spanish as a second language can not be taught without giving attention to the grammatical component of language. Compares aspects of the traditional and communicative approaches to language teaching, refers to theory on grammar instruction, and offers examples of classroom activities supporting the learning…

  18. AN ANALYSIS OF GRAMMATICAL ERRORS IN SPEECH AT THE STUDENTS OF ENGLISH EDUCATION STUDY PROGRAM OF MUHAMMADIYAH UNIVERSITY OF METRO ACADEMIC YEAR 2013/2014

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Septian Dwi Sondiana

    2017-02-01

    Full Text Available The objectives of the research are to find out the types of grammatical errors in English students’ speech; to find out the percentage of grammatical errors in English students’ speech; to find out the factors influencing English students’ grammatical errors in their speech. Based on the data, the students have problem in producing verb group, errors in subject-verb agreement, errors in the use of articles, errors in the use of prepositions, errors in noun pluralization, errors in the use of pronouns, and errors in the use of conjunctions. It shows that Anisa made eleven sentences in 2 minutes 28 seconds. She made eight errors. Dewi made seven sentences in 1 minutes 57 seconds. She made five errors. Fatika made sixteen sentences in 4 minutes 14 seconds. She made eight errors. Fitri made sixteen sentences in 4 minutes 23 seconds. She made seven errors. Ibnu  made  ten sentences in 2 minutes 18 seconds. He made eight errors. Linda made fiveteen sentences in 3 minutes 7 seconds. She made eight errors. Musli made fourteen sentences in 2 minutes 39 seconds. She made six errors. Nyoman made twelve sentences in 3 minutes 43 seconds. He made nine errors. Pera made ten sentences in 2 minutes 23 seconds. She made seven errors. Sri made fourteen sentences in 6 minutes 34 seconds. She made eleven errors. And about the percentages of errors, here is the data; Anisa: 72,73% of errors; Dewi: 71,4% of errors; Fatika: 50% of errors; Fitri: 43,75% of errors; Ibnu: 80% of errors; Linda: 53,3% of errors; Musli: 42,8% of errors; Nyoman: 75% of errors; Pera: 70% of errors; Sri: 78,57% of errors. Based on interview, it shows it can be concluded the factors influence of English students’ grammatical errors in their speech when their speak using grammar rule. The internal factors are; The first, the students are still difficult to make feeling, for example; confident, feel scary, when they are speaking in public. The second, the students are not mastered in

  19. Effect of X-Word Grammar and Traditional Grammar Instruction on Grammatical Accuracy

    Science.gov (United States)

    Livingston, Sue; Toce, Andi; Casey, Toce; Montoya, Fernando; Hart, Bonny R.; O'Flaherty, Carmela

    2018-01-01

    This study first briefly describes an instructional approach to teaching grammar known as X-Word Grammar and then compares its effectiveness in assisting students in achieving grammatical accuracy with traditionally taught grammar. Two groups of L2 pre-college students were taught using curricula and practice procedures in two different grammar…

  20. Incidental Learning of Gender Agreement in L2

    Science.gov (United States)

    Denhovska, Nadiia; Serratrice, Ludovica

    2017-01-01

    Incidental learning of grammar has been an area of interest for many decades; nevertheless, existing research has primarily focused on artificial or semi-artificial languages. The present study examines the incidental acquisition of the grammar of a natural language by exposing adult speakers of an ungendered L1 (English) to the gender agreement…

  1. A Study of the Use of the Weak Forms of English Grammatical Words ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    More often than not, when grammatical words such as determiners, pronouns, conjunctions, auxiliary verbs and prepositions occur in Standard English sentences, they are produced in their weak forms. The concern of this study is whether educated Yoruba English speakers appropriately use the weak forms of English ...

  2. [Gender systems and/in the Spanish National Health Interview Survey].

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ruiz Cantero, María Teresa; Papí Gálvez, Natalia; Carbrera Ruiz, Virginia; Ruiz Martínez, Ana; Alvarez-Dardet Díaz, Carlos

    2006-01-01

    To analyze the Spanish National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) from a gender perspective, with special emphasis on gender division of labor. We analyzed the 2003 Spanish NHIS from the perspective of the levels of gender observation, with gender understood as: a) the basis of social norms (responsibilities by sex, health risks, and problems related to masculine/feminine roles); b) the organizer of the social structure: gender division of labor, work overload, vertical/horizontal segregation, time spent in activities according to social times, access to resources), and c) a component of individual identity (conflicts due to multiple roles, body image dissatisfaction, self-esteem, self-perceived recognition of the work performed, assimilation of the sexual gender role, sex differences in health conditions). The Spanish NHIS is centered on the main provider, referred to in masculine grammatical form. Gender division of domestic labor is identified only by a general question. When using the concept of main activity for productive or reproductive work, the survey requires respondents to evaluate them and select only one, thus losing information and hampering analysis of the impact of an overload of work on health. Information on time used for reproductive work and leisure is not solicited. Assaults (intentional) and accidents (non-intentional) are combined in the same question, thus preventing research on gender-related violence. The Spanish NHIS includes the variable of sex, but its more descriptive than analytic focus limits gender analysis. The survey allows specific circumstances of employment-related inequalities between sexes to be measured, but does not completely allow other indicators of gender inequalities, such as the situation of housewives or work overload, to be measured.

  3. Grammatical Structures in Cross-Cultural Comparisons

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Анна Н Гладкова

    2015-12-01

    Full Text Available The article discusses how cultural information is embedded at the level of grammar and it treats grammar as inseparable from semantics and pragmatics. The study is done within the approach known as ethnosyntax. The article provides examples of cultural meaning embedded at the level of syntax relying on examples from Russian and English. In particular, it demonstrates variation in impersonal constructions in Russian and causative constructions in English. It then discusses variation in the use of grammatical structures due to the influence of cultural factors on the basis of ways of wording ‘requests’ in English and Russian. The linguistic examples in the discussion are sources from the Russian National Corpus for Russian and Collins Wordbanks Online for English. The article argues for the importance of culture-sensitive linguistic studies in language teaching.

  4. Negative Input for Grammatical Errors: Effects after a Lag of 12 Weeks

    Science.gov (United States)

    Saxton, Matthew; Backley, Phillip; Gallaway, Clare

    2005-01-01

    Effects of negative input for 13 categories of grammatical error were assessed in a longitudinal study of naturalistic adult-child discourse. Two-hour samples of conversational interaction were obtained at two points in time, separated by a lag of 12 weeks, for 12 children (mean age 2;0 at the start). The data were interpreted within the framework…

  5. Diminutivization supports gender acquisition in Russian children.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kempe, Vera; Brooks, Patricia J; Mironova, Natalija; Fedorova, Olga

    2003-05-01

    Gender agreement elicitation was used with Russian children to examine how diminutives common in Russian child-directed speech affect gender learning. Forty-six children (2;9-4;8) were shown pictures of familiar and of novel animals and asked to describe them after hearing their names, which all contained regular morphophonological cues to masculine or feminine gender. Half were presented as simplex (e.g. jozh 'porcupine') and half as diminutive forms (e.g. jozhik 'porcupine-DIM'). Children produced fewer agreement errors for diminutive than for simplex nouns, indicating that the regularizing features of diminutives enhance gender categorization. The study demonstrates how features of child-directed speech can facilitate language learning.

  6. Development of morphosyntactic accuracy and grammatical complexity in Dutch school-age children with SLI

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Zwitserlood, R.L.M.; Weerdenburg, M.W.C. van; Verhoeven, L.T.W.; Wijnen, F.N.K.

    2015-01-01

    Purpose: The purpose of this study was to identify the development of morphosyntactic accuracy and grammatical complexity in Dutch school-age children with specific language impairment (SLI). Method: Morphosyntactic accuracy, the use of dummy auxiliaries, and complex syntax were assessed using a

  7. Development of morphosyntactic accuracy and grammatical complexity in dutch school-age children with SLI

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Zwitserlood, Rob; van Weerdenburg, Marjolijn; Verhoeven, Ludo; Wijnen, Frank

    2015-01-01

    Purpose: The purpose of this study was to identify the development of morphosyntactic accuracy and grammatical complexity in Dutch school-age children with specific language impairment (SLI). Method: Morphosyntactic accuracy, the use of dummy auxiliaries, and complex syntax were assessed using a

  8. Warm-hearted businessmen, competitive housewives? Effects of gender-fair language on adolescents’ perceptions of occupations

    Science.gov (United States)

    Vervecken, Dries; Gygax, Pascal M.; Gabriel, Ute; Guillod, Matthias; Hannover, Bettina

    2015-01-01

    Recent studies from countries with grammatical gender languages (e.g., French) found both children and adults to more frequently think of female jobholders and to consider women’s success in male dominated occupations more likely when the jobs were described in pair forms (i.e., by explicit reference to male and female jobholders, e.g., inventeuses et inventeurs; French feminine and masculine plural forms for inventors), rather than masculine only forms (e.g., inventors). To gain a better understanding of this phenomenon, we systematically varied the gender connotation of occupations (males overrepresented, females overrepresented, equal share of males and females) and measured additional dependent variables, predicting that gender fair language would reduce the impact of the gender connotation on participants’ perceptions. In a sample of 222 adolescents (aged 12–17) from French speaking Switzerland, we found that pair forms attenuated the difference in the ascription of success to male and female jobholders in gendered occupations and attenuated the differential ascription of warmth to prototypical jobholders in male vs. female dominated jobs. However, no effect of language form on the ascription of competence was found. These findings suggest that language policies are an effective tool to impact gendered perceptions, however, they also hint at competence-related gender stereotypes being in decline. PMID:26441805

  9. Warm-hearted businessmen, competitive housewives? Effects of gender-fair language on adolescents' perceptions of occupations.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Vervecken, Dries; Gygax, Pascal M; Gabriel, Ute; Guillod, Matthias; Hannover, Bettina

    2015-01-01

    Recent studies from countries with grammatical gender languages (e.g., French) found both children and adults to more frequently think of female jobholders and to consider women's success in male dominated occupations more likely when the jobs were described in pair forms (i.e., by explicit reference to male and female jobholders, e.g., inventeuses et inventeurs; French feminine and masculine plural forms for inventors), rather than masculine only forms (e.g., inventors). To gain a better understanding of this phenomenon, we systematically varied the gender connotation of occupations (males overrepresented, females overrepresented, equal share of males and females) and measured additional dependent variables, predicting that gender fair language would reduce the impact of the gender connotation on participants' perceptions. In a sample of 222 adolescents (aged 12-17) from French speaking Switzerland, we found that pair forms attenuated the difference in the ascription of success to male and female jobholders in gendered occupations and attenuated the differential ascription of warmth to prototypical jobholders in male vs. female dominated jobs. However, no effect of language form on the ascription of competence was found. These findings suggest that language policies are an effective tool to impact gendered perceptions, however, they also hint at competence-related gender stereotypes being in decline.

  10. A Grammatical Approach to the Modeling of an Autonomous Robot

    OpenAIRE

    Gabriel López-García; A. Javier Gallego-Sánchez; J. Luis Dalmau-Espert; Rafael Molina-Carmona; Patricia Compañ-Rosique

    2012-01-01

    Virtual Worlds Generator is a grammatical model that is proposed to define virtual worlds. It integrates the diversity of sensors and interaction devices, multimodality and a virtual simulation system. Its grammar allows the definition and abstraction in symbols strings of the scenes of the virtual world, independently of the hardware that is used to represent the world or to interact with it. A case study is presented to explain how to use the proposed model to formalize a robot navigation s...

  11. First language acquisition differs from second language acquisition in prelingually deaf signers: evidence from sensitivity to grammaticality judgement in British Sign Language.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cormier, Kearsy; Schembri, Adam; Vinson, David; Orfanidou, Eleni

    2012-07-01

    Age of acquisition (AoA) effects have been used to support the notion of a critical period for first language acquisition. In this study, we examine AoA effects in deaf British Sign Language (BSL) users via a grammaticality judgment task. When English reading performance and nonverbal IQ are factored out, results show that accuracy of grammaticality judgement decreases as AoA increases, until around age 8, thus showing the unique effect of AoA on grammatical judgement in early learners. No such effects were found in those who acquired BSL after age 8. These late learners appear to have first language proficiency in English instead, which may have been used to scaffold learning of BSL as a second language later in life. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  12. Grammatical markers switch roles and elicit different electrophysiological responses under shallow and deep semantic requirements.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Soshi, Takahiro; Nakajima, Heizo; Hagiwara, Hiroko

    2016-10-01

    Static knowledge about the grammar of a natural language is represented in the cortico-subcortical system. However, the differences in dynamic verbal processing under different cognitive conditions are unclear. To clarify this, we conducted an electrophysiological experiment involving a semantic priming paradigm in which semantically congruent or incongruent word sequences (prime nouns-target verbs) were randomly presented. We examined the event-related brain potentials that occurred in response to congruent and incongruent target words that were preceded by primes with or without grammatical case markers. The two participant groups performed either the shallow (lexical judgment) or deep (direct semantic judgment) semantic tasks. We hypothesized that, irrespective of the case markers, the congruent targets would reduce centro-posterior N400 activities under the deep semantic condition, which induces selective attention to the semantic relatedness of content words. However, the same congruent targets with correct case markers would reduce lateralized negativity under the shallow semantic condition because grammatical case markers are related to automatic structural integration under semantically unattended conditions. We observed that congruent targets (e.g., 'open') that were preceded by primes with congruent case markers (e.g., 'shutter-object case') reduced lateralized negativity under the shallow semantic condition. In contrast, congruent targets, irrespective of case markers, consistently yielded N400 reductions under the deep semantic condition. To summarize, human neural verbal processing differed in response to the same grammatical markers in the same verbal expressions under semantically attended or unattended conditions.

  13. The forgotten grammatical category: Adjective use in agrammatic aphasia.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Meltzer-Asscher, Aya; Thompson, Cynthia K

    2014-07-01

    In contrast to nouns and verbs, the use of adjectives in agrammatic aphasia has not been systematically studied. However, because of the linguistic and psycholinguistic attributes of adjectives, some of which overlap with nouns and some with verbs, analysis of adjective production is important for testing theories of word class production deficits in agrammatism. The objective of the current study was to compare adjective use in agrammatic and healthy individuals, focusing on three factors: overall adjective production rate, production of predicative and attributive adjectives, and production of adjectives with complex argument structure. Narratives elicited from 14 agrammatic and 14 control participants were coded for open class grammatical category production (i.e., nouns, verbs, adjectives), with each adjective also coded for its syntactic environment (attributive/predicative) and argument structure. Overall, agrammatic speakers used adjectives in proportions similar to that of cognitively healthy speakers. However, they exhibited a greater proportion of predicative adjectives and a lesser proportion of attributive adjectives, compared to controls. Additionally, agrammatic participants produced adjectives with less complex argument structure than controls. The overall normal-like frequency of adjectives produced by agrammatic speakers suggests that agrammatism does not involve an inherent difficulty with adjectives as a word class or with predication, or that it entails a deficit in processing low imageability words. However, agrammatic individuals' reduced production of attributive adjectives and adjectives with complements extends previous findings of an adjunction deficit and of impairment in complex argument structure processing, respectively, to the adjectival domain. The results suggest that these deficits are not tied to a specific grammatical category.

  14. A research-based study of foreign students' use of grammatical codes in five leading British learners' dictionaries

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Marjeta Vrbinc

    2006-12-01

    Full Text Available Grammatical codes are one of several ways of including grammar in learners' dictionaries. In our research we focussed on the usability and user-friendliness of learners' dictionaries as regards grammatical information. The results presented and discussed in this article are based on answers obtained by a questionnaire that tested the understanding of codes found in five leading British monolingual learners' dictionaries and the success of the explanations of the same codes provided in the front matter of each dictionary. The results are presented by dictionaries and by codes. The most important finding of this research is that the understanding of the code and thus its usefulness depends on the code itself rather than on the dictionary.

  15. Grey matter volume in the cerebellum is related to the processing of grammatical rules in a second language: a structural voxel-based morphometry study.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Pliatsikas, Christos; Johnstone, Tom; Marinis, Theodoros

    2014-02-01

    The experience of learning and using a second language (L2) has been shown to affect the grey matter (GM) structure of the brain. Importantly, GM density in several cortical and subcortical areas has been shown to be related to performance in L2 tasks. Here, we show that bilingualism can lead to increased GM volume in the cerebellum, a structure that has been related to the processing of grammatical rules. Additionally, the cerebellar GM volume of highly proficient L2 speakers is correlated to their performance in a task tapping on grammatical processing in an L2, demonstrating the importance of the cerebellum for the establishment and use of grammatical rules in an L2.

  16. Exploring the acquisition and production of grammatical constructions through human-robot interaction with echo state networks.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hinaut, Xavier; Petit, Maxime; Pointeau, Gregoire; Dominey, Peter Ford

    2014-01-01

    One of the principal functions of human language is to allow people to coordinate joint action. This includes the description of events, requests for action, and their organization in time. A crucial component of language acquisition is learning the grammatical structures that allow the expression of such complex meaning related to physical events. The current research investigates the learning of grammatical constructions and their temporal organization in the context of human-robot physical interaction with the embodied sensorimotor humanoid platform, the iCub. We demonstrate three noteworthy phenomena. First, a recurrent network model is used in conjunction with this robotic platform to learn the mappings between grammatical forms and predicate-argument representations of meanings related to events, and the robot's execution of these events in time. Second, this learning mechanism functions in the inverse sense, i.e., in a language production mode, where rather than executing commanded actions, the robot will describe the results of human generated actions. Finally, we collect data from naïve subjects who interact with the robot via spoken language, and demonstrate significant learning and generalization results. This allows us to conclude that such a neural language learning system not only helps to characterize and understand some aspects of human language acquisition, but also that it can be useful in adaptive human-robot interaction.

  17. Quirky Quotes and Needles in the Haystack: Tracing Grammatical Change in Untagged Corpora

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Norde, Muriel

    2013-12-01

    Full Text Available This paper discusses pivotal theoretical and methodological problems of historical corpus linguistics. In two case studies from Swedish language history, the development of the epistemic adverb kanske and the group genitive respectively, it illustrates how the use of qualitative method in addition to corpus investigation can contribute to understanding grammatical change.

  18. Sample Size for Measuring Grammaticality in Preschool Children from Picture-Elicited Language Samples

    Science.gov (United States)

    Eisenberg, Sarita L.; Guo, Ling-Yu

    2015-01-01

    Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate whether a shorter language sample elicited with fewer pictures (i.e., 7) would yield a percent grammatical utterances (PGU) score similar to that computed from a longer language sample elicited with 15 pictures for 3-year-old children. Method: Language samples were elicited by asking forty…

  19. Grammar in Art

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    Edward eSegel

    2011-01-01

    Full Text Available Roman Jakobson (1959 reports: The Russian painter Repin was baffled as to why Sin had been depicted as a woman by German artists: he did not realize that sin is feminine in German (die Sünde, but masculine in Russian (грех. Does the grammatical gender of nouns in an artist’s native language indeed predict the gender of personifications in art? In this paper we analyzed works in the ARTstor database (a digital art library containing over a million images to measure this correspondence. This analysis provides a measure of artists’ real-world behavior. Our results show a clear correspondence between grammatical gender in language and personified gender in art. Grammatical gender predicted personified gender in 78% of the cases, significantly more often than if the two factors were independent. This analysis offers a new window on an age-old question about the relationship between linguistic structure and patterns in culture and cognition.

  20. Effects of Length, Complexity, and Grammatical Correctness on Stuttering in Spanish-Speaking Preschool Children

    Science.gov (United States)

    Watson, Jennifer B.; Byrd, Courtney T.; Carlo, Edna J.

    2011-01-01

    Purpose: To explore the effects of utterance length, syntactic complexity, and grammatical correctness on stuttering in the spontaneous speech of young, monolingual Spanish-speaking children. Method: Spontaneous speech samples of 11 monolingual Spanish-speaking children who stuttered, ages 35 to 70 months, were examined. Mean number of syllables,…

  1. Grammatical dissociation during acquired childhood aphasia.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Martins, Isabel Pavão; Loureiro, Clara; Ramos, Sara; Moreno, Teresa

    2009-12-01

    We report the case of a 6-year-old female who suffered a left hemisphere stroke attributed to a genetically determined prothrombotic state. She presented a fluent speech pattern with selective difficulty in retrieving names but not verbs. An evaluation was designed to clarify whether her symptoms represented a specific impairment of name retrieval. The child undertook an experimental battery of visual naming tasks requiring the production of 52 nouns (belonging to nine different semantic categories) and 44 verbs. Her performance was compared with that of 12 healthy children, matched for age and IQ, attending a local kindergarten. The child retrieved significantly more verbs than nouns (chi(2)=16.27, pgrammatical dissociation in a child. It suggests that nouns and verbs are subject to different processing early in development, at least before the formal acquisition of grammar. It contradicts theories that postulate a common processing of different grammatical categories early in life.

  2. Verbalizing in the Second Language Classroom: The Development of the Grammatical Concept of Aspect

    Science.gov (United States)

    Garcia, Prospero N.

    2012-01-01

    Framed within a Sociocultural Theory of Mind (SCT) in the field of Second Language Acquisition (Lantolf & Thorne, 2006), this dissertation explores the role of verbalizing in the internalization of grammatical categories through the use of Concept-based Instruction (henceforth CBI) in the second language (L2) classroom. Using Vygotsky's…

  3. Grammatical markers switch roles and elicit different electrophysiological responses under shallow and deep semantic requirements

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Takahiro Soshi

    2016-10-01

    Full Text Available Static knowledge about the grammar of a natural language is represented in the cortico-subcortical system. However, the differences in dynamic verbal processing under different cognitive conditions are unclear. To clarify this, we conducted an electrophysiological experiment involving a semantic priming paradigm in which semantically congruent or incongruent word sequences (prime nouns–target verbs were randomly presented. We examined the event-related brain potentials that occurred in response to congruent and incongruent target words that were preceded by primes with or without grammatical case markers. The two participant groups performed either the shallow (lexical judgment or deep (direct semantic judgment semantic tasks. We hypothesized that, irrespective of the case markers, the congruent targets would reduce centro-posterior N400 activities under the deep semantic condition, which induces selective attention to the semantic relatedness of content words. However, the same congruent targets with correct case markers would reduce lateralized negativity under the shallow semantic condition because grammatical case markers are related to automatic structural integration under semantically unattended conditions. We observed that congruent targets (e.g., ‘open' that were preceded by primes with congruent case markers (e.g., ‘shutter-object case' reduced lateralized negativity under the shallow semantic condition. In contrast, congruent targets, irrespective of case markers, consistently yielded N400 reductions under the deep semantic condition. To summarize, human neural verbal processing differed in response to the same grammatical markers in the same verbal expressions under semantically attended or unattended conditions. Keyword: Neuroscience

  4. Modeling children's early grammatical knowledge

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bannard, Colin; Lieven, Elena; Tomasello, Michael

    2009-01-01

    Theories of grammatical development differ in how much abstract knowledge they attribute to young children. Here, we report a series of experiments using a computational model to evaluate the explanatory power of child grammars based not on abstract rules but on concrete words and phrases and some local abstractions associated with these words and phrases. We use a Bayesian procedure to extract such item-based grammars from transcriptions of 28+ h of each of two children's speech at 2 and 3 years of age. We then use these grammars to parse all of the unique multiword utterances from transcriptions of separate recordings of these same children at each of the two ages. We found that at 2 years of age such a model had good coverage and predictive fit, with the children showing radically limited productivity. Furthermore, adding expert-annotated parts of speech to the induction procedure had little effect on coverage, with the exception of the category of noun. At age 3, the children's productivity sharply increased and the addition of a verb and a noun category markedly improved the model's performance. PMID:19805057

  5. Grammatical norm problem in diachronies (on the material of the manuscript of the XVII century “Jesus Christ passions”

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Serebryakova Elina Valerievna

    2015-09-01

    Full Text Available The article describes the results of the study in terms of the implementation of the grammatical rules of the text of the apocryphal writings of «Jesus Christ Passion», forming the bulk of convolutes of the XVII century, which is stored in the Mordovian regional museum and has not been introduced in the scientific sphere. It is given the definition of the grammatical norm, summarized the point of view of well-known scientists who study the evolution of the norms of book-Slavic language at different stages of its development and in the establishment and description of the main characteristics of the «strict» and reduced norm of the Church Slavonic language. It is use/disuse of a complicated system of past tenses of verbs, the dual number, principles in the use of participle forms, formation of imperative, causal, conditional and temporary relations and other features. An analysis of the graphic-orthographic and grammatical features of the manuscript concluded that the language of the monument is in the center of the Church Slavonic language of the reduced standard of the XVII century with the appearance of dialectal features inherent to the southern Russian dialects.

  6. The Ineffectiveness of the Provision of Input on the Problematic Grammatical Feature of Articles

    Science.gov (United States)

    Morgan, Gareth

    2017-01-01

    This study examined the value of giving specific input on the use of articles on an undergraduate English for Academic Purposes (EAP) course. This topic was chosen as previous cohorts had generated a noticeable amount of errors in their use of articles, and developing written grammatical accuracy was one of the course's aims. Participants were…

  7. Factors Affecting Grammatical and Lexical Complexity of Long-Term L2 Speakers' Oral Proficiency

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lahmann, Cornelia; Steinkrauss, Rasmus; Schmid, Monika S.

    2016-01-01

    There remains considerable disagreement about which factors drive second language (L2) ultimate attainment. Age of onset (AO) appears to be a robust factor, lending support to theories of maturational constraints on L2 acquisition. The present study is an investigation of factors that influence grammatical and lexical complexity at the stage of L2…

  8. Agreement of NP and VP Coordination in English and Korean

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hong, Sung-Ryong; Na, Won-Shik

    2011-01-01

    There have been long argumentations about this topic and people are still having difficulty in explaining precisely what the agreement values the mother NP phrase should have from two conjunct daughters which have different AGR (Agreement) values. Especially, this could be more complicated when the values of gender, number, and person of each…

  9. Investigating the Grammatical and Pragmatic Origins of Wh-Questions in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders

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    Manya Jyotishi

    2017-03-01

    Full Text Available Compared to typically developing children, children with autism (ASD show delayed production of wh-questions. It is currently controversial the degree to which such deficits derive from social-pragmatic requirements and/or because these are complex grammatical structures. The current study employed the intermodal preferential looking (IPL paradigm, which reduces social-pragmatic demands. The IPL paradigm can help distinguish these proposals, as successful comprehension promotes the “pragmatics-origins” argument whereas comprehension difficulties would implicate a “grammatical-origins” argument. Additionally, we tested both the linguistic and social explanations by assessing the contributions of children's early grammatical knowledge (i.e., SVO word order and their social-pragmatic scores on the Vineland to their later wh-question comprehension. Fourteen children with ASD and 17 TD children, matched on language level, were visited in their homes at 4-month intervals. Comprehension of wh-questions and SVO word order were tested via IPL: the wh-question video showed a costumed horse and bird serving as agents or patients of familiar transitive actions. During the test trials, they were displayed side by side with directing audios (e.g., “What did the horse tickle?”, “What hugged the bird?”, “Where is the horse/bird?”. Children's eye movements were coded offline; the DV was their percent looking to the named item during test. To show comprehension, children should look longer at the named item during a where-question than during a subject-wh or object-wh question. Results indicated that TD children comprehended both subject and object wh-questions at 32 months of age. Comprehension of object-wh questions emerged chronologically later in children with ASD compared to their TD peers, but at similar levels of language. Moreover, performance on word order and social-pragmatic scores independently predicted both groups' later

  10. Contributions of Children's Linguistic and Working Memory Proficiencies to Their Judgments of Grammaticality

    Science.gov (United States)

    Noonan, Nicolette B.; Redmond, Sean M.; Archibald, Lisa M. D.

    2014-01-01

    Purpose: The authors explored the cognitive mechanisms involved in language processing by systematically examining the performance of children with deficits in the domains of working memory and language. Method: From a database of 370 school-age children who had completed a grammaticality judgment task, groups were identified with a co-occurring…

  11. Left cytoarchitectonic BA 44 processes syntactic gender violations in determiner phrases.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Heim, Stefan; van Ermingen, Muna; Huber, Walter; Amunts, Katrin

    2010-10-01

    Recent neuroimaging studies make contradictory predictions about the involvement of left Brodmann's area (BA) 44 in processing local syntactic violations in determiner phrases (DPs). Some studies suggest a role for BA 44 in detecting local syntactic violations, whereas others attribute this function to the left premotor cortex. Therefore, the present event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study investigated whether left-cytoarchitectonic BA 44 was activated when German DPs involving syntactic gender violations were compared with correct DPs (correct: 'der Baum'-the[masculine] tree[masculine]; violated: 'das Baum'--the[neuter] tree[masculine]). Grammaticality judgements were made for both visual and auditory DPs to be able to generalize the results across modalities. Grammaticality judgements involved, among others, left BA 44 and left BA 6 in the premotor cortex for visual and auditory stimuli. Most importantly, activation in left BA 44 was consistently higher for violated than for correct DPs. This finding was behaviourally corroborated by longer reaction times for violated versus correct DPs. Additional brain regions, showing the same effect, included left premotor cortex, supplementary motor area, right middle and superior frontal cortex, and left cerebellum. Based on earlier findings from the literature, the results indicate the involvement of left BA 44 in processing local syntactic violations when these include morphological features, whereas left premotor cortex seems crucial for the detection of local word category violations. © 2010 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

  12. Evolving Levels for Super Mario Bros Using Grammatical Evolution

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Shaker, Noor; Nicolau, Miguel; Yannakakis, Georgios N.

    2012-01-01

    This paper presents the use of design grammars to evolve playable 2D platform levels through grammatical evolution (GE). Representing levels using design grammars allows simple encoding of important level design constraints, and allows remarkably compact descriptions of large spaces of levels....... The expressive range of the GE-based level generator is analyzed and quantitatively compared to other feature-based and the original level generators by means of aesthetic and similarity based measures. The analysis reveals strengths and shortcomings of each generator and provides a general frame- work...... for comparing content generated by different generators. The approach presented can be used as an assistive tool by game designers to compare and analyze generators’ capabilities within the same game genre....

  13. High inter-observer agreement of observer-perceived pain assessment in the emergency department

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Hangaard, Martin Høhrmann; Malling, Brian; Mogensen, Christian Backer

    2018-01-01

    degree of inter-observer agreement. The aim of the present study was to assess the inter-observer agreement of perceived pain among emergency department nurses and to evaluate if it was influenced by predetermined factors like age and gender. Method: A project assistant randomly recruited two nurses, who...... of 0.05 and 95% limits of agreement of +/-1 category. Patient age, gender, localization of pain, examination room or presence of a significant other did not affect the inter-observer agreement. Conclusion: We found 70% agreement on pain category between the nurses and it is justified that nurse......Background: Triage is used to prioritize the patients in the emergency department. The majority of the triage systems include the patients' pain score to assess their level of acuity by using a combination of patient reported pain and observer-perceived pain; the latter therefore requires a certain...

  14. Multiple Regions of a Cortical Network Commonly Encode the Meaning of Words in Multiple Grammatical Positions of Read Sentences.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Anderson, Andrew James; Lalor, Edmund C; Lin, Feng; Binder, Jeffrey R; Fernandino, Leonardo; Humphries, Colin J; Conant, Lisa L; Raizada, Rajeev D S; Grimm, Scott; Wang, Xixi

    2018-05-16

    Deciphering how sentence meaning is represented in the brain remains a major challenge to science. Semantically related neural activity has recently been shown to arise concurrently in distributed brain regions as successive words in a sentence are read. However, what semantic content is represented by different regions, what is common across them, and how this relates to words in different grammatical positions of sentences is weakly understood. To address these questions, we apply a semantic model of word meaning to interpret brain activation patterns elicited in sentence reading. The model is based on human ratings of 65 sensory/motor/emotional and cognitive features of experience with words (and their referents). Through a process of mapping functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging activation back into model space we test: which brain regions semantically encode content words in different grammatical positions (e.g., subject/verb/object); and what semantic features are encoded by different regions. In left temporal, inferior parietal, and inferior/superior frontal regions we detect the semantic encoding of words in all grammatical positions tested and reveal multiple common components of semantic representation. This suggests that sentence comprehension involves a common core representation of multiple words' meaning being encoded in a network of regions distributed across the brain.

  15. The naming of gender-marked pronouns supports interactivity in models of lexical access

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Albert Costa

    2009-01-01

    Full Text Available When a speaker names an object using a gender-marked pronominal form, the referent word corresponding to the target object has to be selected in order to access the grammatical gender. By contrast, the phonological content of the referent word is not needed. In two picture-naming interference experiments we explored whether the lexical selection of a referent word is affected by its phonological properties. In Experiment 1, Spanish participants named pictures using a sentence with a noun or a pronoun while ignoring words semantically or phonologically related. The results showed a semantic interference effect and a Phonological Facilitation Effect (PFE in both type of utterances. In Experiment 2 the PFE was replicated with Italian participants in a different pronominal utterance. The PFE suggests that the lexical selection of the referent word is facilitated by the presentation of a distractor word phonologically related. These findings are consistent with the predictions of interactive models of lexical access.

  16. "Speaking Volumes": A Longitudinal Study of Lexical and Grammatical Growth between 17 and 42 Months

    Science.gov (United States)

    Labrell, Florence; van Geert, Paul; Declercq, Christelle; Baltazart, Véronique; Caillies, Stéphanie; Olivier, Marie; Le Sourn-Bissaoui, Sandrine

    2014-01-01

    Dynamic analyses of language growth tell us how vocabulary and grammar develop and how the two might be intertwined. Analyses of growth curves between 17 and 42 months, based on longitudinal data for 34 children, revealed interesting patterns of vocabulary and grammatical developments. They showed that these patterns were nonlinear, but with…

  17. Noun or Verb? Adult Readers' Sensitivity to Spelling Cues to Grammatical Category in Word Endings

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kemp, Nenagh; Nilsson, Jodi; Arciuli, Joanne

    2009-01-01

    The spelling of many disyllabic English word endings holds cues to their grammatical category, beyond obvious inflectional endings such as "-ing" for verbs. For example, some letter sequences are clearly associated with nouns (e.g., "-oon") and others with verbs (e.g., "-erge"). This study extended recent research by Arciuli and Cupples (2006),…

  18. PHONOLOGICAL AND GRAMMATICAL PERFORMANCE OF DISABLED STUDENTS IN SLB NEGERI UNGARAN

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Muhimatul Ifadah

    2017-04-01

    Full Text Available In Indonesia, disabled students are taught in particular schools. The research was aimed to give an overview of phonological and grammatical performance of those students and to find out how the teachers deliver English. English was not taught since primary school due to the competence of the teachers and some complexities of the students themselves, so English taught only for those with cognitive or learning disability and autism. The English teachers at the school did not have qualification in English because their major was not English; however, this gave impact on their teaching. In the process of teaching, the students were much asked to listen and imitate the teachers’ pronunciation, and they always used pictures as media. Unfortunately, words found in the material distributed in the classroom pronounced differently by the teacher and he seems do not realize with this weakness. Meanwhile, in grammatical performance they always use present progressive in the process of teaching. The students were much taught lexical or vocabulary to simplify the concept of English subject.Hence, the students were already sat on the senior high level, and the material were the same with the elementary. Meanwhile, the students made many unappropriate pronunciation because the teacher inconsistently pronouncing the words or sentences. It is suggested that teachers should have adequate skill in English to help those students in English class, because in a classroom setting, communication means a lot of things, and it is represented by the sufficient competence in English skills.

  19. Gender and Number Agreement in the Oral Production of Arabic Heritage Speakers

    Science.gov (United States)

    Albirini, Abdulkafi; Benmamoun, Elabbas; Chakrani, Brahim

    2013-01-01

    Heritage language acquisition has been characterized by various asymmetries, including the differential acquisition rates of various linguistic areas and the unbalanced acquisition of different categories within a single area. This paper examines Arabic heritage speakers' knowledge of subject-verb agreement versus noun-adjective agreement with the…

  20. Visual Input Enhancement via Essay Coding Results in Deaf Learners' Long-Term Retention of Improved English Grammatical Knowledge

    Science.gov (United States)

    Berent, Gerald P.; Kelly, Ronald R.; Schmitz, Kathryn L.; Kenney, Patricia

    2009-01-01

    This study explored the efficacy of visual input enhancement, specifically "essay enhancement", for facilitating deaf college students' improvement in English grammatical knowledge. Results documented students' significant improvement immediately after a 10-week instructional intervention, a replication of recent research. Additionally, the…

  1. Alternative tense and agreement morpheme measures for assessing grammatical deficits during the preschool period.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gladfelter, Allison; Leonard, Laurence B

    2013-04-01

    P. A. Hadley and H. Short (2005) developed a set of measures designed to assess the emerging diversity and productivity of tense and agreement (T/A) morpheme use by 2-year-olds. The authors extended 2 of these measures to the preschool years to evaluate their utility in distinguishing children with specific language impairment (SLI) from their typically developing (TD) peers. Spontaneous speech samples from 55 children (25 with SLI, 30 TD) at 2 different age levels (4;0-4;6 [years;months] and 5;0-5;6) were analyzed, using a traditional T/A morphology composite that assessed accuracy, and the Hadley and Short measures of Tense Marker Total (assessing diversity of T/A morpheme use) and Productivity Score (assessing productivity of major T/A categories). All 3 measures showed acceptable levels of sensitivity and specificity. In addition, similar differences in levels of productivity across T/A categories were seen in the TD and SLI groups. The Tense Marker Total and Productivity Score measures seem to have considerable utility for preschool-age children, in that they provide information about specific T/A morphemes and major T/A categories that are not distinguished using the traditional composite measure. The findings are discussed within the framework of the gradual morphosyntactic learning account.

  2. A purple giraffe is faster than a purple elephant: Inconsistent phonology affects determiner selection in English

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Spalek, K.; Bock, K.; Schriefers, H.J.

    2010-01-01

    The form of a determiner is dependent on different contextual factors: in some languages grammatical number and grammatical gender determine the choice of a determiner variant. In other languages, the phonological onset of the element immediately following the determiner affects selection, too.

  3. On the Flexibility of Grammatical Advance Planning During Sentence Production: Effects of Cognitive Load on Multiple Lexical Access

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Wagner, V.; Jescheniak, J.D.; Schriefers, H.J.

    2010-01-01

    Three picture-word interference experiments addressed the question of whether the scope of grammatical advance planning in sentence production corresponds to some fixed unit or rather is flexible. Subjects produced sentences of different formats under varying amounts of cognitive load. When speakers

  4. Trade, Gender and Equity in Latin America : Knowledge for Political ...

    International Development Research Centre (IDRC) Digital Library (Canada)

    This project will analyze the complex trade liberalization-gender equity nexus, focusing ... Interface of research on gender and trade with the negotiations of trade agreements ... IDRC invites applications for the IDRC Doctoral Research Awards.

  5. Gender equality in couples and self-rated health - A survey study evaluating measurements of gender equality and its impact on health.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sörlin, Ann; Lindholm, Lars; Ng, Nawi; Ohman, Ann

    2011-08-26

    Men and women have different patterns of health. These differences between the sexes present a challenge to the field of public health. The question why women experience more health problems than men despite their longevity has been discussed extensively, with both social and biological theories being offered as plausible explanations. In this article, we focus on how gender equality in a partnership might be associated with the respondents' perceptions of health. This study was a cross-sectional survey with 1400 respondents. We measured gender equality using two different measures: 1) a self-reported gender equality index, and 2) a self-perceived gender equality question. The aim of comparison of the self-reported gender equality index with the self-perceived gender equality question was to reveal possible disagreements between the normative discourse on gender equality and daily practice in couple relationships. We then evaluated the association with health, measured as self-rated health (SRH). With SRH dichotomized into 'good' and 'poor', logistic regression was used to assess factors associated with the outcome. For the comparison between the self-reported gender equality index and self-perceived gender equality, kappa statistics were used. Associations between gender equality and health found in this study vary with the type of gender equality measurement. Overall, we found little agreement between the self-reported gender equality index and self-perceived gender equality. Further, the patterns of agreement between self-perceived and self-reported gender equality were quite different for men and women: men perceived greater gender equality than they reported in the index, while women perceived less gender equality than they reported. The associations to health were depending on gender equality measurement used. Men and women perceive and report gender equality differently. This means that it is necessary not only to be conscious of the methods and measurements

  6. Children's Production of Subject-Verb Agreement in Hebrew When Gender and Context Are Ambiguous

    Science.gov (United States)

    Karniol, Rachel; Artzi, Sigal; Ludmer, Maya

    2016-01-01

    Third and 5th grade Hebrew-speaking children performed two sentence completion tasks, one requiring the assignment of male, female, or gender-ambiguous names and the inflection of verbs for male-stereotyped, female-stereotyped, and gender-neutral activities, and the other task, of inflecting verbs for male- and female-stereotyped activities…

  7. Adaptive CGFs Based on Grammatical Evolution

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Jian Yao

    2015-01-01

    Full Text Available Computer generated forces (CGFs play blue or red units in military simulations for personnel training and weapon systems evaluation. Traditionally, CGFs are controlled through rule-based scripts, despite the doctrine-driven behavior of CGFs being rigid and predictable. Furthermore, CGFs are often tricked by trainees or fail to adapt to new situations (e.g., changes in battle field or update in weapon systems, and, in most cases, the subject matter experts (SMEs review and redesign a large amount of CGF scripts for new scenarios or training tasks, which is both challenging and time-consuming. In an effort to overcome these limitations and move toward more true-to-life scenarios, a study using grammatical evolution (GE to generate adaptive CGFs for air combat simulations has been conducted. Expert knowledge is encoded with modular behavior trees (BTs for compatibility with the operators in genetic algorithm (GA. GE maps CGFs, represented with BTs to binary strings, and uses GA to evolve CGFs with performance feedback from the simulation. Beyond-visual-range air combat experiments between adaptive CGFs and nonadaptive baseline CGFs have been conducted to observe and study this evolutionary process. The experimental results show that the GE is an efficient framework to generate CGFs in BTs formalism and evolve CGFs via GA.

  8. Progressive Treatment and Self-Assessment: Effects on Students' Automatisation of Grammatical Spelling and Self-Efficacy Beliefs

    Science.gov (United States)

    Van Reybroeck, Marie; Penneman, Jessica; Vidick, Charline; Galand, Benoît

    2017-01-01

    The production of grammatical markers takes a long time to master. Even when students know the rules, they do not systematically apply them. However, few studies have demonstrated the efficacy of interventions to improve this competence, and no study has addressed the issue at the cognitive and motivational levels jointly. Our study demonstrates…

  9. On the Flexibility of Grammatical Advance Planning during Sentence Production: Effects of Cognitive Load on Multiple Lexical Access

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wagner, Valentin; Jescheniak, Jorg D.; Schriefers, Herbert

    2010-01-01

    Three picture-word interference experiments addressed the question of whether the scope of grammatical advance planning in sentence production corresponds to some fixed unit or rather is flexible. Subjects produced sentences of different formats under varying amounts of cognitive load. When speakers described 2-object displays with simple…

  10. Children's grammatical categories of verb and noun: a comparative look at children with specific language impairment (SLI) and normal language (NL).

    Science.gov (United States)

    Skipp, Amy; Windfuhr, Kirsten L; Conti-Ramsden, Gina

    2002-01-01

    The study investigated the development of grammatical categories (noun and verb) in young language learners. Twenty-eight children with specific language impairment (SLI) with a mean language age of 35 months and 28 children with normal language (NL) with a mean language age of 34 months were exposed to four novel verbs and four novel nouns during 10 experimental child-directed play sessions. The lexical items were modelled with four experimentally controlled argument structures. Both groups of children showed little productivity with syntactic marking of arguments in the novel verb conditions. Thus, both groups of children mostly followed the surface structure of the model presented to them, regardless of the argument they were trying to express. Therefore, there was little evidence of verb-general processes. In contrast, both groups used nouns in semantic roles that had not been modelled for them. Importantly, however, children with SLI still appeared to be more input dependent than NL children. This suggests that children with NL were working with a robust noun schema, whereas children with SLI were not. Taken together, the findings suggest that neither group of children had a grammatical category of verb, but demonstrated a general knowledge of the grammatical category of noun. These findings are discussed in relation to current theories of normal and impaired language development.

  11. Parent-teacher agreement on children's problems in 21 societies

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Rescorla, Leslie A; Bochicchio, Lauren; Achenbach, Thomas M

    2014-01-01

    Parent-teacher cross-informant agreement, although usually modest, may provide important clinical information. Using data for 27,962 children from 21 societies, we asked the following: (a) Do parents report more problems than teachers, and does this vary by society, age, gender, or type of proble...

  12. Friendship and gender in preschoolers’ conflicts

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Tania M. Sperb

    2007-06-01

    Full Text Available Investigated the role of friendship and gender on conflict episodes of 48 preschoolers aged approximately 5 years and 8 months. Children were organized in dyads of same-sex friends and non-friends. Conflict situations were coded according to incidence, type, termination strategies, and finalizations. Gender differences were detected for type of conflict, with girls using more reasons for oppositions than boys. Termination strategies were used with a joint effect of friendship and gender: girl-friends preferred the tactic of standing firm whereas boy-friends chose more negotiation as means to deal with a disagreement, compared to the non-friend dyads. As for the results on conflict finalizations, friendship relations accounted for a significant difference found for agreement, while gender showed to be related to the use of disengagement among girls. Combined analysis between termination strategies and conflict finalizations indicated two significant differences: the first was related to friendship, through which children used more negotiation leading to agreement; the second showed a joint effect of friendship and gender, where non-friend girls tended to negotiate to reach disengagement, more often that non-friend boys. Findings for termination strategies – with girl-friends being more incisive and firm with their partners – diverge from the results provided by empirical literature, where boys are described as more autonomy- and domain oriented, and girls are prone to intimacy and social well-being in their relationships. Results are discussed with basis on previous studies conducted on conflict among preschoolers with considerations about the effects of gender and type of relationship.

  13. Aspectual asymmetries in the mental representation of events: Role of lexical and grammatical aspect.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Yap, Foong Ha; Chu, Patrick Chun Kau; Yiu, Emily Sze Man; Wong, Stella Fay; Kwan, Stella Wing Man; Matthews, Stephen; Tan, Li Hai; Li, Ping; Shirai, Yasuhiro

    2009-07-01

    Temporal information is important in the construction of situation models, and many languages make use of perfective and imperfective aspect markers to distinguish between completed situations (e.g., He made a cake) and ongoing situations (e.g., He is making a cake). Previous studies in which the effect of grammatical aspect has been examined have shown that perfective sentences are often processed more quickly than imperfective ones (e.g., Chan, Yap, Shirai, & Matthews, 2004; Madden & Zwaan, 2003; Yap et al., 2004; Yap et al., 2006). However, these studies used only accomplishment verbs (i.e., verbs with an inherent endpoint, such as bake a cake). The present study on the processing of Cantonese includes activity verbs (i.e., durative verbs with no inherent endpoint, such as play the piano), and the results indicate a strong interaction between lexical aspect (i.e., verb type) and grammatical aspect. That is, perfective sentences were processed more quickly with accomplishment verbs, consistent with previous findings, but imperfective sentences were processed more quickly with activity verbs. We suggest that these different aspectual asymmetries emerge as a result of the inherent associations between accomplishment verbs and the bounded features of perfective aspect and between activity verbs and the unbounded features of imperfective aspect. The sentence stimuli from this study may be downloaded from mc.psychonomic-journals.org/content/supplemental.

  14. Grammatical morphology is not a sensitive marker of language impairment in Icelandic in children aged 4-14 years.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Thordardottir, Elin

    2016-01-01

    Grammatical morphology continues to be widely regarded as an area of extraordinary difficulty in children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI). A main argument for this view is the purported high diagnostic accuracy of morphological errors for the identification of SLI. However, findings are inconsistent across age groups and across languages. Studies show morphological difficulty to be far less pronounced in more highly inflected languages and the diagnostic accuracy of morphology in such languages is largely unknown. This study examines the morphological use of Icelandic children with and without SLI in a cross-sectional sample of children ranging from preschool age to adolescence and assesses the usefulness of morphology as a clinical marker to identify SLI. Participants were 57 monolingual Icelandic-speaking children age 4-14 years; 31 with SLI and 26 with typical language development (TD). Spontaneous language samples were coded for correct and incorrect use of grammatical morphology. The diversity of use of grammatical morphemes was documented for each group at different age and MLU levels. Individual accuracy scores were plotted against age as well as MLU and diagnostic accuracy was calculated. MLU and morphological accuracy increased with age for both children with SLI and TD, with the two groups gradually approaching each other. Morphological diversity and sequence of acquisition was similar across TD and SLI groups compared based on age or MLU. Morphological accuracy was overall high, but was somewhat lower in the SLI group, in particular at ages below 12 years and MLU levels below 6.0. However, overlap between the groups was important in all age groups, involving a greater tendency for errors in both groups at young ages and scores close to or at ceiling at older ages. Sensitivity rates as well as likelihood ratios for each morpheme were all below the range considered acceptable for clinical application, whereas better specificity rates in some age

  15. Poetics of Disintegration in Laure’s “Poems before the summer of 1936”

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Barbara Ann Brown

    2011-01-01

    Full Text Available This article examines issues of grammatical gender and symbol in the poetry of Colette Laure Lucienne Peignot. I have focused on the poetics of disintegration in the section entitled "Poems before the summer of 1936," in which we encounter a number of poems written in free verse that reflect different aspects of Laure's notion of the poetic sacred. The poetic sacred, for Laure, relates to the moment when the eternal part of a human being becomes actualized via the engagement of fulfilling a goal while simultaneously being aware of the "weight of death." For Laure, if a person cannot or can no longer experience this emotion, then the person's life is deprived of meaning, deprived of the sacred. Many of the poems in "Poems before the summer of 1936" recount journeys that the speaker, or statement subject "I," embarks upon. Great attention is paid to the grammatical gender of the statement subjects in these poems, although, at times, grammatical gender can be difficult to determine. Sometimes grammatical gender can be discerned in the past tense forms of verbs in the French language, and other times it can be determined by Laure's use of masculine or feminine rhymes in her work. But often, Laure conceals the gender of her statement subjects, choosing instead to focus on represent a rejection of traditional gender roles in her poetry. Ultimately, this article seeks to posit Laure among France's best known writers and thinkers in the early part of the twentieth century, to help close the huge gap in the canon left by the absence of women writers and thinkers between the years 1880-1930.

  16. A Purple Giraffe Is Faster than a Purple Elephant: Inconsistent Phonology Affects Determiner Selection in English

    Science.gov (United States)

    Spalek, Katharina; Bock, Kathryn; Schriefers, Herbert

    2010-01-01

    The form of a determiner is dependent on different contextual factors: in some languages grammatical number and grammatical gender determine the choice of a determiner variant. In other languages, the phonological onset of the element immediately following the determiner affects selection, too. Previous work has shown that the activation of…

  17. Second language processing : when are first and second languages processed similarly?

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Sabourin, Laura; Stowe, Laurie A.

    In this article we investigate the effects of first language (L1) on second language (L2) neural processing for two grammatical constructions (verbal domain dependency and grammatical gender), focusing on the event-related potential P600 effect, which has been found in both L1 and L2 processing.

  18. Understanding Gender and Domestic Violence from a Sample of Married Women in Urban Thailand

    Science.gov (United States)

    Xu, Xiaohe; Kerley, Kent R.; Sirisunyaluck, Bangon

    2011-01-01

    There is a widespread agreement among gender and family violence investigators that gender and socioeconomic inequalities play key roles in domestic violence against women (DVAW). By integrating the concepts of gender traditionalism and decision-making power into a variety of resource-based theories, this study develops a gender perspective to…

  19. Patterns of third person plural verbal agreement

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Silvia Rodrigues Vieira

    2013-12-01

    Full Text Available This paper aims to provide a Labovian sociolinguistic description of 3rd person plural patterns of agreement in European (EP, Brazilian (BP and São Tomé (STP Portuguese based on very recent samples of speech stratified for age, sex/gender and education. Linguistic and social restrictions for the variation are investigated. Results from statistical analysis indicate that there are two patterns of agreement in Portuguese: a semi-categorical rule, typical of EP, and a variable rule, typical of BP and STP, restricted by specific linguistic and social factors. Additionally, the results indicate that general linguistic constraints – such as the position of the subject, semantic feature of the subject or even discursive parallelism – cannot say anything about historical origin of Portuguese varieties, since they can be concerned with any language. Therefore, besides the quantitative expression of non-agreement, the quality of the occurrences of non-plural marking may support the characterization of each variety.

  20. Does EFL Readers' Lexical and Grammatical Knowledge Predict Their Reading Ability? Insights from a Perceptron Artificial Neural Network Study

    Science.gov (United States)

    Aryadoust, Vahid; Baghaei, Purya

    2016-01-01

    This study aims to examine the relationship between reading comprehension and lexical and grammatical knowledge among English as a foreign language students by using an Artificial Neural Network (ANN). There were 825 test takers administered both a second-language reading test and a set of psychometrically validated grammar and vocabulary tests.…

  1. Dependency-dependent interference: NPI interference, agreement attraction, and global pragmatic inferences

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Ming eXiang

    2013-10-01

    Full Text Available Previous psycholinguistics studies have shown that when forming a long distance dependency in online processing, the parser sometimes accepts a sentence even though the required grammatical constraints are only partially met. A mechanistic account of how such errors arise sheds light on both the underlying linguistic representations involved and the processing mechanisms that put such representations together. In the current study, we contrast the NPI (negative polarity items interference effect, as shown by the acceptance of an ungrammatical sentence like The bills that democratic senators have voted for will ever become law, with the well-known phenomenon of agreement attraction (The key to the cabinets are…. On the surface, these two types of errors look alike and thereby can be explained as being driven by the same source: similarity based memory interference. However, we argue that the linguistic representations involved in NPI licensing are substantially different from those of subject-verb agreement, and therefore the interference effects in each domain potentially arise from distinct sources. In particular, we show that NPI interference at least partially arises from pragmatic inferences. In a self-paced reading study with an acceptability judgment task, we showed NPI interference was modulated by participants’ general pragmatic communicative skills, as quantified by the Autism-Spectrum Quotient (Baron-Cohen 2001, especially in offline tasks. Participants with more autistic traits were actually less prone to the NPI interference effect than those with fewer autistic traits. This result contrasted with agreement attraction conditions, which were not influenced by individual pragmatic skill differences. We also show that different NPI licensors have distinct interference profiles. We discuss two kinds of interference effects for NPI licensing: memory-retrieval based and pragmatically triggered.

  2. Grammatical replacements in translation of German advertising texts of utomotive subject including participial constructions with attributive meaning

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Артур Нарманович Мамедов

    2013-12-01

    Full Text Available Informative capacity of participial construction of source and target languages contributes to a more complex and multi aspect image of an expensive car. Dangling participles and attributive clauses placed after the determined word are being used in translation of extended adjectives with participles I and II. These grammatical transformations connected with reconstruction of semantic structure remain logically rational argumentation of an advertising text of the source language.

  3. Language identification of information blocks based on lexico-grammatic markers

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Sergey N. Kalegin

    2017-12-01

    Full Text Available This article is a continuation of the author's series of publications on the subjects of language identification of texts. In the article is being considered the creation of a technological basis for language identification systems of unstructured information blocks based on lexico-grammatical markers, in which are used the forms of verbs, verbal formations or functionally analogous constructions, are described method and algorithm for its software implementation. These developments will significantly reduce the resource intensity and improve the quality of such systems, which will give a significant economic effect and the possibility of creating fundamentally new technologies for determining the linguistic affiliation of information in a multilingual environment. Consequently, the study is of interest for computer linguists and developers of automatic word processing systems, such as: global monitoring systems, multilingual knowledge bases, automatic translation systems, information retrieval systems, document summarizing systems, literature catalogers, etc.

  4. Does Grammatical Structure Accelerate Number Word Learning? Evidence from Learners of Dual and Non-Dual Dialects of Slovenian.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Franc Marušič

    Full Text Available How does linguistic structure affect children's acquisition of early number word meanings? Previous studies have tested this question by comparing how children learning languages with different grammatical representations of number learn the meanings of labels for small numbers, like 1, 2, and 3. For example, children who acquire a language with singular-plural marking, like English, are faster to learn the word for 1 than children learning a language that lacks the singular-plural distinction, perhaps because the word for 1 is always used in singular contexts, highlighting its meaning. These studies are problematic, however, because reported differences in number word learning may be due to unmeasured cross-cultural differences rather than specific linguistic differences. To address this problem, we investigated number word learning in four groups of children from a single culture who spoke different dialects of the same language that differed chiefly with respect to how they grammatically mark number. We found that learning a dialect which features "dual" morphology (marking of pairs accelerated children's acquisition of the number word two relative to learning a "non-dual" dialect of the same language.

  5. Does Grammatical Structure Accelerate Number Word Learning? Evidence from Learners of Dual and Non-Dual Dialects of Slovenian

    Science.gov (United States)

    Plesničar, Vesna; Razboršek, Tina; Sullivan, Jessica; Barner, David

    2016-01-01

    How does linguistic structure affect children’s acquisition of early number word meanings? Previous studies have tested this question by comparing how children learning languages with different grammatical representations of number learn the meanings of labels for small numbers, like 1, 2, and 3. For example, children who acquire a language with singular-plural marking, like English, are faster to learn the word for 1 than children learning a language that lacks the singular-plural distinction, perhaps because the word for 1 is always used in singular contexts, highlighting its meaning. These studies are problematic, however, because reported differences in number word learning may be due to unmeasured cross-cultural differences rather than specific linguistic differences. To address this problem, we investigated number word learning in four groups of children from a single culture who spoke different dialects of the same language that differed chiefly with respect to how they grammatically mark number. We found that learning a dialect which features “dual” morphology (marking of pairs) accelerated children’s acquisition of the number word two relative to learning a “non-dual” dialect of the same language. PMID:27486802

  6. Comparative Study of the Passive Verb in Arabic and Persian Languages from the Perspective of Grammatical and Semantic

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Mansooreh Zarkoob

    2012-11-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Verb is one the important categories and main elements of sentence which is sometimes divided in similar types in Arabic and Persian. One of the main types of verb existed in both languages is passive verb. Although this appellation is apparently common in both languages, it seems passive verbs are completely equivalent in both languages but since passive verb in the Persian language has been discussed from different aspects compared with Arabic, in this article we are looking for some answers to these questions that if we can find other structures apart from passive structure which are accounted as passive in their meanings? Which kind of relationship is there between grammatical and semantic structures of passive verb in both languages? What are grammatical and semantic differences and similarities of passive verb in Persian and Arabic languages? The results of this survey decreased translation errors of students. We also state this example as a result of this research that, not only there is an auxiliary verb in both languages is investigated as a passive-maker but also, there are some planar verbs in both languages and also voice changes are occurred in addition to inflection changes.

  7. Age of Acquisition and Sensitivity to Gender in Spanish Word Recognition

    Science.gov (United States)

    Foote, Rebecca

    2014-01-01

    Speakers of gender-agreement languages use gender-marked elements of the noun phrase in spoken-word recognition: A congruent marking on a determiner or adjective facilitates the recognition of a subsequent noun, while an incongruent marking inhibits its recognition. However, while monolinguals and early language learners evidence this…

  8. Beyond gender stereotypes in language comprehension: self sex-role descriptions affect the brain's potentials associated with agreement processing

    OpenAIRE

    Paolo eCanal; Paolo eCanal; Alan eGarnham; Jane eOakhill

    2015-01-01

    We recorded Event-Related Potentials to investigate differences in the use of gender information during the processing of reflexive pronouns. Pronouns either matched the gender provided by role nouns (such as king or engineer) or did not. We compared two types of gender information, definitional information, which is semantic in nature (a mother is female), or stereotypical (a nurse is likely to be female). When they followed definitional role-nouns, gender-mismatching pronouns elicited a P60...

  9. Gender-Biased Expectations of Altruism in Adolescents

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Mauricio Salgado

    2018-04-01

    Full Text Available Research suggests that women, but not men, manifest gender-biased expectations of altruism: while women expect other women to be more altruistic, men expect women to be as generous as men. Do adolescents expect women and men to behave differently regarding altruism? I analyse adolescents' gender beliefs about altruism using a modified Dictator Game. Results indicate that adolescents believe that others of same gender are more altruistic than others of the opposite gender. I also found that adolescents' agreement with the existence of different societal roles for men and women moderates the relationship between gender and gender beliefs. Although it was expected that adolescents who agree with different gender roles would expect women to be more generous, surprisingly, the results presented here confirm this only for male adolescents, but in the opposite direction: the more male adolescents agree with the existence of different gender roles, the more they seem to believe that men are more generous than women. Meanwhile, female adolescents believe that women are more altruistic unconditionally. Thus, the previously documented bias seems to be already in place during adolescence, above and beyond other confounding factors. Adolescents' in-group bias, and their socialization into different cultural values regarding gender roles are discussed as potential explanatory mechanisms for these gender beliefs.

  10. Real-time parallel processing of grammatical structure in the fronto-striatal system: a recurrent network simulation study using reservoir computing.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hinaut, Xavier; Dominey, Peter Ford

    2013-01-01

    Sentence processing takes place in real-time. Previous words in the sentence can influence the processing of the current word in the timescale of hundreds of milliseconds. Recent neurophysiological studies in humans suggest that the fronto-striatal system (frontal cortex, and striatum--the major input locus of the basal ganglia) plays a crucial role in this process. The current research provides a possible explanation of how certain aspects of this real-time processing can occur, based on the dynamics of recurrent cortical networks, and plasticity in the cortico-striatal system. We simulate prefrontal area BA47 as a recurrent network that receives on-line input about word categories during sentence processing, with plastic connections between cortex and striatum. We exploit the homology between the cortico-striatal system and reservoir computing, where recurrent frontal cortical networks are the reservoir, and plastic cortico-striatal synapses are the readout. The system is trained on sentence-meaning pairs, where meaning is coded as activation in the striatum corresponding to the roles that different nouns and verbs play in the sentences. The model learns an extended set of grammatical constructions, and demonstrates the ability to generalize to novel constructions. It demonstrates how early in the sentence, a parallel set of predictions are made concerning the meaning, which are then confirmed or updated as the processing of the input sentence proceeds. It demonstrates how on-line responses to words are influenced by previous words in the sentence, and by previous sentences in the discourse, providing new insight into the neurophysiology of the P600 ERP scalp response to grammatical complexity. This demonstrates that a recurrent neural network can decode grammatical structure from sentences in real-time in order to generate a predictive representation of the meaning of the sentences. This can provide insight into the underlying mechanisms of human cortico

  11. DEVELOPMENT OF FOREIGN LANGUAGE STYLISTIC COMPETENCE OF FUTURE PHILOLOGISTS: GRAMMATICAL ASPECT

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Олена Вовк

    2015-05-01

    Full Text Available The article studies a grammatical aspect of developing stylistic competence of students of linguistic departments. Particularly, the stylistic competence which is defined as a capacity to create adequate utterances under natural conditions of communication according to a concrete situation is characterized. To highlight the importance of acquiring stylistic competence the levels of speech development of an individual are indentified and the stages of teaching grammar are differentiated. The approaches to teaching stylistic grammar are characterized within a communicative framework and relevant skills are elucidated. The role of functional styles in teaching a foreign language is clarified. The idea of teaching students to be able to make register shifts and mixture of speech registers in the process of foreign language competence acquiring are highlihgted. The theoretical principles are illustrated with the appropriate examples of exercises.

  12. A Grammatical Approach to the Modeling of an Autonomous Robot

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Gabriel López-García

    2012-06-01

    Full Text Available Virtual Worlds Generator is a grammatical model that is proposed to define virtual worlds. It integrates the diversity of sensors and interaction devices, multimodality and a virtual simulation system. Its grammar allows the definition and abstraction in symbols strings of the scenes of the virtual world, independently of the hardware that is used to represent the world or to interact with it. A case study is presented to explain how to use the proposed model to formalize a robot navigation system with multimodal perception and a hybrid control scheme of the robot. The result is an instance of the model grammar that implements the robotic system and is independent of the sensing devices used for perception and interaction. As a conclusion the Virtual Worlds Generator adds value in the simulation of virtual worlds since the definition can be done formally and independently of the peculiarities of the supporting devices

  13. Grammatical and pragmatic properties of the DP in children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) and in children with High Functioning Autism (HFA)

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Creemers, A.; Schaeffer, J.C.; Köhnlein, B.; Audring, J.

    2015-01-01

    This study investigates whether grammar and pragmatics are separate linguistic components or not, and whether children with SLI and children with HFA have overlapping or distinct linguistic profiles. We examine two DP-related phenomena: the mass-count distinction (grammatical) and the choice for a

  14. Phonological and acoustic bases for earliest grammatical category assignment: a cross-linguistic perspective.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Shi, R; Morgan, J L; Allopenna, P

    1998-02-01

    Maternal infant-directed speech in Mandarin Chinese and Turkish (two mother-child dyads each; ages of children between 0;11 and 1;8) was examined to see if cues exist in input that might assist infants' assignment of words to lexical and functional item categories. Distributional, phonological, and acoustic measures were analysed. In each language, lexical and functional items (i.e. syllabic morphemes) differed significantly on numerous measures. Despite differences in mean values between categories, distributions of values typically displayed substantial overlap. However, simulations with self-organizing neural networks supported the conclusion that although individual dimensions had low cue validity, in each language multidimensional constellations of presyntactic cues are sufficient to guide assignment of words to rudimentary grammatical categories.

  15. California State U. Campuses Struggle to Comply with Gender-Equity Goals.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Selingo, Jeffrey

    1997-01-01

    Almost three years after the California State University System settled a sex-discrimination lawsuit by acceding to the strictest gender-equity standards in college sports, only 2 of the 19 institutions sponsoring athletic programs have met the agreement's terms. Some feel the agreement, based on proportionality of participation and funding for…

  16. Gender Discrimination in Educational Personnel: A Case Study of Gweru Urban District Secondary Schools, Zimbabwe

    Science.gov (United States)

    Matope, Nogget

    2012-01-01

    Gender discrimination in educational institutions persists, despite the vigorous pursuit of policies and programmes to reduce the varying degrees of gender inequity in Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe is a signatory to international agreements and conventions which promote gender equity with a thrust towards increased access to education for girls and females.…

  17. Preventing Gender-based Violence in Senegal | IDRC - International ...

    International Development Research Centre (IDRC) Digital Library (Canada)

    ... agreements that protect women from violence and has the laws, strategies, and ... and giving them an opportunity to increase their skills in the areas of gender ... conference of McGill's Institute for the Study of International Development.

  18. Gender Equality in Education : Experiences of Nepal to Achieve EFA Goal 5

    OpenAIRE

    菅野, 琴

    2008-01-01

    The Dakar Education for All (EFA) Framework for Action includes Gender Equality in Education as one of its six time-bound goals. "Gender" being regarded as its transverse theme, the Dakar EFA agreement pays special attention to girls and women in other EFA goals as well. The first time-bound goal of gender parity in primary and secondary education by 2005 was, however, not met by many developing countries, including Nepal. Why they missed the 2005 goal? What are the obstacles for gender parit...

  19. The modality-specific organization of grammatical categories: evidence from impaired spoken and written sentence production.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Rapp, B; Caramazza, A

    1997-02-01

    We describe the case of a brain-damaged individual whose speech is characterized by difficulty with practically all words except for elements of the closed class vocabulary. In contrast, his written sentence production exhibits a complementary impairment involving the omission of closed class vocabulary items and the relative sparing of nouns. On the basis of these differences we argue: (1) that grammatical categories constitute an organizing parameter of representation and/or processing for each of the independent, modality-specific lexicons, and (2) that these observations contribute to the growing evidence that access to the orthographic and phonological forms of words can occur independently.

  20. Beyond Gender Stereotypes in Language Comprehension: Self Sex-Role Descriptions Affect the Brain’s Potentials Associated with Agreement Processing

    OpenAIRE

    Canal, Paolo; Garnham, Alan; Oakhill, Jane

    2015-01-01

    We recorded Event-Related Potentials to investigate differences in the use of gender information during the processing of reflexive pronouns. Pronouns either matched the gender provided by role nouns (such as “king” or “engineer”) or did not. We compared two types of gender information, definitional information, which is semantic in nature (a mother is female), or stereotypical (a nurse is likely to be female). When they followed definitional role-nouns, gender-mismatching pronouns elicited a...

  1. Comprehension of verb number morphemes in Czech children: Singular and plural show different relations to age and vocabulary

    Czech Academy of Sciences Publication Activity Database

    Smolík, Filip; Bláhová, Veronika

    2017-01-01

    Roč. 37, č. 1 (2017), s. 42-57 ISSN 0142-7237 R&D Projects: GA ČR GA13-26779S Institutional support: RVO:68081740 Keywords : comprehension * grammatical agreement * grammatical number * morphology * picture-pointing task * picture-pointing task Subject RIV: AN - Psychology OBOR OECD: Psychology (including human - machine relations) Impact factor: 1.196, year: 2016

  2. Further Evidence in Support of the Universal Nilpotent Grammatical Computational Paradigm of Quantum Physics

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Marcer, Peter J.; Rowlands, Peter

    2010-01-01

    Further evidence is presented in favour of the computational paradigm, conceived and constructed by Rowlands and Diaz, as detailed in Rowlands' book Zero to Infinity (2007), and in particular the authors' paper 'The Grammatical Universe: the Laws of Thermodynamics and Quantum Entanglement'. The paradigm, which has isomorphic group and algebraic quantum mechanical language interpretations, not only predicts the well-established facts of quantum physics, the periodic table, chemistry / valence and of molecular biology, whose understanding it extends; it also provides an elegant, simple solution to the unresolved quantum measurement problem. In this fundamental paradigm, all the computational constructs / predictions that emerge, follow from the simple fact, that, as in quantum mechanics, the wave function is defined only up to an arbitrary fixed phase. This fixed phase provides a simple physical understanding of the quantum vacuum in quantum field theory, where only relative phases, known to be able to encode 3+1 relativistic space-time geometries, can be measured. It is the arbitrary fixed measurement standard, against which everything that follows is to be measured, even though the standard itself cannot be, since nothing exists against which to measure it. The standard, as an arbitrary fixed reference phase, functions as the holographic basis for a self-organized universal quantum process of emergent novel fermion states of matter where, following each emergence, the arbitrary standard is re-fixed anew so as to provide a complete history / holographic record or hologram of the current fixed past, advancing an unending irreversible evolution, such as is the evidence of our senses. The fermion states, in accord with the Pauli exclusion principle, each correspond to a unique nilpotent symbol in the infinite alphabet (which specifies the grammar in this nilpotent universal computational rewrite system (NUCRS) paradigm); and the alphabet, as Hill and Rowlands

  3. The Loss of Grammatical Gender and Case Features Between Old and Early Middle English: Its Impact on Simple Demonstratives and Topic Shift

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Jurczyk Rafał

    2017-12-01

    Full Text Available In this paper we examine the relation between the loss of formal gender and Case features on simple demonstratives and the topic shifting property they manifest. The examination period spans between Old English and Early Middle English. While we argue that this loss has important discourse-pragmatic and derivational effects on demonstratives, we also employ the Strong Minimalist Hypothesis approach (Chomsky 2001 and feature valuation, as defined in Pesetsky & Torrego (2007, to display how their syntactic computation and pragmatic properties have come about. To account for the above innovations yielding the Early Middle English ϸe (‘the’, we first discuss the formal properties of the Old English demonstratives which distinguish number, gender, and Case features. This inflectional variety of forms allows the Old English demonstratives to be used independently and to show the anaphoric and discourse-linking properties of topics. Crucially, the same properties characterise also German and Dutch demonstratives that manifest Case and/or gender morphology overtly, which shows that the syntactic distribution of LIs and their morphological richness should be considered as intertwined. The above properties are then confronted with the determiner system in Early Middle English, whose forms undergo inflectional levelling producing the invariant ϸe/ðe form that loses its distributional independence and acquires the article status. The levelling process in question is argued to stimulate the shift of the [+ref/spec] feature from the formal to the semantic pole. This suggests that the Early Middle English ϸe form no longer counts as an appropriate anaphor in topic shift contexts owing to its indeterminacy of Case, gender, and φ-features, which means that it cannot satisfy the Full Interpretation requirement at the interfaces.

  4. Concord, Convergence and Accommodation in Bilingual Children

    Science.gov (United States)

    Radford, Andrew; Kupisch, Tanja; Koppe, Regina; Azzaro, Gabriele

    2007-01-01

    This paper examines the syntax of "GENDER CONCORD" in mixed utterances where bilingual children switch between a modifier in one language and a noun in another. Particular attention is paid to how children deal with potential gender mismatches between modifier and noun, i.e., if one of the languages has grammatical gender but the other does not,…

  5. Does parent-child agreement vary based on presenting problems? Results from a UK clinical sample.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cleridou, Kalia; Patalay, Praveetha; Martin, Peter

    2017-01-01

    Discrepancies are often found between child and parent reports of child psychopathology, nevertheless the role of the child's presenting difficulties in relation to these is underexplored. This study investigates whether parent-child agreement on the conduct and emotional scales of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) varied as a result of certain child characteristics, including the child's presenting problems to clinical services, age and gender. The UK-based sample consisted of 16,754 clinical records of children aged 11-17, the majority of which were female (57%) and White (76%). The dataset was provided by the Child Outcomes Research Consortium , which collects outcome measures from child services across the UK. Clinicians reported the child's presenting difficulties, and parents and children completed the SDQ. Using correlation analysis, the main findings indicated that agreement varied as a result of the child's difficulties for reports of conduct problems, and this seemed to be related to the presence or absence of externalising difficulties in the child's presentation. This was not the case for reports of emotional difficulties. In addition, agreement was higher when reporting problems not consistent with the child's presentation; for instance, agreement on conduct problems was greater for children presenting with internalising problems. Lastly, the children's age and gender did not seem to have an impact on agreement. These findings demonstrate that certain child presenting difficulties, and in particular conduct problems, may be related to informant agreement and need to be considered in clinical practice and research. Trial Registration This study was observational and as such did not require trial registration.

  6. Number Meaning and Number Grammar in English and Spanish

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bock, Kathryn; Carreiras, Manuel; Meseguer, Enrique

    2012-01-01

    Grammatical agreement makes different demands on speakers of different languages. Being widespread in the languages of the world, the features of agreement systems offer valuable tests of how language affects deep-seated domains of human cognition and categorization. Number agreement is one such domain, with intriguing evidence that typological…

  7. Agreements

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    2001-01-01

    These columns summarize the different bilateral and multilateral agreements concluded recently between the different OECD countries and concerning the nuclear energy domain: Argentina - Australia: Agreement concerning Co-operation in the Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Energy (2001). Argentina - Brazil: Joint Declaration regarding the Creation of the Argentinean-Brazilian Agency for Nuclear Energy Applications (2001). Australia - Czech Republic / Australia - Hungary: Agreements on Co-operation in Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Energy and the Transfer of Nuclear Material (2001). Australia - Indonesia: Arrangement Concerning Co-operation on Nuclear Safeguards and Related Matters (2001). Austria - Switzerland: Agreement on the Early Exchange of Information in the Field of Nuclear Safety and Radiation. Brazil - United States: Extension of the Agreement concerning Research and Development in Nuclear Material Control, Accountancy, Verification, Physical Protection, and Advanced Containment and Surveillance Technologies for International Safeguards Applications (2001). Czech Republic - Republic of Korea: Agreement for Co-operation in the Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Energy (2001). European Union- Russian Federation: Agreements on Nuclear Safety and Controlled Nuclear Fusion (2001). France - United States: Agreement for Co-operation in Advanced Nuclear Reactor Science and Technology (2001). Japan - United Kingdom: Co-operation Agreement on Advanced Nuclear Fuel Cycle, Fast Breeder Reactor and Other Related Technologies (2001). Republic OF Korea - United States: Annex IV Joint Project on Cintichem Technology (2000). Morocco - United States: Protocol amending the Co-operation Agreement on the Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Energy (2001). Multilateral Agreements: Agreement for Information Exchange on Radiological Surveillance in Northern Europe (2001). Status of Conventions in the Field of Nuclear Energy. (author)

  8. Parent-Child Diagnostic Agreement on Anxiety Symptoms with a Structured Diagnostic Interview for Mental Disorders in Children.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Popp, Lukka; Neuschwander, Murielle; Mannstadt, Sandra; In-Albon, Tina; Schneider, Silvia

    2017-01-01

    Objective: In clinical structured diagnostic interviews, diagnoses based on parent and child reports have low to moderate agreement. The aims of the present study are (1) to examine diagnostic agreement on anxiety disorders between parents and children on the levels of current and lifetime diagnostic category and diagnoses focusing in particular on diagnostic criteria and (2) to identify parent- and child-related predictors for diagnostic agreement. Method: The sample consisted of 166 parent-child dyads interviewed with the Structured Diagnostic Interview for Mental Disorders in Children (Kinder-DIPS, Schneider et al., 2009). The children (51.8% girls) were between the ages of 7 and 18 years ( M = 10.94; SD = 2.22). Results: Overall, parent-child agreement on the diagnostic category of anxiety disorder ( k = 0.21; k = 0.22) and the specific anxiety diagnoses (base rate > 10%) of social phobia, specific phobia and separation anxiety disorder ( k = 0.24-0.52; k = 0.19-0.43) and corresponding diagnostic criteria ( k = 0.22-0.67; k = 0.24-0.41) were low to moderate with the highest agreement on separation anxiety disorder ( k > 0.43). Lower maternal depression, and higher social support reported by mother and father were associated with higher parent-child agreement. Maternal depression was indicated as the strongest predictor. Parental sense of competence, parental anxiety, the amount of parent-child interaction and the child's age and gender had no predictive value. Conclusions: Parent-child agreement can be expected to be higher on the level of anxiety criteria compared to specific anxiety diagnoses and diagnostic anxiety category. Psychological strains in the family-especially maternal depression and low social support-lower the parent-child agreement on anxiety symptoms. Child- and relation-related variables (age, gender, amount of time parent(s) and children interact) play no role in the prediction of low parent-child agreement.

  9. Applicability and agreement of different diagnostic criteria for sarcopenia estimation in the elderly.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Pagotto, Valéria; Silveira, Erika Aparecida

    2014-01-01

    The purpose of this study cross-sectional study comprising 132 community dwelling elderly (≥ 60 years) was to identify sarcopenia prevalence in the Brazilian elderly, utilizing different diagnostic criteria and analyze agreement between criteria. Sarcopenia was assessed by nine muscle mass diagnostic criteria, by two muscle strength criteria and also by the combination of criteria. Prevalence was analyzed for each method, along with differences by gender and age group through calculation of the prevalence ratio (PR) and confidence interval (CI) 95%. The Kappa coefficient was used to analyze the level of agreement between all criteria. Sarcopenia prevalence varied between 60.6% and 8.3% with the application of muscle mass criteria, and between 54.2% and 48.8% with the application of strength criteria. The combination muscle mass+strength resulted in a decrease of prevalence in all criteria, varying between 36.6% and 6.1%. There was an increase in prevalence according to age groups for all methods. Prevalence was higher for men according to three muscle mass criteria, and higher in women for strength criteria and by two combined mass+strength criteria. The best level of agreement was obtained for two methods that utilized dual energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA). The prevalence of sarcopenia differs by gender and age and definition criteria. The low agreement levels obtained between methods and the different prevalence values encountered indicate the necessities of an operational definition for the estimation of sarcopenia in different population. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

  10. Processing Biological Gender and Number Information during Chinese Pronoun Resolution: ERP Evidence for Functional Differentiation

    Science.gov (United States)

    Xu, Xiaodong; Jiang, Xiaoming; Zhou, Xiaolin

    2013-01-01

    There have been a number of behavioral and neural studies on the processing of syntactic gender and number agreement information, marked by different morpho-syntactic features during sentence comprehension. By using the event-related potential (ERP) technique, the present study investigated whether the processing of semantic gender information and…

  11. Gender differences in customer expectations and perceptions of corporate social responsibility

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Calabrese, Armando; Costa, Roberta; Rosati, Francesco

    2016-01-01

    The literature on business ethics, corporate social responsibility and sustainability includes many studies on gender differences, however the results are often contrasting. In particular, there has not yet been full agreement on the role and significance of gender differences in customer...... the statistical and the substantive significance of gender differences in customer expectations and perceptions of corporate responsibility, also examining the influence of age and education. The analysis is carried out on a remarkably large sample of 908 clients, pertaining to 12 of the largest Italian banks...... strategies in designing, planning, implementing and assessing sustainability initiatives....

  12. Annotated corpus and the empirical evaluation of probability estimates of grammatical forms

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Ševa Nada

    2003-01-01

    Full Text Available The aim of the present study is to demonstrate the usage of an annotated corpus in the field of experimental psycholinguistics. Specifically, we demonstrate how the manually annotated Corpus of Serbian Language (Kostić, Đ. 2001 can be used for probability estimates of grammatical forms, which allow the control of independent variables in psycholinguistic experiments. We address the issue of processing Serbian inflected forms within two subparadigms of feminine nouns. In regression analysis, almost all processing variability of inflected forms has been accounted for by the amount of information (i.e. bits carried by the presented forms. In spite of the fact that probability distributions of inflected forms for the two paradigms differ, it was shown that the best prediction of processing variability is obtained by the probabilities derived from the predominant subparadigm which encompasses about 80% of feminine nouns. The relevance of annotated corpora in experimental psycholinguistics is discussed more in detail .

  13. Cognitive categories and noun classification. Romance neuter: from [passivity] to [indifference

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Maria M. Manoliu

    2009-01-01

    Full Text Available The present contribution aims to reveal the ways in which the evolution of the grammatical category of gender from Latin to Romance reflects the dramatic changes undergone by its semantic domains. Arguments for the hypothesis that Latin gender oppositions were determined by the important role played by activeness (and not animacy in the interpretation of the state of affairs are brought into the picture in order to explain the subcategorization of nouns in both Latin and in Romance. The term activeness is to be understood as a reflection of the ‘capacity of referents for influencing human life in positive or negative ways’. The changes undergone by grammatical gender in Romance languages were triggered not only by a morpho-syntactic reorganization of case and number, but also by social and pragmatic factors that triggered a reorganization of cognitive categories and their linguistic encoding

  14. Gender Differences in Knee Joint Congruity Quantified from MRI

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Tummala, Sudhakar; Schiphof, Dieuwke; Byrjalsen, Inger

    2018-01-01

    was located and quantified using Euclidean distance transform. Furthermore, the CI was quantified over the contact area by assessing agreement of the first- and second-order general surface features. Then, the gender differences between CA and CI values were evaluated at different stages of radiographic OA...

  15. Le poids du mot genre dans les revendications de « l’écriture inclusive »

    OpenAIRE

    Selosse, Philippe

    2018-01-01

    For gender studies, concord with masculine gender refl ects sexism. This paper defi nes the signifi cation of the French word genre as a formal category, with a marking function in sentences, which has nothing to do with sex. Grammatical gender in language is arbitrary and artifi cial, as many historical examples can demonstrate, except among the prototypical group of animated and sexed beings. As the nomenclature of genders « masculin vs féminin » (masculine vs feminine gender) is the conseq...

  16. Towards the Lexicographic Description of the Grammatical Behaviour of Japanese Loanwords: A Case Study

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Toshinobu MOGI

    2012-10-01

    Full Text Available The present papers offers a case study of a Japanese loanword verb, with the aim of contributing to corpus-based research on Japanese loanwords and of providing a foundation for the compilation of a dictionary of grammatical patterns of loanwords for learners of Japanese as a foreign language. The case study presents an analysis of actual usage of loanword suru-verbs in the large-scale Balanced Corpus of Contemporary Written Japanese, which is followed by a detailed analysis of all examples of the polysemous verb katto-suru. It is thereby shown how corpora can help in describing loanwords by matching a word’s meaning with its patterns of usage, and how such a description can be useful to learners of Japanese as a foreign language.

  17. Parent-child agreement on the Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Functioning (BRIEF) in a community sample of adolescents.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Egan, Kaitlyn N; Cohen, L Adelyn; Limbers, Christine

    2018-03-06

    Despite its widespread use, a minimal amount is known regarding the agreement between parent and youth ratings of youth's executive functioning on the Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Functioning (BRIEF) in typically developing youth. The present study examined parent-child agreement on the BRIEF with a community sample of adolescents and their parents. Ninety-seven parent-child dyads (M age  = 13.91 years; SD = .52) completed the BRIEF self- and parent-report forms and a demographic questionnaire. Intraclass Correlation Coefficients (ICCs) and paired sample t-tests were used to evaluate agreement between self- and parent-reports on the BRIEF. Total sample ICCs indicated moderate to good parent-child agreement (0.46-0.68). Parents from the total sample reported significantly higher mean T-scores for their adolescents on Inhibit, Working Memory, Planning/Organization, Behavioral Regulation Index (BRI), Metacognition Index, and Global Executive Composite. Differences were found in regard to gender and race/ethnicity: ICCs were higher between parent-girl dyads on the scales that comprise the BRI than between parent-boy dyads. Parent-adolescent ICCs were also higher for adolescents who self-identified as White in comparison to those who identified as Non-White/Mixed Race on Emotional Control. These findings suggest gender and racial/ethnic differences should be considered when examining parent-child agreement on the BRIEF in typically developing adolescents.

  18. [A questionnaire study of the relationship between gender and chronic pain].

    Science.gov (United States)

    Teuber, N; Thiele, A; Eberhardt, B

    2006-08-01

    The aim of this study was to assess the relationship between gender role orientation and the prevalence of chronic pain. The individual gender role orientation in a sample of 45 chronic pain patients (ICD 10 diagnosis, F 45.4) was compared to gender role orientation in a matched, pain-free control group. Gender role orientation was assessed by questionnaires on the self-attribution of stereotypic gender traits (GEPAQ) and on the extent of agreement with traditional feminine and masculine role norms (MRNS, FRNS). Group differences were compared by multivariate analysis. In accordance with the hypothesis, results confirmed that pain patients showed stronger feminine and weaker masculine role orientations than healthy controls. Pain patients additionally ascribed to themselves more 'feminine' (e.g. worried, nervous) and less 'masculine' (e.g. aggressive, cynical) traits. Sociopsychological variables of gender role orientation were related to chronic pain in the groups observed. An integrated model consisting of psychodynamic, sociological, and sociopsychological factors is proposed.

  19. Collective agreements as a tool for achieving gender equality in the workplace. Case study: the chemical industry in Tarragona / Los convenios colectivos como herramienta para alcanzar la igualdad de género en el trabajo. Estudio de caso: la industria química en Tarragona

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Paloma Pontón Merino

    2014-10-01

    Full Text Available Gender equality and collective bargaining are the key elements of the analysis presented in this paper. Collective agreements and collective bargaining are some of the tools to achieve the goal of equality between women and men at work. The incorporation of equality issues in bargaining debate is something relatively new, which is crucial to reach real labor equality. In Spain, since 2007, the collective agreements that include clauses on equality have grown exponentially. Nevertheless, the incorporation of contents on equality between women and men in collective agreements is slow and limited. Changes in legislation and the contents incorporated in the agreements do not stop being functional measures for a system based on the sexual division of labor that is not sufficiently criticized. In this paper we analyze the existing collective agreements of the Asociación Empresarial Química de Tarragona, in south Catalonia, that demonstrate these affirmations.

  20. L'antisexisme linguistique dans les brochures libertaires : pratiques d'écriture et métadiscours

    OpenAIRE

    Abbou, Julie

    2011-01-01

    Transgressions of gender appear, in French language, in anarchist pamphlets, turning masculine and feminine upside down and leading the way to the emergence of a new generic class, beyond the generic masculine. The relationship between the general/particular opposition and gender shows that gender has grammatical, semantic and social features. However, it is also necessary to focus on the way gender is constructed in discourse, as a space where power is articulated. Acting on power relations ...

  1. 78 FR 35323 - Solicitation for a Cooperative Agreement-Gender-Informed Research (Women): Enhanced Approaches to...

    Science.gov (United States)

    2013-06-12

    ...--Gender-Informed Research (Women): Enhanced Approaches to Project Development AGENCY: National Institute... deliverables from this solicitation will be based on research and theory and are meant to provide a medium to...- Informed Research (Women): Enhanced Approaches to Project Development.'' The package must include: a cover...

  2. Degree of agreement among sepsis diagnosis criteria in adult emergency room patients with infection

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sinto, R.; Chandra, A. T.; Lie, K. C.; Suwarto, S.

    2018-03-01

    The study on the degree of agreement among three established sepsis diagnosis criteria become the necessity to investigate the best sepsis diagnosis criteria in Indonesia further. A cross-sectional study of adult Emergency Room patients hospitalized with a diagnosis of infection in CiptoMangunkusumo Hospital, Indonesia was conducted during March and April 2017. We recorded diagnosis, gender, age, comorbidities, infection source, and origin. Every subject was classified into sepsis and non-sepsis based on 1991, 2001 and sepsis-3 criteria. Raw % and Kappa agreement coefficients (κ) were calculated according to previously established formula to measure the degree of agreement among three diagnostic criteria. As many as 278 subjects were included in this study. The raw % agreement and κ between 1991 and 2001 criteria is 69.07% and 0.34 respectively. The raw % agreement and κ between 2001 and sepsis-3 criteria is 56.12% and 0.15 respectively. The raw % agreement and κ between 1991 and sepsis-3 criteria is 48.19% and -0.02. In conclusions, there is afair agreement between 1991 and 2001 criteria, poor agreement between 2001 and sepsis-3 criteria, and poor disagreement between 1991 and sepsis-3 criteria. This necessitates further Indonesian study of the best diagnosis criteria to diagnose an infected patient with sepsis.

  3. Topos

    Czech Academy of Sciences Publication Activity Database

    Kopecký, Jakub

    2011-01-01

    Roč. 94, č. 5 (2011), s. 264-267 ISSN 0027-8203 Institutional research plan: CEZ:AV0Z90610518 Keywords : meaning * grammatical gender * inflection * Czech National Corpus Subject RIV: AI - Linguistics

  4. Chodovo, Kouto, Choboto. K přechodu toponym od maskulina k neutru

    Czech Academy of Sciences Publication Activity Database

    Štěpán, Pavel

    2017-01-01

    Roč. 100, č. 3 (2017), s. 148-158 ISSN 0027-8203 Institutional support: RVO:68378092 Keywords : toponyms * morphology * parasystem * change of grammatical gender * dialects Subject RIV: AI - Linguistics OBOR OECD: Linguistics

  5. On the flexibility of grammatical advance planning during sentence production: Effects of cognitive load on multiple lexical access.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wagner, Valentin; Jescheniak, Jörg D; Schriefers, Herbert

    2010-03-01

    Three picture-word interference experiments addressed the question of whether the scope of grammatical advance planning in sentence production corresponds to some fixed unit or rather is flexible. Subjects produced sentences of different formats under varying amounts of cognitive load. When speakers described 2-object displays with simple sentences of the form "the frog is next to the mug," the 2 nouns were found to be lexically-semantically activated to similar degrees at speech onset, as indexed by similarly sized interference effects from semantic distractors related to either the first or the second noun. When speakers used more complex sentences (including prenominal color adjectives; e.g., "the blue frog is next to the blue mug") much larger interference effects were observed for the first than the second noun, suggesting that the second noun was lexically-semantically activated before speech onset on only a subset of trials. With increased cognitive load, introduced by an additional conceptual decision task and variable utterance formats, the interference effect for the first noun was increased and the interference effect for second noun disappeared, suggesting that the scope of advance planning had been narrowed. By contrast, if cognitive load was induced by a secondary working memory task to be performed during speech planning, the interference effect for both nouns was increased, suggesting that the scope of advance planning had not been affected. In all, the data suggest that the scope of advance planning during grammatical encoding in sentence production is flexible, rather than structurally fixed.

  6. Parent-Child Diagnostic Agreement on Anxiety Symptoms with a Structured Diagnostic Interview for Mental Disorders in Children

    Science.gov (United States)

    Popp, Lukka; Neuschwander, Murielle; Mannstadt, Sandra; In-Albon, Tina; Schneider, Silvia

    2017-01-01

    Objective: In clinical structured diagnostic interviews, diagnoses based on parent and child reports have low to moderate agreement. The aims of the present study are (1) to examine diagnostic agreement on anxiety disorders between parents and children on the levels of current and lifetime diagnostic category and diagnoses focusing in particular on diagnostic criteria and (2) to identify parent- and child-related predictors for diagnostic agreement. Method: The sample consisted of 166 parent-child dyads interviewed with the Structured Diagnostic Interview for Mental Disorders in Children (Kinder-DIPS, Schneider et al., 2009). The children (51.8% girls) were between the ages of 7 and 18 years (M = 10.94; SD = 2.22). Results: Overall, parent-child agreement on the diagnostic category of anxiety disorder (k = 0.21; k = 0.22) and the specific anxiety diagnoses (base rate > 10%) of social phobia, specific phobia and separation anxiety disorder (k = 0.24–0.52; k = 0.19–0.43) and corresponding diagnostic criteria (k = 0.22–0.67; k = 0.24–0.41) were low to moderate with the highest agreement on separation anxiety disorder (k > 0.43). Lower maternal depression, and higher social support reported by mother and father were associated with higher parent-child agreement. Maternal depression was indicated as the strongest predictor. Parental sense of competence, parental anxiety, the amount of parent-child interaction and the child's age and gender had no predictive value. Conclusions: Parent-child agreement can be expected to be higher on the level of anxiety criteria compared to specific anxiety diagnoses and diagnostic anxiety category. Psychological strains in the family—especially maternal depression and low social support—lower the parent-child agreement on anxiety symptoms. Child- and relation-related variables (age, gender, amount of time parent(s) and children interact) play no role in the prediction of low parent-child agreement. PMID:28396644

  7. How normal is grammatical development in the right hemisphere following hemispherectomy? The root infinitive stage and beyond.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Curtiss, Susan; de Bode, Stella

    2003-08-01

    We examined the morphosyntax of eight left hemispherectomized children at two different stages and compared it to MLU-matched normals. We found that the language of the hemispherectomies paralleled that of their MLU matches with respect to the specific morphosyntactic characteristics of each stage. Our findings provide strong evidence for the presence of functional categories in all early grammars and demonstrate that grammatical development, regardless of its neural substrate, is highly constrained by UG and follows a narrowly determined course. We discuss our findings within a neurobiological framework in which etiology defines the integrity of the remaining hemisphere, which in turn, determines its potential for linguistic reorganization and/or acquisition.

  8. Grammatical categories in the brain: the role of morphological structure.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Longe, O; Randall, B; Stamatakis, E A; Tyler, L K

    2007-08-01

    The current study addresses the controversial issue of how different grammatical categories are neurally processed. Several lesion-deficit studies suggest that distinct neural substrates underlie the representation of nouns and verbs, with verb deficits associated with damage to left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG) and noun deficits with damage to left temporal cortex. However, this view is not universally shared by neuropsychological and neuroimaging studies. We have suggested that these inconsistencies may reflect interactions between the morphological structure of nouns and verbs and the processing implications of this, rather than differences in their neural representations (Tyler et al. 2004). We tested this hypothesis using event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging, to scan subjects performing a valence judgment on unambiguous nouns and verbs, presented as stems ('snail, hear') and inflected forms ('snails, hears'). We predicted that activations for noun and verb stems would not differ, whereas inflected verbs would generate more activation in left frontotemporal areas than inflected nouns. Our findings supported this hypothesis, with greater activation of this network for inflected verbs compared with inflected nouns. These results support the claim that form class is not a first-order organizing principle underlying the representation of words but rather interacts with the processes that operate over lexical representations.

  9. Substitution as a Device of Grammatical Cohesion in English Contexts

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Mohammad Reza Hasannejad

    2012-05-01

    Full Text Available The present study set out to investigate the effect of teaching substitution as a kind of grammatical cohesion on the true identification of confusing substitution elements with cohesive or non-cohesive roles in different contexts and also the production of modal, reporting and conditional contexts through clausal substitution acquaintance. To this end, the following procedures were taken. First 120 male and female EFL students were selected from Iranshahr Azad University. Having administered the language proficiency test, researchers selected 80 students as intermediate subjects according to their TOEFL band scores. First, pretests of cohesion identification (substitution and production of modal, reporting and conditional environments were administered to both control and experimental groups. Then, the experimental group was exposed to the teaching of the above-said above-mentioned cohesive device. Finally, post-tests of substitution elements’ identification and modal, reporting and conditional contexts’ production through clausal substitution familiarity were administered. The results showed that cohesive device treatment helped students on the true identification of substitution elements. Another finding proved that EFL students might have no difficulty in learning certain rules or classification of rules and application of their clausal substitution knowledge in creating modal, reporting and conditional contexts. Our findings can have implications for the field of language learning and teaching.

  10. Infants can use distributional cues to form syntactic categories.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gerken, LouAnn; Wilson, Rachel; Lewis, William

    2005-05-01

    Nearly all theories of language development emphasize the importance of distributional cues for segregating words and phrases into syntactic categories like noun, feminine or verb phrase. However, questions concerning whether such cues can be used to the exclusion of referential cues have been debated. Using the headturn preference procedure, American children aged 1;5 were briefly familiarized with a partial Russian gender paradigm, with a subset of the paradigm members withheld. During test, infants listened on alternate trials to previously withheld grammatical items and ungrammatical items with incorrect gender markings on previously heard stems. Across three experiments, infants discriminated new grammatical from ungrammatical items, but like adults in previous studies, were only able to do so when a subset of familiarization items was double marked for gender category. The results suggest that learners can use distributional cues to category structure, to the exclusion of referential cues, from relatively early in the language learning process.

  11. Therapy-Induced Neuroplasticity of Language in Chronic Post Stroke Aphasia: A Mismatch Negativity Study of (A)Grammatical and Meaningful/less Mini-Constructions

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lucchese, Guglielmo; Pulvermüller, Friedemann; Stahl, Benjamin; Dreyer, Felix R.; Mohr, Bettina

    2017-01-01

    Clinical language performance and neurophysiological correlates of language processing were measured before and after intensive language therapy in patients with chronic (time post stroke >1 year) post stroke aphasia (PSA). As event-related potential (ERP) measure, the mismatch negativity (MMN) was recorded in a distracted oddball paradigm to short spoken sentences. Critical ‘deviant’ sentence stimuli where either well-formed and meaningful, or syntactically, or lexico-semantically incorrect. After 4 weeks of speech-language therapy (SLT) delivered with high intensity (10.5 h per week), clinical language assessment with the Aachen Aphasia Test battery demonstrated significant linguistic improvements, which were accompanied by enhanced MMN responses. More specifically, MMN amplitudes to grammatically correct and meaningful mini-constructions and to ‘jabberwocky’ sentences containing a pseudoword significantly increased after therapy. However, no therapy-related changes in MMN responses to syntactically incorrect strings including agreement violations were observed. While MMN increases to well-formed meaningful strings can be explained both at the word and construction levels, the neuroplastic change seen for ‘jabberwocky’ sentences suggests an explanation in terms of constructions. The results confirm previous reports that intensive SLT leads to improvements of linguistic skills in chronic aphasia patients and now demonstrate that this clinical improvement is associated with enhanced automatic brain indexes of construction processing, although no comparable change is present for ungrammatical strings. Furthermore, the data confirm that the language-induced MMN is a useful tool to map functional language recovery in PSA. PMID:28111545

  12. The interaction of grammatical aspect and temporal distance in motion descriptions

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Sarah eAnderson

    2013-07-01

    Full Text Available Grammatical aspect is known to shape event understanding. However, little is known about how it interacts with other important temporal information, such as recent and distant past. The current work uses computer-mouse tracking (Spivey, Grosjean, & Knoblich, 2005 to explore the interaction of aspect and temporal context. Participants in our experiment listened to past motion event descriptions that varied according to aspect (simple past, past progressive and temporal distance (recent past, distant past while viewing scenes with paths and implied destinations. Participants used a computer mouse to place characters into the scene to match event descriptions. Our results indicated that aspect and temporal context interact in interesting ways. When aspect placed emphasis on the ongoing details of the event and the temporal context was recent (thus, making fine details available in memory, this match between conditions elicited smoother and faster computer mouse movements than when conditions mismatched. Likewise, when aspect placed emphasis on the less-detailed end state of the event and temporal context was in the distant past (thus making fine details less available, this match between conditions also elicited smoother and faster computer mouse movements.

  13. Osseous changes and condyle position in TMJ tomograms: impact of RDC/TMD clinical diagnoses on agreement between expected and actual findings.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wiese, Mie; Wenzel, Ann; Hintze, Hanne; Petersson, Arne; Knutsson, Kerstin; Bakke, Merete; List, Thomas; Svensson, Peter

    2008-08-01

    The objective of this study was to evaluate the impact of clinical TMJ diagnosis, gender, and age on the agreement between expected and actual radiographic findings. A total of 204 patients with TMJ symptoms were examined using the Research Diagnostic Criteria (RDC/TMD). Expected radiographic findings were recorded. TMJ tomograms in closed and open mouth position were assessed for osseous changes and condyle position. Expected and actual findings were compared. Logistic regression analyses were performed with agreement on radiographic findings as the dependent variable and with clinical RDC/TMD diagnoses, gender and age as the independent variables. The number of radiographic findings was mostly underestimated. A clinical diagnosis of osteoarthritis and age increased the chance of overestimating osseous changes. Disc displacement and age decreased the chance of agreement on certain condyle positions. Tomography often revealed unexpected findings. It was not possible to select particular patient groups who would benefit more or less from a radiographic examination.

  14. 76 FR 24069 - Self-Regulatory Organizations; NASDAQ OMX PHLX LLC; Order Approving Proposed Rule Change, as...

    Science.gov (United States)

    2011-04-29

    ... in the Exchange's LLC Agreement and By-Laws, including technical and grammatical changes to reflect... categories: ``Committees Composed Solely of Directors'' or ``Committees Not Composed Solely of Directors...

  15. Exploring rater agreement: configurations of agreement and disagreement

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    ALEXANDER VON EYE

    2006-03-01

    Full Text Available At the level of manifest categorical variables, a large number of coefficients and models for the examination of rater agreement has been proposed and used for descriptive and explanatory purposes. This article focuses on exploring rater agreement. Configural Frequency Analysis (CFA is proposed as a method of exploration of cross-classifications of raters’ judgements. CFA allows researchers to (1 examine individual cells and sets of cells in agreement tables; (2 examine cells that indicate disagreement; and (3 explore agreement and disagreement among three or more raters. Four CFA base models are discussed. The first is the model of rater agreement that is also used for Cohen’s (1960  (kappa. This model proposes independence of raters’ judgements. Deviations from this model suggest agreement or disagreement beyond chance. The second CFA model is based on a log-linear null model. This model is also used for Brennan and Prediger’s (1981 n. It proposes a uniform distribution of ratings. The third model is that of Tanner and Young (1985. This model proposes equal weights for agreement cases and independence otherwise. The fourth model is the quasi-independence model. This model allows one to blank out agreement cells and thus to focus solely on patterns of disagreement. Examples use data from applicant selection.

  16. Bilateral agreements

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    1998-01-01

    Ten bilateral agreements are presented. These are: 1) Co-operation agreement relating to the peaceful uses of nuclear energy between Argentina and EURATOM (1996); 2) Agreement on co-operation in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy between Argentina and Greece (1997); 3) Implementing arrangement for technical exchange and co-operation in the area of peaceful uses of nuclear energy between Argentina and the United States (1997); 4) Agreement concerning co-operation in nuclear science and technology between Australia and Indonesia (1997); 5) Implementation of the 1985 Agreement for co-operation concerning the peaceful uses of nuclear energy between the People's Republic of China and the United States (1998); 6) Protocol of co-operation between France and Lithuania (1997); 7) Agreement on co-operation in energy research, science and technology, and development between Germany and the United States (1998); 8) Agreement on early notification of a nuclear accident and exchange of information on nuclear facilities between Greece and Romania (1997); 9) Agreement on early notification of nuclear accidents and co-operation in the field of nuclear safety between Hungary and the Ukraine (1997); 10) Agreement in the field of radioactive waste management between Switzerland and the United States (1997). (K.A.)

  17. The Influence of a Policy Document in the Practice of Intersectorial Collaboration in Danish Health Care

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Andersen, Anne Bendix; Beedholm, Kirsten; Kolbæk, Raymond

    . The linguistic analysis of grammatical features present in the document enabled us to demonstrate how the authors of Health Agreements apply governing technologies to control the delivery of intersectorial health care in Denmark. Furthermore, the findings showed how this policy document, through its use......Background Policy documents are powerful actors in health care, and they play a significant role because they produce certain discursive and non-discursive conditions for intersectorial collaboration. Central documents in Denmark are the Health Agreements. These policy documents set out...... assess a policy document. Method A critical discourse analysis based on a three-dimensional model. Findings Our analysis showed how wordings and grammatical features create and maintain certain perceptions or common-sense understandings of actors, responsibilities, and tasks in health care...

  18. Immediate sensitivity to structural constraints in pronoun resolution

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Wing Yee eChow

    2014-06-01

    Full Text Available Real-time interpretation of pronouns is sometimes sensitive to the presence of grammatically-illicit antecedents, and sometimes not. This occasional sensitivity has been taken as evidence that structural constraints do not immediately impact the initial antecedent retrieval for pronoun interpretation. We argue that it is important to separate effects that reflect the initial antecedent retrieval process from those that reflect later processes. We present results from five reading comprehension experiments. Both the current results and previous evidence support the hypothesis that agreement features and structural constraints immediately constrain the antecedent retrieval process for pronoun interpretation. Occasional sensitivity to grammatically-illicit antecedents may be due to repair processes triggered when the initial retrieval fails to return a grammatical antecedent.

  19. Impact de la littérature dans l’apprentissage grammatical en français langue seconde? À l’écoute des commentaires des étudiants.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Laura Ambrosio

    2009-12-01

    Full Text Available RésuméLes recherches semblent confirmer un lien important entre l'apprentissage d'une langue et l'exposition à la littérature dans cette langue en salle de classe, surtout en ce qui touche une subséquente amélioration de la compétence communicative des apprenants. La recherche présentée dans cet article s'inscrit dans un projet qui avait pour objectif de vérifier, auprès d'une population d'étudiants universitaires de niveau intermédiaire, s'il y avait amélioration de l'acquisition et de la compétence grammaticale par l'intégration d'extraits littéraires. Cette étude en apprentissage des langues secondes a été structurée dans l'optique d'une approche axée sur le contenu. Cet article présente les résultats des groupes de discussion et les commentaires exprimés par les étudiants face à l'intégration de textes littéraires ainsi que les liens qu'ils établissent entre l'utilisation de la littérature et leur perception de la compétence grammaticale.Mots-clefs : Français langue seconde - littérature - grammaireAbstractResearch seems to confirm an important link existing between the learning of a second language and the fact that a systematic introduction of excerpts of literature can facilitate language learning, particularly with grammatical components of the second language. This paper relates part of a research project aimed at verifying, with a population of university students of intermediate level in French as a second language if there was an improvement in the acquisition and grammatical competence through the use excerpts of literature. This study has been structured in the framework of the content-based approach. This article summarizes the results of group discussions and the comments of the students on the use of literary excerpts and their perception of grammatical competence.

  20. Role of language in socio – economic development: the semiotics ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    The Lord said if as one people, speaking the same language have begun to do ... When one does not know the language, it means these grammatical aspects are not ..... Therefore, tracking gender gaps and inequalities against each of the.

  1. Dilemmas in the Danish approach to gender equality : gender equality without gender quota

    OpenAIRE

    ROLANDSEN AGUSTÍN, Lise; SIIM, Birte

    2015-01-01

    The paper addresses the dilemmas, contradictions and paradoxes in the Danish approach to gender quotas and gender equality and discusses the intersections of citizenship, democracy and gender justice. Gender research understands gender quota as a means to achieve equal rights, gender equality and gender parity. Gender theory has conceptualized gender parity as one step towards achieving gender justice in all arenas of social, political and economic life. The Danish cases illustrate that conte...

  2. Developmental differences in beta and theta power during sentence processing

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Julie M. Schneider

    2016-06-01

    Full Text Available Although very young children process ongoing language quickly and effortlessly, research indicates that they continue to improve and mature in their language skills through adolescence. This prolonged development may be related to differing engagement of semantic and syntactic processes. This study used event related potentials and time frequency analysis of EEG to identify developmental differences in neural engagement as children (ages 10–12 and adults performed an auditory verb agreement grammaticality judgment task. Adults and children revealed very few differences in comprehending grammatically correct sentences. When identifying grammatical errors, however, adults displayed widely distributed beta and theta power decreases that were significantly less pronounced in children. Adults also demonstrated a significant P600 effect, while children exhibited an apparent N400 effect. Thus, when identifying subtle grammatical errors in real time, adults display greater neural activation that is traditionally associated with syntactic processing whereas children exhibit greater activity more commonly associated with semantic processing. These findings support previous claims that the cognitive and neural underpinnings of syntactic processing are still developing in adolescence, and add to them by more clearly identifying developmental changes in the neural oscillations underlying grammatical processing.

  3. The Effect of Study Abroad on Grammatical Accuracy of Indonesian Students’ Oral and Written Performance

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Kristian Adi Putra

    2014-01-01

    Full Text Available This  correlational  study investigates the  effect  of  study  abroad  of two  exchange  students (SA from  Indonesia  in  public  schools  in the United  States  on  their  grammatical  accuracy as  compared  to the oral and written performance of two first year college students through  formal  instruction (FI in  Indonesia  never  experiencing living  in  L2  environment.  Speech  samples  were  elicited  through interview via-Skype, while writing samples were obtained through writing task. The result of this study shows that in oral and written performance, SA participants used more accurate grammar than FI participants.  However,  SA  participants  were  more  accurate  in using  the  three  tenses  in  writing (90% than  in  speaking  (87%, while FI participants showed different result, i.e. their grammatical accuracy of speaking (78% was higher than that of writing (76%.Studi  korelasional  ini  meneliti  efek  studi  di  luar negeri  untuk dua siswa  Indonesia  program  pertukaran (SA di  sekolah  negeri Amerika Serikat  dalam  hal  ketepatan  gramatikal  yang dibandingkan dengan ketrampilan lesan dan tulis mahasiswa tahun pertama  melalui  instruksi  formal  (FI di  Indonesia  yang  belum pernah  tinggal  di  lingkungan  bahasa  kedua. Sampel  ketrampilan lesan dikumpulkan lewat wawancara via Skype, sedangkan sampel ketrampilan tulis  diperoleh  melalui  tugas  mengarang.  Hasil penelitian  ini  menunjukkan  bahwa dalam  ketrampilan lesan  dan tulis,  akurasi  gramatikal  peserta  SA  lebih  tinggi  daripada  peserta FI. Namun demikian, peserta SA lebih akurat dalam menggunakan tiga kala dalam mengarang (90% daripada penggunaan kala dalam berbicara  (87%,  sementara  peserta  FI menunjukkan  hasil  yang berbeda,  yaitu  akurasi  gramatikal  berbicara  (78%  lebih  tinggi daripada akurasi gramatikal mengarang (76%.

  4. Active Search for Antecedents in Cataphoric Pronoun Resolution

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Leticia ePablos

    2015-10-01

    Full Text Available Cataphoric dependencies where a pronoun precedes its antecedent appear to call on different mechanisms in language comprehension from forward dependencies where the antecedent precedes the pronoun. Previous research has shown that the resolution of cataphoric dependencies involves predictive processes such as the Active Search Mechanism, which hypothesizes the automatic search for an antecedent immediately after encountering a cataphoric pronoun. The current study employs gender mismatch to investigate whether the active search for an antecedent of a cataphoric pronoun is restricted only to grammatically licit positions. We present results from an event-related potential experiment on the reading comprehension of cataphoric dependencies in Dutch. Results show that gender mismatch gives rise to an anterior negativity at grammatically licit antecedent positions only. We hypothesize that this negativity reflects the prediction failure for an antecedent after encountering a pronoun, rather than a gender mismatch. We discuss the timing, topography and functionality of this negativity with respect to previous studies and how this relates to the ERPs elicited in the processing of structural constraints on pronoun resolution.

  5. Cladistic analysis of Bantu languages: a new tree based on combined lexical and grammatical data

    Science.gov (United States)

    Rexová, Kateřina; Bastin, Yvonne; Frynta, Daniel

    2006-04-01

    The phylogeny of the Bantu languages is reconstructed by application of the cladistic methodology to the combined lexical and grammatical data (87 languages, 144 characters). A maximum parsimony tree and Bayesian analysis supported some previously recognized clades, e.g., that of eastern and southern Bantu languages. Moreover, the results revealed that Bantu languages south and east of the equatorial forest are probably monophyletic. It suggests an unorthodox scenario of Bantu expansion including (after initial radiation in their homelands and neighboring territories) just a single passage through rainforest areas followed by a subsequent divergence into major clades. The likely localization of this divergence is in the area west of the Great Lakes. It conforms to the view that demographic expansion and dispersal throughout the dry-forests and savanna regions of subequatorial Africa was associated with the acquisition of new technologies (iron metallurgy and grain cultivation).

  6. Internal and external factors in child second language acquisition: introduction

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Unsworth, S.; Hulk, A.; Marinis, T.

    2011-01-01

    An introduction to the journal is presented in which the editor discusses various articles published within the issue including one on morphosyntactic development and vocabulary, one on acquisition of grammatical gender, and one on the importance of the low proficiency in immigrant families..

  7. From gender identity disorder to gender identity creativity: true gender self child therapy.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ehrensaft, Diane

    2012-01-01

    True gender self child therapy is based on the premise of gender as a web that weaves together nature, nurture, and culture and allows for a myriad of healthy gender outcomes. This article presents concepts of true gender self, false gender self, and gender creativity as they operationalize in clinical work with children who need therapeutic supports to establish an authentic gender self while developing strategies for negotiating an environment resistant to that self. Categories of gender nonconforming children are outlined and excerpts of a treatment of a young transgender child are presented to illustrate true gender self child therapy.

  8. Rethinking Modal Gender in the Context of the Universe of Tn-Types: Definitions and Mathematical Models for Tonicity and Phonicity

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Marcus Alessi Bittencourt

    2016-07-01

    Full Text Available An indisputable cornerstone of the Western music tradition, the dialectic opposition between the major and minor grammatical modal genders has always been present in the imagination of musicians and music theorists for centuries. Such dialectics of opposition is especially important in the context of nineteenth-century harmonic dualism, with its ideas of tonicity and phonicity. These concepts serve as the main foundation for the way harmonic dualism conceives the major and minor worlds: two worlds with equivalent rights and properties, but with opposed polarities. This paper presents a redefinition of the terms tonicity and phonicity, translating those concepts to the context of post-tonal music theory. The terminologies of generatrix, tonicity, root, phonicity, vertex, and azimuth are explained in this paper, followed by propositions of mathematical models for those concepts, which spring from Richard Parncutt’s root-salience model for pitch-class sets. In order to demonstrate the possibilities of using modal gender as a criterion for the study and classification of the universe of Tn-types, we will present a taxonomy of the 351 transpositional set types, which comprises the categories of tonic (major, phonic (minor and neutral (genderless. In addition, there will be a small discussion on the effect of set symmetries and set asymmetries on the tonic/phonic properties of a Tn-type.

  9. From grammatical number to exact numbers: early meanings of 'one', 'two', and 'three' in English, Russian, and Japanese.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sarnecka, Barbara W; Kamenskaya, Valentina G; Yamana, Yuko; Ogura, Tamiko; Yudovina, Yulia B

    2007-09-01

    This study examined whether singular/plural marking in a language helps children learn the meanings of the words 'one,' 'two,' and 'three.' First, CHILDES data in English, Russian (which marks singular/plural), and Japanese (which does not) were compared for frequency, variability, and contexts of number-word use. Then young children in the USA, Russia, and Japan were tested on Counting and Give-N tasks. More English and Russian learners knew the meaning of each number word than Japanese learners, regardless of whether singular/plural cues appeared in the task itself (e.g., "Give two apples" vs. "Give two"). These results suggest that the learning of "one," "two" and "three" is supported by the conceptual framework of grammatical number, rather than that of integers.

  10. Improving the Bin Packing Heuristic through Grammatical Evolution Based on Swarm Intelligence

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Marco Aurelio Sotelo-Figueroa

    2014-01-01

    Full Text Available In recent years Grammatical Evolution (GE has been used as a representation of Genetic Programming (GP which has been applied to many optimization problems such as symbolic regression, classification, Boolean functions, constructed problems, and algorithmic problems. GE can use a diversity of searching strategies including Swarm Intelligence (SI. Particle Swarm Optimisation (PSO is an algorithm of SI that has two main problems: premature convergence and poor diversity. Particle Evolutionary Swarm Optimization (PESO is a recent and novel algorithm which is also part of SI. PESO uses two perturbations to avoid PSO’s problems. In this paper we propose using PESO and PSO in the frame of GE as strategies to generate heuristics that solve the Bin Packing Problem (BPP; it is possible however to apply this methodology to other kinds of problems using another Grammar designed for that problem. A comparison between PESO, PSO, and BPP’s heuristics is performed through the nonparametric Friedman test. The main contribution of this paper is proposing a Grammar to generate online and offline heuristics depending on the test instance trying to improve the heuristics generated by other grammars and humans; it also proposes a way to implement different algorithms as search strategies in GE like PESO to obtain better results than those obtained by PSO.

  11. Are physicians and patients in agreement? Exploring dyadic concordance.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Coran, Justin J; Koropeckyj-Cox, Tanya; Arnold, Christa L

    2013-10-01

    Dyadic concordance in physician-patient interactions can be defined as the extent of agreement between physicians and patients in their perceptions of the clinical encounter. The current research specifically examined two types of concordance: informational concordance-the extent of agreement in physician and patient responses regarding patient information (education, self-rated health, pain); and interactional concordance-the extent of physician-patient agreement regarding the patient's level of confidence and trust in the physician and the perceived quality of explanations concerning diagnosis and treatment. Using a convenience sample of physicians and patients (N = 50 dyads), a paired survey method was tested, which measured and compared physician and patient reports to identify informational and interactional concordances. Factors potentially related to dyadic concordance were also measured, including demographic characteristics (patient race, gender, age, and education) and clinical factors (whether this was a first visit and physician specialty in family medicine or oncology). The paired survey showed informational discordances, as physicians tended to underestimate patients' pain and overestimate patient education. Interactional discordances included overestimating patients' understanding of diagnosis and treatment explanations and patients' level of confidence and trust. Discordances were linked to patient dissatisfaction with physician listening, having unanswered questions, and feeling the physician had not spent enough time. The paired survey method effectively identified physician-patient discordances that may interfere with effective medical practice; this method may be used in various settings to identify potential areas of improvement in health communication and education.

  12. Agreement and Anti-Agreement in Berber: A Multiple-Feature Inheritance Account

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Saleem Abdelhady

    2017-10-01

    Full Text Available This study proposes understanding Agreement and Anti-Agreement in Berber from Multi-Feature Inheritance (MFI account following Branigan’s (2016 recent approach. The study aims to bridge a misunderstanding in the literature where it has been assumed that Feature Inheritance (FI can only account for Agreement relations while Anti-agreement relations can only be established by a direct Agree between C as a probe and its goal. Under MFI, it can be argued that FI can account for all aspects of Agreement/Anti-agreement. The study, therefore, presents a unification of the three mechanisms proposed by Ouali (2008. The new approach is tested on data from Berber.

  13. SOSIALISASI BUDAYA ADIL GENDER OLEH ORGANISASI GENDER

    OpenAIRE

    Sumiarti, Sumiarti; Munfarida, Elya

    2015-01-01

    Abstract: equality and gender justice is a global issue. Along with the awareness of human rights, human beings begin to question and criticize the cultures already established that they perceive as unfair behavior constructor (bias) gender. From this point, then there are many organizations that provoke equality and gender justice. In this paper, the organization is called gender organizations. Gender organizations is a noble mission, to speak out gender equality and justice, but in practice...

  14. Delusions of Gender - Gender Benders

    OpenAIRE

    Uhlig, Louise; Zampetis, Marios Stylianos; Lochte, Frans; Ahmed, Samira M.; Karlsen, Luna Maria Stjerneby

    2014-01-01

    “Taking Cordelia Fine’s Delusions of Gender as it point of departure, together with popular gender theories by Simon Baron-Cohen and Louann Brizendine, we raise the following question: how strong is the foundation of biological determinism and how can we decide?” In this project the point of departure is taken in Cordelia Fine’s book Delusions of Gender. Fine brings forth several published scientific studies on gender differences, and she systematically debunks them one by one. This research ...

  15. Gender-Atypical Mental Illness as Male Gender Threat.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Michniewicz, Kenneth S; Bosson, Jennifer K; Lenes, Joshua G; Chen, Jason I

    2016-07-01

    The present study examined whether men view gender-atypical (i.e., feminine) psychological disorders as threats to their gender status. Men and women (N = 355) rated their expectations of gender status loss, feelings of distress, and help-seeking intentions in response to 10 different stereotypically masculine and feminine psychological disorders. Men as compared to women expected greater gender status loss for, and reported more distress to, gender-atypical versus gender-typical disorders. Expectations of gender status loss partially mediated the link between participant gender and distress at the thought of gender-atypical disorders. These findings suggest that feminine disorders pose more powerful gender status threats for men than masculine disorders do and that men's expectations of gender status loss for feminine disorders drive their negative reactions to these mental illnesses. The discussion emphasizes the importance of considering the gender-typicality of disorders, and the implications of these findings for clinical interventions. © The Author(s) 2015.

  16. Charles Darwin and the evolution of human grammatical systems.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Buckingham, Hugh W; Christman, Sarah S

    2010-04-08

    Charles Darwin's evolutionary theories of animal communication were deeply embedded in a centuries-old model of association psychology, whose prodromes have most often been traced to the writings of Aristotle. His notions of frequency of occurrence of pairings have been passed down through the centuries and were a major ontological feature in the formation of associative connectivity. He focused on the associations of cause and effect, contiguity of sequential occurrence, and similarity among items. Cause and effect were often reduced to another type of contiguity relation, so that Aristotle is most often evoked as the originator of the associative bondings through similarity and contiguity, contiguity being the most powerful and frequent means of association. Contiguity eventually became the overriding mechanism for serial ordering of mental events in both perception and action. The notions of concatenation throughout the association psychology took the form of "trains" of events, both sensory and motor, in such a way that serial ordering came to be viewed as an item-by-item string of locally contiguous events. Modern developments in the mathematics of serial ordering have advanced in sophistication since the early and middle twentieth century, and new computational methods have allowed us to reevaluate the serial concatenative theories of Darwin and the associationists. These new models of serial order permit a closer comparative scrutiny between human and nonhuman. The present study considers Darwin's insistence on a "degree" continuity between human and nonhuman animal serial ordering. We will consider a study of starling birdsongs and whether the serial ordering of those songs provides evidence that they have a syntax that at best differs only in degree and not in kind with the computations of human grammatical structures. We will argue that they, in fact, show no such thing.

  17. 12 CFR 533.5 - Related agreements considered a single agreement.

    Science.gov (United States)

    2010-01-01

    ... DISCLOSURE AND REPORTING OF CRA-RELATED AGREEMENTS § 533.5 Related agreements considered a single agreement... entered into within the same 12-month period; and (3) Are each in fulfillment of the CRA. (b... in fulfillment of the CRA, if the contracts were negotiated in a coordinated fashion and a NGEP is a...

  18. 12 CFR 35.5 - Related agreements considered a single agreement.

    Science.gov (United States)

    2010-01-01

    ... DISCLOSURE AND REPORTING OF CRA-RELATED AGREEMENTS § 35.5 Related agreements considered a single agreement... into within the same 12-month period; and (3) Are each in fulfillment of the CRA. (b) Substantively... the CRA, if the contracts were negotiated in a coordinated fashion and a NGEP is a party to each...

  19. The European Construction Social Partners: Gender Equality in Theory and Practice

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Pedersen, Elsebet Frydendal

    2005-01-01

    that play a role in women's integration. The responses indicate that the construction industry still displays inertia and conservatism, and that the social partners coroborate rather than counter this. They express a "discourse" of gender equality, but this does not automatically lead to equal opportunity......This article explores the social partners' role in a gender quality agenda in construction at skilled operative level. It draws on a survey of the European construction social partners that investigated the presence of women in skilled trades and the policies, collective agreements and practices...... policies or programmes. The social partners have a platform to make inroads and to change the industry from within, but need further encouragement to put this on their agenda....

  20. Theory of mind and emotion recognition skills in children with specific language impairment, autism spectrum disorder and typical development: group differences and connection to knowledge of grammatical morphology, word-finding abilities and verbal working memory.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Loukusa, Soile; Mäkinen, Leena; Kuusikko-Gauffin, Sanna; Ebeling, Hanna; Moilanen, Irma

    2014-01-01

    Social perception skills, such as understanding the mind and emotions of others, affect children's communication abilities in real-life situations. In addition to autism spectrum disorder (ASD), there is increasing knowledge that children with specific language impairment (SLI) also demonstrate difficulties in their social perception abilities. To compare the performance of children with SLI, ASD and typical development (TD) in social perception tasks measuring Theory of Mind (ToM) and emotion recognition. In addition, to evaluate the association between social perception tasks and language tests measuring word-finding abilities, knowledge of grammatical morphology and verbal working memory. Children with SLI (n = 18), ASD (n = 14) and TD (n = 25) completed two NEPSY-II subtests measuring social perception abilities: (1) Affect Recognition and (2) ToM (includes Verbal and non-verbal Contextual tasks). In addition, children's word-finding abilities were measured with the TWF-2, grammatical morphology by using the Grammatical Closure subtest of ITPA, and verbal working memory by using subtests of Sentence Repetition or Word List Interference (chosen according the child's age) of the NEPSY-II. Children with ASD scored significantly lower than children with SLI or TD on the NEPSY-II Affect Recognition subtest. Both SLI and ASD groups scored significantly lower than TD children on Verbal tasks of the ToM subtest of NEPSY-II. However, there were no significant group differences on non-verbal Contextual tasks of the ToM subtest of the NEPSY-II. Verbal tasks of the ToM subtest were correlated with the Grammatical Closure subtest and TWF-2 in children with SLI. In children with ASD correlation between TWF-2 and ToM: Verbal tasks was moderate, almost achieving statistical significance, but no other correlations were found. Both SLI and ASD groups showed difficulties in tasks measuring verbal ToM but differences were not found in tasks measuring non-verbal Contextual ToM. The

  1. Language Mixing in the Nominal Phrase: Implications of a Distributed Morphology Perspective

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Michèle Burkholder

    2018-04-01

    Full Text Available This paper investigates a pattern found in Spanish–English mixed language corpora whereby it is common to switch from a Spanish determiner to an English noun (e.g., la house, ‘the house’, but rare to switch from an English determiner to a Spanish noun (e.g., the casa, ‘the house’. Unlike previous theoretical accounts of this asymmetry, that which is proposed here follows assumptions of the Distributed Morphology (DM framework, specifically those regarding the relationship between grammatical gender and nominal declension class in Spanish. Crucially, and again in contrast to previous accounts, it is demonstrated that this approach predicts no such asymmetry for French–English. This hypothesis is tested experimentally using an acceptability judgment task with self-paced reading, and as expected, no evidence is found for an asymmetry. This experiment is also used to test predictions regarding how English nominal roots in mixed nominal phrases are assigned grammatical gender, and the impact of language background factors such as age of acquisition. Evidence is found that bilinguals attempt to assign analogical gender if possible, but that late sequential bilinguals have a stronger preference for this option than do simultaneous bilinguals.

  2. Flexibility of Gender Stereotypes: Italian Study on Comparative Gender-consistent and Gender-inconsistent Information

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Elisabetta Sagone

    2018-05-01

    Full Text Available The topic of this study is flexibility in gender stereotyping linked to attribution of toys, socio-cognitive traits, and occupations in 160 Italian children aged 6 to 12 years. We used the Gender Toys Choice, the Gender Traits Choice, and the Gender Jobs Choice, a selected set of colored cards containing masculine and feminine stimuli to assign to a male or female or both male and female silhouette (the flexible-choice technique. In order to verify the change of flexibility in gender stereotyping, we made use of four cartoon stories with male and female characters with typical or atypical traits and performing gender-consistent or gender-inconsistent activities. Results indicated that the exposure to cartoon stories with gender-inconsistent information rather than cartoon stories with gender-consistent information increased flexibility in gender stereotyping, showing age differences in favor of children aged 11-12. Implications in relation to the developmental-constructivist approach were noted.

  3. Gender Roles, Gender (Inequality and Fertility: An Empirical Test of Five Gender Equity Indices

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Melinda Mills

    2010-01-01

    Full Text Available The division of gender roles in the household and societal level gender (inequality have been situated as one of the most powerful factors underlying fertility behaviour. Despite continued theoretical attention to this issue by demographers, empirical research integrating gender roles and equity in relation to fertility remains surprisingly sparse. This paper first provides a brief review of previous research that has examined gender roles and fertility followed by a comparison of six prominent gender equality indices: Gender-related Development Index (GDI, Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM, Gender Gap Index (GGI, Gender Equality Index (GEI, the European Union Gender Equality Index (EU-GEI and the Social Institutions and Gender Index (SIGI. The paper then tests how five of these indices impact fertility intentions and behaviour using a series of multilevel (random-coefficient logistic regression models, applying the European Social Survey (2004/5. The GDI, with its emphasis on human development, adjusted for gender, has the strongest and significant effect on fertility intentions. The EU-GEI, which focuses on the universal caregiver model, uncovers that more equity significantly lowers fertility intentions, but only for women. The remaining indicators show no significant impact. The paper concludes with a reflection and suggestions for future research.

  4. Gender Biases and Linguistic Sexism in Political Communication: A Comparison of Press News About Men and Women Italian Ministers

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Gilda Sensales

    2017-12-01

    Full Text Available This research on press communication uses a synchronic perspective concerning eighteen ministers, balanced by gender, in the Renzi government (in 2014, as well as a diachronic perspective concerning women ministers from five governments (from 2006-2014. The governments in 2014 and of 2013 were predominantly center-left, with the participation of center and center-right parties, whereas the previous governments had technical-professional rather than political ministers (in 2011, center-right (in 2008, and center-left (in 2006 ministers. In the synchronic analysis we explored the different ways in which the ministers are named, the relative presence of sexist/non-sexist, agentive/non-agentive, and abstract/concrete language in which they were presented. The first analysis comprised 332 headlines and the second comprised 1,356 headlines; we conducted a numerical and lexicographical analysis on the headlines. The results showed: more coverage for men than for women; gender biases in naming ministers involving a greater number of citations of women with both first and last name, whereas there were a greater number of citations of men with their first name only; the prevalence of sexist language that uses the generic masculine rather than the specific feminine (that is, the grammatical feminization of a typically masculine form in representing women; an increment of the specific feminine in representing women in the last three governments over the previous two; no gender differences in the use of “I” and “We” as markers of agency; more quotations of direct discourse for women than for men; language slightly more abstract than concrete, for both men and women; more positive adjectives for women, and more negative adjectives for men. The results are discussed in relation to the international literature and to the Italian cultural-political context.

  5. Is the gap more than gender? A longitudinal analysis of gender, gender role orientation, and earnings.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Judge, Timothy A; Livingston, Beth A

    2008-09-01

    This study investigated the relationships among gender, gender role orientation (i.e., attitudes toward the gendered separation of roles at work and at home), and earnings. A multilevel model was conceptualized in which gender role orientation and earnings were within-individual variables that fluctuate over time (although predictors of between-individual differences in gender role orientation were also considered). Results indicated that whereas traditional gender role orientation was positively related to earnings, gender significantly predicted the slope of this relationship: Traditional gender role orientation was strongly positively associated with earnings for men; it was slightly negatively associated with earnings for women. Occupational segregation partly explained these gender differences. Overall, the results suggest that although gender role attitudes are becoming less traditional for men and for women, traditional gender role orientation continues to exacerbate the gender wage gap.

  6. 46 CFR 298.38 - Partnership agreements and limited liability company agreements.

    Science.gov (United States)

    2010-10-01

    ... 46 Shipping 8 2010-10-01 2010-10-01 false Partnership agreements and limited liability company... liability company agreements. Partnership and limited liability company agreements must be in form and...) Duration of the entity; (b) Adequate partnership or limited liability company funding requirements and...

  7. Technology Partnership Agreements | NREL

    Science.gov (United States)

    Partnership Agreements Technology Partnership Agreements Looking for Funding? We do not fund any projects under a technology partnership agreement. The partner provides the necessary resources and, in using technology partnership agreements. See a summary of our Fiscal Year 2017 technology partnership

  8. Gender preference and perinatal depression in Turkey: A cohort study.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Senturk Cankorur, Vesile; Duman, Berker; Taylor, Clare; Stewart, Robert

    2017-01-01

    Child gender preference is important in some cultures and has been found to modify risk for antenatal and postnatal depression. We investigated discrepancies in the child gender preference between participating women and other key family members and the extent to which these predicted perinatal depression. In a large cohort study of perinatal depression in urban and rural Turkey, participants had been asked about child gender preferences: their own, and those of their husband, parents, and parents in-law. Of 730 participants recruited in their third trimester (94.6% participation), 578 (79.2%) were reassessed at a mean (SD) 4.1 (3.3) months after childbirth, and 488 (66.8%) were reassessed at 13.7 (2.9) months. No associations were found between any gender preference reported in the antenatal period and depression at any examination. On the other hand, we found associations of antenatal depression with differences in participant-reported gender preference and that reported for their mother-in-law (OR 1.81, 1.08-3.04). This non-agreement also predicted depression at the 4 month (OR 2.24, 1.24-4.03) and 14 month (OR 2.07, 1.05-4.04) post-natal examinations. These associations with postnatal depression persisted after adjustment for a range of covariates (ORs 3.19 (1.54-6.59) and 3.30 (1.49-7.33) respectively). Reported disagreement in child gender preferences between a woman and her mother-in-law was a predictor of post-natal depression and may reflect wider family disharmony as an underlying factor.

  9. Gender preference and perinatal depression in Turkey: A cohort study.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Vesile Senturk Cankorur

    Full Text Available Child gender preference is important in some cultures and has been found to modify risk for antenatal and postnatal depression. We investigated discrepancies in the child gender preference between participating women and other key family members and the extent to which these predicted perinatal depression.In a large cohort study of perinatal depression in urban and rural Turkey, participants had been asked about child gender preferences: their own, and those of their husband, parents, and parents in-law. Of 730 participants recruited in their third trimester (94.6% participation, 578 (79.2% were reassessed at a mean (SD 4.1 (3.3 months after childbirth, and 488 (66.8% were reassessed at 13.7 (2.9 months.No associations were found between any gender preference reported in the antenatal period and depression at any examination. On the other hand, we found associations of antenatal depression with differences in participant-reported gender preference and that reported for their mother-in-law (OR 1.81, 1.08-3.04. This non-agreement also predicted depression at the 4 month (OR 2.24, 1.24-4.03 and 14 month (OR 2.07, 1.05-4.04 post-natal examinations. These associations with postnatal depression persisted after adjustment for a range of covariates (ORs 3.19 (1.54-6.59 and 3.30 (1.49-7.33 respectively.Reported disagreement in child gender preferences between a woman and her mother-in-law was a predictor of post-natal depression and may reflect wider family disharmony as an underlying factor.

  10. Understanding parent-teacher agreement of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ): Comparison across seven European countries.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cheng, Sabrina; Keyes, Katherine M; Bitfoi, Adina; Carta, Mauro Giovanni; Koç, Ceren; Goelitz, Dietmar; Otten, Roy; Lesinskiene, Sigita; Mihova, Zlatka; Pez, Ondine; Kovess-Masfety, Viviane

    2018-03-01

    Assessments of child psychopathology are often derived from parental and teacher reports, yet there is substantial disagreement. This study utilized data from 7 European countries to examine parent-teacher agreement and possible explanatory factors for parent-teacher disagreement such as child and family characteristics, parenting dimensions, and maternal distress were explored. Parent-teacher agreement of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire were assessed using a cross-sectional survey of 4,894 school aged children 6-11 from the School Children Mental Health Europe Project. Parent-teacher agreement was low to moderate (Pearson correlation ranging from .24 (Prosocial) to .48 (Hyperactivity) for the 5 subscales across 7 countries); kappa coefficient ranged from .01 (Turkey) to .44 (Italy) for internalizing problems and .19(Romania) to .44(Italy) for externalizing problems. Child's gender and age, mother's employment status, single parent home, number of children in household, and selected parenting dimension were found to be explanatory of informant disagreement. This study not only serves to advance our understanding of parent-teacher agreement of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire in 7 European countries but provides a novel approach to examining the factors that contribute to informant disagreement. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  11. Wie 'Haar' zu 'Maus' wird: Geschlechtsbezogene pronominale Referenz im Thailändischen

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Attaviriyanupap, Korakoch

    2004-01-01

    Full Text Available The use of gender-related personal pronouns is mostly found in different forms of third person singular (e. g. he/she/it in English or er/sie/es in German. In Thai, an isolate language without grammatical gender, the gender-specification can be observed in the use of first person singular pronominal reference. The selection of gender-related self-reference depends not only on sex but also on gender identity of the speaker. In this article, the complex system of pronominal reference in Thai language will be briefly introduced. After that, forms of self-reference used in the Thai film Iron Ladies are analyzed to show how the gender identity of speakers can influence their selection of pronominal reference.

  12. Input Variability Facilitates Unguided Subcategory Learning in Adults

    Science.gov (United States)

    Eidsvåg, Sunniva Sørhus; Austad, Margit; Plante, Elena; Asbjørnsen, Arve E.

    2015-01-01

    Purpose: This experiment investigated whether input variability would affect initial learning of noun gender subcategories in an unfamiliar, natural language (Russian), as it is known to assist learning of other grammatical forms. Method: Forty adults (20 men, 20 women) were familiarized with examples of masculine and feminine Russian words. Half…

  13. NOUN CLASSIFICATION IN ESAHIE

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    The present work deals with noun classification in Esahie (Kwa, Niger ... phonological information influences the noun (form) class system of Esahie. ... between noun classes and (grammatical) Gender is interrogated (in the light of ..... the (A) argument6 precedes the verb and the (P) argument7 follows the verb in a simple.

  14. Emotion, gender, and gender typical identity in autobiographical memory.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Grysman, Azriel; Merrill, Natalie; Fivush, Robyn

    2017-03-01

    Gender differences in the emotional intensity and content of autobiographical memory (AM) are inconsistent across studies, and may be influenced as much by gender identity as by categorical gender. To explore this question, data were collected from 196 participants (age 18-40), split evenly between men and women. Participants narrated four memories, a neutral event, high point event, low point event, and self-defining memory, completed ratings of emotional intensity for each event, and completed four measures of gender typical identity. For self-reported emotional intensity, gender differences in AM were mediated by identification with stereotypical feminine gender norms. For narrative use of affect terms, both gender and gender typical identity predicted affective expression. The results confirm contextual models of gender identity (e.g., Diamond, 2012 . The desire disorder in research on sexual orientation in women: Contributions of dynamical systems theory. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 41, 73-83) and underscore the dynamic interplay between gender and gender identity in the emotional expression of autobiographical memories.

  15. 48 CFR 225.403 - World Trade Organization Government Procurement Agreement and Free Trade Agreements.

    Science.gov (United States)

    2010-10-01

    ... Government Procurement Agreement and Free Trade Agreements. 225.403 Section 225.403 Federal Acquisition... FOREIGN ACQUISITION Trade Agreements 225.403 World Trade Organization Government Procurement Agreement and... Government Procurement Agreement, acquire only U.S.-made, qualifying country, or designated country end...

  16. Does Sleep Improve Your Grammar? Preferential Consolidation of Arbitrary Components of New Linguistic Knowledge.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mirković, Jelena; Gaskell, M Gareth

    2016-01-01

    We examined the role of sleep-related memory consolidation processes in learning new form-meaning mappings. Specifically, we examined a Complementary Learning Systems account, which implies that sleep-related consolidation should be more beneficial for new hippocampally dependent arbitrary mappings (e.g. new vocabulary items) relative to new systematic mappings (e.g. grammatical regularities), which can be better encoded neocortically. The hypothesis was tested using a novel language with an artificial grammatical gender system. Stem-referent mappings implemented arbitrary aspects of the new language, and determiner/suffix+natural gender mappings implemented systematic aspects (e.g. tib scoiffesh + ballerina, tib mofeem + bride; ked jorool + cowboy, ked heefaff + priest). Importantly, the determiner-gender and the suffix-gender mappings varied in complexity and salience, thus providing a range of opportunities to detect beneficial effects of sleep for this type of mapping. Participants were trained on the new language using a word-picture matching task, and were tested after a 2-hour delay which included sleep or wakefulness. Participants in the sleep group outperformed participants in the wake group on tests assessing memory for the arbitrary aspects of the new mappings (individual vocabulary items), whereas we saw no evidence of a sleep benefit in any of the tests assessing memory for the systematic aspects of the new mappings: Participants in both groups extracted the salient determiner-natural gender mapping, but not the more complex suffix-natural gender mapping. The data support the predictions of the complementary systems account and highlight the importance of the arbitrariness/systematicity dimension in the consolidation process for declarative memories.

  17. [Gender stereotypes arising in a state of gender awareness].

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ito, Y

    2001-12-01

    This study examined the structure of gender stereotypes which might arise in the state of gender awareness that was triggered by social situations where people perceived their gender differences strongly. Out of 1,500 residents in Tokyo aged between 20-60, 342 females and 313 males were randomly chosen and answered the questions about gender consciousness in the state of gender awareness. A factor analysis revealed that "maternity" and "trustworthiness" were the dominant dimensions of gender stereotypes in the state of gender awareness, and that trustworthiness particularly formed the basis of gender stereotypes. Generation differences in gender stereotypes were also revealed between women in their 40 s and 50 s, and between men in their 30 s and 40 s. Generally, power for men and nurture for women were more likely to be perceived in a state of gender awareness.

  18. Gender Incongruence of Childhood: Clinical Utility and Stakeholder Agreement with the World Health Organization's Proposed ICD-11 Criteria.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Titia F Beek

    Full Text Available The World Health Organization (WHO is revising the tenth version of the International Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD-10. This includes a reconceptualization of the definition and positioning of Gender Incongruence of Childhood (GIC. This study aimed to: 1 collect the views of transgender individuals and professionals regarding the retention of the diagnosis; 2 see if the proposed GIC criteria were acceptable to transgender individuals and health care providers; 3 compare results between two countries with two different healthcare systems to see if these differences influence opinions regarding the GIC diagnosis; and 4 determine whether healthcare providers from high-income countries feel that the proposed criteria are clinically useful and easy to use. A total of 628 participants were included in the study: 284 from the Netherlands (NL; 45.2%, 8 from Flanders (Belgium; 1.3%, and 336 (53.5% from the United Kingdom (UK. Most participants were transgender people (or their partners/relatives; TG (n = 522, 89 participants were healthcare providers (HCPs and 17 were both HCP and TG individuals. Participants completed an online survey developed for this study. Overall, the majority response from transgender participants (42.9% was that if the diagnosis would be removed from the mental health chapter it should also be removed from the ICD-11 completely, while 33.6% thought it should remain in the ICD-11. Participants were generally satisfied with other aspects of the proposed ICD-11 GIC diagnosis: most TG participants (58.4% thought the term Gender Identity Disorder should change, and most thought Gender Incongruence was an improvement (63.0%. Furthermore, most participants (76.1% did not consider GIC to be a psychiatric disorder and placement in a separate chapter dealing with Gender and Sexual Health (the majority response in the NL and selected by 37.5% of the TG participants overall or as a Z-code (the majority response

  19. Gender Equality and Violent Behavior: How Neighborhood Gender Equality Influences the Gender Gap in Violence

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lei, Man-Kit; Simons, Ronald L.; Simons, Leslie Gordon; Edmond, Mary Bond

    2014-01-01

    Using a sample of 703 African American adolescents from the Family and Community Health Study (FACHS) along with census data from the year 2000, we examine the association between neighborhood-level gender equality and violence. We find that boys’ and girls’ violent behavior is unevenly distributed across neighborhood contexts. In particular, gender differences in violent behavior are less pronounced in gender-equalitarian neighborhoods compared to those characterized by gender inequality. We also find that the gender gap narrows in gender-equalitarian neighborhoods because boys’ rates of violence decrease whereas girls’ rates remain relatively low across neighborhoods. This is in stark contrast to the pessimistic predictions of theorists who argue that the narrowing of the gender gap in equalitarian settings is the result of an increase in girls’ violence. In addition, the relationship between neighborhood gender equality and violence is mediated by a specific articulation of masculinity characterized by toughness. Our results provide evidence for the use of gender-specific neighborhood prevention programs. PMID:24672996

  20. [An Investigation of Factors Associated with Emotional Exhaustion among Hospital Nurses: Adherence to "Maternal Affection" and Agreement with Stereotypical Gender Roles].

    Science.gov (United States)

    Takai, Rei; Nomura, Kyoko; Hiraike, Haruko; Murakami, Aya; Tanabe, Ayumi; Tsuchiya, Akiko; Okinaga, Hiroko

    2018-01-01

    To investigate factors including adherence to "maternal affection" and stereotypical gender roles associated with emotional exhaustion among hospital nurses. In 2014, among 2,690 workers recruited for this study, 891 participated with written informed consent. Of these, we investigated 464 hospital nurses. Adherence to maternal affection and emotional exhaustion were measured using valid and reliable scales developed by Egami (2005, 12 items) and Kubo (1992, 5 items), respectively. Stereotypical gender role was measured by asking "how much do you agree with the idea that women should stay home and men should work?". Workfamily conflict was measured in terms of the discrepancy in priority in life (i.e., a work or a private life) between the participant's ideal and the real world. The majority of our participants were women (86%), aged 39 or younger (80%), and single (70%). About one-quarter had workfamily conflict (26%) and agreed with the stereotypical gender role (28%). The mean scores of emotional exhaustion and adherence to maternal affection were 17.2 (out of 25) and 30.8 (out of 48), respectively. A stepwise multivariable model showed that being a woman (p=0.028), being young (p=0.022), being single (p=0.007), and having workfamily conflict (pgender role were not significantly associated with emotional exhaustion. This study demonstrated that adherence to "maternal affection" and stereotypical gender roles were not associated with psychological burnout. Special attention should be paid to hospital nurses who are women, young, or single, or who have workfamily conflict.

  1. Shareholders' agreements in Denmark

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Werlauff, Erik

    2010-01-01

    ’ agreements”) cannot bind the company within the sense of company law under the new state of law, and voting rights agreements, agreements on right of pre-emption etc. will therefore only apply at the level of contract law between the parties to the agreement. This article for European Business Law Review......The article warns that with effect from 1 March 2010, the new Danish Companies Act (on public and private limited companies) has seriously weakened the effect of shareholders’ agreements which have been entered into on Danish companies. These agreements (in the act’s new terminology: “owners...... analyses the consequences of this. Rights and duties in the owners’ agreements must now be reiterated to the greatest possible extent in the company’s articles of association so that the precepts become binding on the company and its management. Whether the parties to the owners’ agreement can be required...

  2. Gender Differences in Child Aggression: Relations With Gender-Differentiated Parenting and Parents' Gender-Role Stereotypes.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Endendijk, Joyce J; Groeneveld, Marleen G; van der Pol, Lotte D; van Berkel, Sheila R; Hallers-Haalboom, Elizabeth T; Bakermans-Kranenburg, Marian J; Mesman, Judi

    2017-01-01

    This longitudinal study examines the association between child gender and child aggression via parents' physical control, moderated by parents' gender-role stereotypes in a sample of 299 two-parent families with a 3-year-old child in the Netherlands. Fathers with strong stereotypical gender-role attitudes and mothers were observed to use more physical control strategies with boys than with girls, whereas fathers with strong counterstereotypical attitudes toward gender roles used more physical control with girls than with boys. Moreover, when fathers had strong attitudes toward gender roles (stereotypical or counterstereotypical), their differential treatment of boys and girls completely accounted for the gender differences in children's aggressive behavior a year later. Mothers' gender-differentiated parenting practices were unrelated to gender differences in child aggression. © 2016 The Authors. Child Development © 2016 Society for Research in Child Development, Inc.

  3. Determining the Effectiveness of Visual Input Enhancement across Multiple Linguistic Cues

    Science.gov (United States)

    Comeaux, Ian; McDonald, Janet L.

    2018-01-01

    Visual input enhancement (VIE) increases the salience of grammatical forms, potentially facilitating acquisition through attention mechanisms. Native English speakers were exposed to an artificial language containing four linguistic cues (verb agreement, case marking, animacy, word order), with morphological cues either unmarked, marked in the…

  4. From gender bias to gender awareness in medical education.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Verdonk, Petra; Benschop, Yvonne W M; de Haes, Hanneke C J M; Lagro-Janssen, Toine L M

    2009-03-01

    Gender is an essential determinant of health and illness. Gender awareness in doctors contributes to equity and equality in health and aims towards better health for men and women. Nevertheless, gender has largely been ignored in medicine. First, it is stated that medicine was 'gender blind' by not considering gender whenever relevant. Secondly, medicine is said to be 'male biased' because the largest body of knowledge on health and illness is about men and their health. Thirdly, gender role ideology negatively influences treatment and health outcomes. Finally, gender inequality has been overlooked as a determinant of health and illness. The uptake of gender issues in medical education brings about specific challenges for several reasons. For instance, the political-ideological connotations of gender issues create resistance especially in traditionalists in medical schools. Secondly, it is necessary to clarify which gender issues must be integrated in which domains. Also, some are interdisciplinary issues and as such more difficult to integrate. Finally, schools need assistance with implementation. The integration of psychosocial issues along with biomedical ones in clinical cases, the dissemination of literature and education material, staff education, and efforts towards structural embedding of gender in curricula are determining factors for successful implementation. Gender equity is not a spontaneous process. Medical education provides specific opportunities that may contribute to transformation for medical schools educate future doctors for future patients in future settings. Consequently, future benefits legitimize the integration of gender as a qualitative investment in medical education.

  5. Gender Beliefs and Embedded Gendered Values in Preschool

    Science.gov (United States)

    Emilson, Anette; Folkesson, Anne-Mari; Lindberg, Ingeborg Moqvist

    2016-01-01

    The aim of this study is to explore practitioners' gender beliefs and how gendered values are embedded in Swedish preschool practice. The research question is: What beliefs about gender and the associated values, can be identified in practitioners' talk when they discuss gender issues? The study is informed by Bronwyn Davies' theoretical ideas…

  6. Analisando representações sociais através de elementos gramaticais: compondo representações sobre música Analyzing social representations with grammatical elements: composing representations about music

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Anderson Scardua

    2010-08-01

    Full Text Available O objetivo deste trabalho foi o de apresentar uma forma de análise de representações sociais (RS baseada em elementos gramaticais. Descrevemos este método através de uma pesquisa feita sobre as RS da música entre músicos (N=57 e ouvintes (N=234 da cidade do Rio de Janeiro. Foram feitas perguntas sobre a definição de música e sobre a descrição dos gostos e desgostos para ouvir e produzir música. Foi feita uma análise de conteúdo gramatical/temática em que várias categorias foram descritas e agrupadas em três grupos de acordo com a prevalência dos elementos gramaticais: Descritivas/objetivas - baseadas em substantivos; Efeitos/usos - prevalência de verbos e expressões (e.g., "é para", "me faz"; e Retóricas - baseadas em advérbios e adjetivos. Essas categorias nos permitiram observar de forma mais específica os processos de objetivação (Descritivas, a ancoragem (Efeitos/usos e o elemento atitudinal (Retóricas. Foi feita também uma discussão sobre o processo de análise, suas implicações e limites.The aim of this study was to present a method of analysis for social representations (SR based on grammatical elements. This method was described through a research about SR of music among musicians (N=57 and listeners (N=234 from the city Rio de Janeiro. Questions were asked about the definition of music and the description of likes and dislikes regarding music production and consumption. Drawing on grammatical/thematic content analysis many categories were described and clustered in three groups according to the prevalence of grammatical elements: descriptive/objective - based on nouns; Effects/uses - prevalence of verbs and expressions (e.g. "it is to", "it makes me"; and Rhetorical - based on adverbs and adjectives. These categories allowed us to observe more specifically the processes of objectivation (Descriptive, and anchoring (Effects/uses, as well as attitudinal elements (Rhetorical. Further, the process of analysis

  7. From Gender Bias to Gender Awareness in Medical Education

    Science.gov (United States)

    Verdonk, Petra; Benschop, Yvonne W. M.; de Haes, Hanneke C. J. M.; Lagro-Janssen, Toine L. M.

    2009-01-01

    Gender is an essential determinant of health and illness. Gender awareness in doctors contributes to equity and equality in health and aims towards better health for men and women. Nevertheless, gender has largely been ignored in medicine. First, it is stated that medicine was "gender blind" by not considering gender whenever relevant. Secondly,…

  8. Gender identities and gender dysphoria in the Netherlands.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kuyper, Lisette; Wijsen, Ciel

    2014-02-01

    Several studies estimate the prevalence of gender dysphoria among adults by examining the number of individuals turning to health services. Since individuals might be hesitant to seek medical care related to gender dysphoria, these studies could underestimate the prevalence. The studies also lack information regarding the variance among different aspects of gender dysphoric conditions. Therefore, the current study estimated the prevalence by examining self-reported gender identity and dysphoria in a Dutch population sample (N = 8,064, aged 15-70 years old). Three measures assessed aspects of gender dysphoria: gender identity, dislike of the natal female/male body, and wish to obtain hormones/sex reassignment surgery. Results showed that 4.6 % of the natal men and 3.2 % of the natal women reported an ambivalent gender identity (equal identification with other sex as with sex assigned at birth) and 1.1 % of the natal men and 0.8 % of the natal women reported an incongruent gender identity (stronger identification with other sex as with sex assigned at birth). Lower percentages reported a dislike of their natal body and/or a wish for hormones/surgery. Combining these figures estimated the percentage of men reporting an ambivalent or incongruent gender identity combined with a dislike of their male body and a wish to obtain hormones/surgery at 0.6 %. For women, this was 0.2 %. These novel findings show that studies based on the number of individuals seeking medical care might underestimate the prevalence of gender dysphoria. Furthermore, the findings argue against a dichotomous approach to gender dysphoria.

  9. From gender bias to gender awareness in medical education

    OpenAIRE

    Verdonk, P.; Benschop, Y.W.M.; Haes, H. de; Lagro-Janssen, A.L.M.

    2009-01-01

    Gender is an essential determinant of health and illness. Gender awareness in doctors contributes to equity and equality in health and aims towards better health for men and women. Nevertheless, gender has largely been ignored in medicine. First, it is stated that medicine was ‘gender blind’ by not considering gender whenever relevant. Secondly, medicine is said to be ‘male biased’ because the largest body of knowledge on health and illness is about men and their health. Thirdly, gender role ...

  10. Bilateral agreements

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Anon.

    2004-01-01

    The bilateral agreements concern Brazil with United States relative to the co operation in nuclear energy, Germany with Russian Federation relative to the elimination and disposal of nuclear weapons; The multilateral agreements concerns the signature of the Protocols to amend the Paris and Brussels Conventions, the multilateral nuclear environmental programme in the Russian Federation, the status of Conventions in the field of nuclear energy. (N.C.)

  11. GENDER EQUALITY AND THE GENDER GAP IN MATHEMATICS.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Tao, Hung-Lin; Michalopoulos, Christos

    2018-03-01

    A gender gap has been found in mathematics (boys outperform girls) that has prevailed across countries for many decades. Whether this gap results from nature or nurture has been hotly debated. Using the evidence of PISA 2003 and the gender equality index of 2003, some researchers have argued that an improvement in gender equality reduces the gender gap in mathematics. This study used five waves of country-level PISA data and, controlling for country fixed effects, found no evidence to support this argument. Furthermore, individual data for PISA 2012 and the multilevel data model were used. The conclusion drawn also does not support the argument. In fact, the relationship between gender equality and the gender gap in mathematics vanished after PISA 2003.

  12. 48 CFR 25.403 - World Trade Organization Government Procurement Agreement and Free Trade Agreements.

    Science.gov (United States)

    2010-10-01

    ... Government Procurement Agreement and Free Trade Agreements. 25.403 Section 25.403 Federal Acquisition... 25.403 World Trade Organization Government Procurement Agreement and Free Trade Agreements. (a... in 25.402(a)(1). The WTO GPA and FTAs specify procurement procedures designed to ensure fairness (see...

  13. Parents' Gender Ideology and Gendered Behavior as Predictors of Children's Gender-Role Attitudes: A Longitudinal Exploration

    Science.gov (United States)

    Paul Halpern, Hillary; Perry-Jenkins, Maureen

    2015-01-01

    The current study utilized longitudinal, self-report data from a sample of 109 dual-earner, working-class couples and their 6-year-old children living in the northeastern United States. Research questions addressed the roles of parents’ gender ideology and gendered behaviors in predicting children’s development of gender-role attitudes. It was hypothesized that parents' behavior would be more influential than their ideology in the development of their children's attitudes about gender roles. Parents responded to questionnaires assessing their global beliefs about women's and men's "rightful" roles in society, work preferences for mothers, division of household and childcare tasks, division of paid work hours, and job traditionality. These data were collected at multiple time points across the first year of parenthood, and during a 6-year follow-up. At the final time point, children completed the Sex Roles Learning Inventory (SERLI), an interactive measure that assesses gender-role attitudes. Overall, mothers’ and fathers’ behaviors were better predictors of children’s gender-role attitudes than parents’ ideology. In addition, mothers and fathers played unique roles in their sons’ and daughters’ acquisition of knowledge about gender stereotypes. Findings from the current study fill gaps in the literature on children’s gender development in the family context—particularly by examining the understudied role of fathers in children’s acquisition of knowledge regarding gender stereotypes and through its longitudinal exploration of the relationship between parents’ gender ideologies, parents’ gendered behaviors, and children’s gender-role attitudes. PMID:27445431

  14. Parents' Gender Ideology and Gendered Behavior as Predictors of Children's Gender-Role Attitudes: A Longitudinal Exploration.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Paul Halpern, Hillary; Perry-Jenkins, Maureen

    2016-05-01

    The current study utilized longitudinal, self-report data from a sample of 109 dual-earner, working-class couples and their 6-year-old children living in the northeastern United States. Research questions addressed the roles of parents' gender ideology and gendered behaviors in predicting children's development of gender-role attitudes. It was hypothesized that parents' behavior would be more influential than their ideology in the development of their children's attitudes about gender roles. Parents responded to questionnaires assessing their global beliefs about women's and men's "rightful" roles in society, work preferences for mothers, division of household and childcare tasks, division of paid work hours, and job traditionality. These data were collected at multiple time points across the first year of parenthood, and during a 6-year follow-up. At the final time point, children completed the Sex Roles Learning Inventory (SERLI), an interactive measure that assesses gender-role attitudes. Overall, mothers' and fathers' behaviors were better predictors of children's gender-role attitudes than parents' ideology. In addition, mothers and fathers played unique roles in their sons' and daughters' acquisition of knowledge about gender stereotypes. Findings from the current study fill gaps in the literature on children's gender development in the family context-particularly by examining the understudied role of fathers in children's acquisition of knowledge regarding gender stereotypes and through its longitudinal exploration of the relationship between parents' gender ideologies, parents' gendered behaviors, and children's gender-role attitudes.

  15. Dilemmas in the Danish Approach to Gender Quotas and Gender Equality

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Siim, Birte; Agustin, Lise Rolandsen

    The paper addresses the dilemmas, contradictions and paradoxes in the Danish approach to gender quotas and gender equality. Gender theory has presented diverse arguments for gender quota: justice, resources and women’s interests. Gender quota can be understood as a means to achieve gender parity...... and gender justice in all arenas of society political and economic life. The belief in gender theory and research has been that gender quota would and should be a means to achieve equal rights and gender equality. Recently a new discourse and rhetoric of profitability of gender equality within a range...... of institutions from business to higher education has become prominent in many arenas. One example is the Report on gender equality between men and women in the EU, which argues that gender quotas are not only beneficial for women’s rights but also for industry, for society, and for men...

  16. Nuclear cooperation agreements

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Nuclear cooperation agreements are reviewed in tabular form, especially agreements with developing countries. The reporting countries are the USA, the Federal Republic of Germany, Canada, Australia, Japan, and France. A separate EURATOM list is annexed

  17. Gendered education in a gendered world: looking beyond cosmetic solutions to the gender gap in science

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sinnes, Astrid T.; Løken, Marianne

    2014-06-01

    Young people in countries considered to be at the forefront of gender equity still tend to choose very traditional science subjects and careers. This is particularly the case in science, technology, engineering and mathematics subjects (STEM), which are largely male dominated. This article uses feminist critiques of science and science education to explore the underlying gendered assumptions of a research project aiming to contribute to improving recruitment, retention and gender equity patterns in STEM educations and careers. Much research has been carried out to understand this gender gap phenomenon as well as to suggest measures to reduce its occurrence. A significant portion of this research has focused on detecting the typical "female" and "male" interest in science and has consequently suggested that adjustments be made to science education to cater for these interests. This article argues that adjusting science subjects to match perceived typical girls' and boys' interests risks being ineffective, as it contributes to the imposition of stereotyped gender identity formation thereby also imposing the gender differences that these adjustments were intended to overcome. This article also argues that different ways of addressing gender issues in science education themselves reflects different notions of gender and science. Thus in order to reduce gender inequities in science these implicit notions of gender and science have to be made explicit. The article begins with an overview of the current situation regarding gender equity in some so- called gender equal countries. We then present three perspectives from feminist critiques of science on how gender can be seen to impact on science and science education. Thereafter we analyze recommendations from a contemporary research project to explore which of these perspectives is most prevalent.

  18. Equal pay by gender and by nationality: a comparative analysis of Switzerland's unequal equal pay policy regimes across time

    OpenAIRE

    Erne, Roland; Imboden, Natalie

    2017-01-01

    What explains the adoption of two different policies on equal pay by gender (EPG) and by nationality (EPN) in Switzerland? And why is the liberal, litigation-based, equal pay policy regime set up by the Gender Equality Act of 1996 much less effective than the neocorporatist ‘accompanying measures’ to the Bilateral European Union–Switzerland Agreement on Free Movement of Persons adopted in 1999 to ensure equal pay for workers of different national origins? The formation of two different policy...

  19. Gendered Peer Involvement in Girls with Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia: Effects of Prenatal Androgens, Gendered Activities, and Gender Cognitions.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Berenbaum, Sheri A; Beltz, Adriene M; Bryk, Kristina; McHale, Susan

    2018-05-01

    A key question in understanding gender development concerns the origins of sex segregation. Children's tendencies to interact with same-sex others have been hypothesized to result from gender identity and cognitions, behavioral compatibility, and personal characteristics. We examined whether prenatal androgen exposure was related to time spent with boys and girls, and how that gendered peer involvement was related to sex-typed activities and gender identity and cognitions. We studied 54 girls with congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH) aged 10-13 years varying in degree of prenatal androgen exposure: 40 girls with classical CAH (C-CAH) exposed to high prenatal androgens and 14 girls with non-classical CAH (NC-CAH) exposed to low, female-typical, prenatal androgens. Home interviews and questionnaires provided assessments of gendered activity interests and participation, gender identity, and gender cognitions. Daily phone calls over 7 days assessed time spent in gendered activities and with peers. Girls with both C-CAH and NC-CAH interacted more with girls than with boys, with no significant group differences. The groups did not differ significantly in gender identity or gender cognitions, but girls with C-CAH spent more time in male-typed activities and less time in female-typed activities than did girls with NC-CAH. Time spent with girls reflected direct effects of gender identity/cognitions and gender-typed activities, and an indirect effect of prenatal androgens (CAH type) through gender-typed activities. Our results extend findings that prenatal androgens differentially affect gendered characteristics and that gendered peer interactions reflect combined effects of behavioral compatibility and feelings and cognitions about gender. The study also shows the value of natural experiments for testing hypotheses about gender development.

  20. Parent-Child Agreement on Parent-to-Child Maltreatment.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Compier-de Block, Laura H C G; Alink, Lenneke R A; Linting, Mariëlle; van den Berg, Lisa J M; Elzinga, Bernet M; Voorthuis, Alexandra; Tollenaar, Marieke S; Bakermans-Kranenburg, Marian J

    2017-01-01

    Parent-child agreement on child maltreatment was examined in a multigenerational study. Questionnaires on perpetrated and experienced child maltreatment were completed by 138 parent-child pairs. Multi-level analyses were conducted to explore whether parents and children agreed about levels of parent-to-child maltreatment (convergence), and to examine whether parents and children reported equal levels of child maltreatment (absolute differences). Direct and moderating effects of age and gender were examined as potential factors explaining differences between parent and child report. The associations between parent- and child-reported maltreatment were significant for all subtypes, but the strength of the associations was low to moderate. Moreover, children reported more parent-to-child neglect than parents did. Older participants reported more experienced maltreatment than younger participants, without evidence for differences in actual exposure. These findings support the value of multi-informant assessment of child maltreatment to improve accuracy, but also reveal the divergent perspectives of parents and children on child maltreatment.

  1. Grammar in Art

    OpenAIRE

    Edward eSegel; Lera eBoroditsky

    2011-01-01

    Roman Jakobson (1959) reports: The Russian painter Repin was baffled as to why Sin had been depicted as a woman by German artists: he did not realize that sin is feminine in German (die Sünde), but masculine in Russian (грех). Does the grammatical gender of nouns in an artist’s native language indeed predict the gender of personifications in art? In this paper we analyzed works in the ARTstor database (a digital art library containing over a million images) to measure this correspondenc...

  2. From gender bias to gender awareness in medical education

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Verdonk, P.; Benschop, Y.W.M.; Haes, J.C.J.M. de; Lagro-Janssen, A.L.M.

    2009-01-01

    Gender is an essential determinant of health and illness. Gender awareness in doctors contributes to equity and equality in health and aims towards better health for men and women. Nevertheless, gender has largely been ignored in medicine. First, it is stated that medicine was ‘gender

  3. Early preschool environments and gender: Effects of gender pedagogy in Sweden.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Shutts, Kristin; Kenward, Ben; Falk, Helena; Ivegran, Anna; Fawcett, Christine

    2017-10-01

    To test how early social environments affect children's consideration of gender, 3- to 6-year-old children (N=80) enrolled in gender-neutral or typical preschool programs in the central district of a large Swedish city completed measures designed to assess their gender-based social preferences, stereotypes, and automatic encoding. Compared with children in typical preschools, a greater proportion of children in the gender-neutral school were interested in playing with unfamiliar other-gender children. In addition, children attending the gender-neutral preschool scored lower on a gender stereotyping measure than children attending typical preschools. Children at the gender-neutral school, however, were not less likely to automatically encode others' gender. The findings suggest that gender-neutral pedagogy has moderate effects on how children think and feel about people of different genders but might not affect children's tendency to spontaneously notice gender. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  4. International Fisheries Agreements

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Pintassilgo, Pedro; Kronbak, Lone Grønbæk; Lindroos, Marko

    2015-01-01

    This paper surveys the application of game theory to the economic analysis of international fisheries agreements. The relevance of this study comes not only from the existence of a vast literature on the topic but especially from the specific features of these agreements. The emphasis of the survey...... is on coalition games, an approach that has become prominent in the fisheries economics literature over the last decade. It is shown that coalition games were first applied to international fisheries agreements in the late 1990s addressing cooperative issues under the framework of characteristic function games...... and stability of international fisheries agreements. A key message that emerges from this literature strand is that self-enforcing cooperative management of internationally shared fish stocks is generally difficult to achieve. Hence, the international legal framework and regulations play a decisive role...

  5. From gender bias to gender awareness in medical education

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Verdonk, P.; Benschop, Y.W.M.; Haes, H. de; Lagro-Janssen, A.L.M.

    2009-01-01

    Gender is an essential determinant of health and illness. Gender awareness in doctors contributes to equity and equality in health and aims towards better health for men and women. Nevertheless, gender has largely been ignored in medicine. First, it is stated that medicine was ‘gender blind’ by not

  6. From gender bias to gender awareness in medical education

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Verdonk, P.; Benschop, Y.W.M.; de Haes, H.C.J.M.; Lagro-Janssen, T.L.M.

    2009-01-01

    Gender is an essential determinant of health and illness. Gender awareness in doctors contributes to equity and equality in health and aims towards better health for men and women. Nevertheless, gender has largely been ignored in medicine. First, it is stated that medicine was 'gender blind' by not

  7. I did eat my vegetables. Agreement between parent and child food intake diaries.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Rangelov, Natalie; Suggs, L Suzanne; Marques-Vidal, Pedro

    2016-12-01

    To assess the level of agreement between children and their parents when reporting a child's food consumption. Cross-sectional study in which children and parents independently completed 7 d food diaries describing the foods and drinks the child consumed at every meal and snack. The association between child and parent reporting was assessed for nineteen food groups using Kendall's tau-b non-parametric correlations, Spearman's rank correlations, kappa coefficients and Lin's concordance measure of agreement. Results were also stratified by gender of the child and his/her grade at school. Households in Ticino, Switzerland, April-June 2014. Two hundred and ninety-nine children aged 6-12 years and one of their parents participated, with 264 providing complete data (35 % completion rate). Results showed a high level of agreement between child and parent reporting. Spearman correlations ranged from 0·55 (sauces) and 0·57 (fatty meat) to 0·80 (fruit), 0·83 (starchy foods) and 0·84 (pastries). All nineteen Spearman correlations were significant at the 0·001 level. Kendall's tau-b correlations ranged from 0·44 (fat meat) to 0·81 (puff pastry). Kappa values showed low to high levels of agreement, ranging from 0·15 (sweets) to 0·77 (puff pastry). Lin's concordance correlation coefficients ranged from 0·39 (whole grains) to 0·86 (puff pastry). When assessing the eating behaviour of children using a 7 d food diary, children's reports might be as reliable as their parents'.

  8. Is the Gap More than Gender? A Longitudinal Analysis of Gender, Gender Role Orientation, and Earnings

    Science.gov (United States)

    Judge, Timothy A.; Livingston, Beth A.

    2008-01-01

    This study investigated the relationships among gender, gender role orientation (i.e., attitudes toward the gendered separation of roles at work and at home), and earnings. A multilevel model was conceptualized in which gender role orientation and earnings were within-individual variables that fluctuate over time (although predictors of…

  9. Social constructions of gender roles, gender-based violence and ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    The links between gender roles, gender-based violence and HIV/AIDS risk are complex and culturally specific. In this qualitative study we investigated how women and men in two black communities in the Western Cape, South Africa, constructed their gender identities and roles, how they understood gender-based violence ...

  10. Gender differences in child aggression : Relations with gender-differentiated parenting and parents’ gender stereotypes

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Endendijk, J. J.; Groeneveld, M.G.; Van der Pol, L.D.; van Berkel, S. R.; Hallers-Haalboom, E.T.; Bakermans-Kranenburg, M. J.; Mesman, J.

    2017-01-01

    This longitudinal study examines the association between child gender and child aggression via parents’ physical control, moderated by parents’ gender-role stereotypes in a sample of 299 two-parent families with a 3-year-old child in the Netherlands. Fathers with strong stereotypical gender-role

  11. Measuring Gender Dysphoria: A Multicenter Examination and Comparison of the Utrecht Gender Dysphoria Scale and the Gender Identity/Gender Dysphoria Questionnaire for Adolescents and Adults.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Schneider, Catharina; Cerwenka, Susanne; Nieder, Timo O; Briken, Peer; Cohen-Kettenis, Peggy T; De Cuypere, Griet; Haraldsen, Ira R; Kreukels, Baudewijntje P C; Richter-Appelt, Hertha

    2016-04-01

    This study examined two instruments measuring gender dysphoria within the multicenter study of the European Network for the Investigation of Gender Incongruence (ENIGI). The Utrecht Gender Dysphoria Scale (UGDS) and the Gender Identity/Gender Dysphoria Questionnaire for Adolescents and Adults (GIDYQ-AA) were examined for their definitions of gender dysphoria and their psychometric properties, and evaluated for their congruence in assessing the construct. The sample of 318 participants consisted of 178 male-to-females (MtF) and 140 female-to-males (FtM) who were recruited from the four ENIGI gender clinics. Both instruments were significantly correlated in the group of MtFs. For the FtM group, there was a trend in the same direction but smaller. Gender dysphoria was found to be defined differently in the two instruments, which led to slightly different findings regarding the subgroups. The UGDS detected a difference between the subgroups of early and late onset of gender identity disorder in the group of MtFs, whereas the GIDYQ-AA did not. For the FtM group, no significant effect of age of onset was found. Therefore, both instruments seem to capture not only similar but also different aspects of gender dysphoria. The UGDS focusses on bodily aspects, gender identity, and gender role, while the GIDYQ-AA addresses subjective, somatic, social, and sociolegal aspects. For future research, consistency in theory and definition of gender dysphoria is needed and should be in line with the DSM-5 diagnosis of gender dysphoria in adolescents and adults.

  12. Disillusioning Gender.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Schiller, Britt-Marie

    2018-04-01

    Illusions are not errors but erroneous beliefs motivated by wishful ideas and fantasies. To disillusion gender is to challenge the traditional Freudian construction that splits masculinity and femininity into agency versus passivity, the first with power, the second without. Disillusioning femininity as impotent frees up potency and power as generativity. Disillusioning masculinity as phallic and omnipotent opens the masculine subject to permeability and vulnerability. Illusions regarding the transgender include the idea that there are only two gender categories and the idea that gender identity is generated solely from an internal sense of self. The wish "to be seen as" or "to pass as" one gender or the other shows that social structures exceed the individual. At least for now, the disillusionment of gender with which we are left marks a tension between the internal sense of gender identity and the social structures of gender.

  13. Gender Incongruence of Childhood: Clinical Utility and Stakeholder Agreement with the World Health Organization’s Proposed ICD-11 Criteria

    Science.gov (United States)

    Beek, Titia F.; Cohen-Kettenis, Peggy T.; Bouman, Walter P.; de Vries, Annelou L. C.; Steensma, Thomas D.; Witcomb, Gemma L.; Arcelus, Jon; Richards, Christina; De Cuypere, Griet; Kreukels, Baudewijntje P. C.

    2017-01-01

    The World Health Organization (WHO) is revising the tenth version of the International Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD-10). This includes a reconceptualization of the definition and positioning of Gender Incongruence of Childhood (GIC). This study aimed to: 1) collect the views of transgender individuals and professionals regarding the retention of the diagnosis; 2) see if the proposed GIC criteria were acceptable to transgender individuals and health care providers; 3) compare results between two countries with two different healthcare systems to see if these differences influence opinions regarding the GIC diagnosis; and 4) determine whether healthcare providers from high-income countries feel that the proposed criteria are clinically useful and easy to use. A total of 628 participants were included in the study: 284 from the Netherlands (NL; 45.2%), 8 from Flanders (Belgium; 1.3%), and 336 (53.5%) from the United Kingdom (UK). Most participants were transgender people (or their partners/relatives; TG) (n = 522), 89 participants were healthcare providers (HCPs) and 17 were both HCP and TG individuals. Participants completed an online survey developed for this study. Overall, the majority response from transgender participants (42.9%) was that if the diagnosis would be removed from the mental health chapter it should also be removed from the ICD-11 completely, while 33.6% thought it should remain in the ICD-11. Participants were generally satisfied with other aspects of the proposed ICD-11 GIC diagnosis: most TG participants (58.4%) thought the term Gender Identity Disorder should change, and most thought Gender Incongruence was an improvement (63.0%). Furthermore, most participants (76.1%) did not consider GIC to be a psychiatric disorder and placement in a separate chapter dealing with Gender and Sexual Health (the majority response in the NL and selected by 37.5% of the TG participants overall) or as a Z-code (the majority response

  14. Catalog of the adelgids of the world (Hemiptera, Adelgidae)

    Science.gov (United States)

    Colin Favret; Nathan P. Havill; Gary L. Miller; Masakazu Sano; Benjamin Victor

    2015-01-01

    A taxonomic and nomenclatural Catalogue of the adelgids (Hemiptera: Adelgidae) is presented. Six family-group names are listed, five being synonyms of Adelgidae. Twenty-two genus-group names, of which nine are subjectively valid and in use, are presented with their type species, etymology, and grammatical gender. One hundred and six species-group names are listed, of...

  15. Agreement Between Actual and Perceived Body Weight in Adolescents and Their Weight Control Behaviors

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Sun Mi Shin

    2017-06-01

    Full Text Available Background : To investigate the agreements between actual and perceived body weight status among adolescents and to identify the associations of disagreements with their weight control behaviors. Methods : This study used the secondary data of a sample survey (n=13,871 of the Seoul Student Health Examination among middle and high schools in 2010. Agreements between actual (underweight, normal, overweight, and obese, according to 2007 Korean National Growth Charts and perceived body weight status (underweight, normal, overweight, and obese were examined using Chi-square and Cohen’s kappa agreement, and then multinomial logistic regression including gender, grade, and attempt of weight control or method of weight control was done. Results : Agreements between actual and perceived body weight status were only 45.2%, and disagreements were up to 54.8%, including mild over- (20.4%, severe over- (1.8%, mild under- (29.5%, and severe under-estimation (3.1%. The kappa coefficient of agreement was only 0.19. The odds ratios on severe over-estimated perception were 1.59 (95% CI, 1.22-2.07 in female subjects, 1.78 (95% CI, 1.36-2.34 in diet control behaviors, and 1.53 (95% CI, 1.18-2.00 in exercise. The odds ratios on severe under-estimated perception were only 0.40 (95% CI, 0.32–0.50 in female subjects but 5.77 (95% CI, 3.68-9.06 in taking medication. Conclusion : There were associations of body weight control behaviors with disagreements of actual and perceived weight status. Therefore, further study is needed to identify the weight disagreement-related factors and to promote the desired weight control behaviors for adolescents.

  16. 12 CFR 346.5 - Related agreements considered a single agreement.

    Science.gov (United States)

    2010-01-01

    ... STATEMENTS OF GENERAL POLICY DISCLOSURE AND REPORTING OF CRA-RELATED AGREEMENTS § 346.5 Related agreements...; (2) Were entered into within the same 12-month period; and (3) Are each in fulfillment of the CRA. (b... in fulfillment of the CRA, if the contracts were negotiated in a coordinated fashion and a NGEP is a...

  17. Number Attraction Effects in Near-Native Spanish Sentence Comprehension

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jegerski, Jill

    2016-01-01

    Grammatical agreement phenomena such as verbal number have long been of fundamental interest in the study of second language (L2) acquisition. Previous research from the perspective of sentence processing has documented nativelike behavior among nonnative participants but has also relied almost exclusively on grammar violation paradigms. The…

  18. Assessing Linguistic Competence: Verbal Inflection in Child Tamil

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lakshmanan, Usha

    2006-01-01

    Within child language acquisition research, there has been a fair amount of controversy regarding children's knowledge of the grammatical properties associated with verbal inflection (e.g., tense, agreement, and aspect). Some researchers have proposed that the child's early grammar is fundamentally different from the adult grammar, whereas others…

  19. A juridical review of partnership agreements that have the elements of work agreements in Indonesia

    Science.gov (United States)

    Nugroho, A.; Sulistyowati, E.; Hikmah, N.

    2018-01-01

    The Partnership Agreements place the parties in an equal position each party has something as the bargaining power. In some cases, employers prefer to use Partnership Agreements to some individuals to complete the work in their company than Work agreements. Practicality and the absence of obligations to fulfil workers’ rights such as the right to join a Union and to get social security are some of the reasons why employers use the Partnership Agreements. Sometimes Partnership Agreement contains jobs, wages and orders which is the characteristic of work agreement. Based on the fact above, the legal issues arise whether the Partnership Agreement can be considered as the Work Agreement or not and which court is authorized to hear in the event of a dispute. To analyze the above legal issues, this research uses normative legal research type with the statute approach. The technique of legal material analysis uses prescriptive techniques to assess the issue and make recommendations. Based on the analysis, it can be concluded that the Partnership Agreement, of which the elements are: wages and orders can be categorized as Work Agreement and therefore in the event of a dispute, the authorized court is Industrial Relations Court.

  20. Sexual education, gender ideology, and youth sexual empowerment.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Grose, Rose Grace; Grabe, Shelly; Kohfeldt, Danielle

    2014-01-01

    Sexual education plays an essential role in preventing unplanned pregnancy and the transmission of sexually transmitted infections (STIs). School-based sexual education programs, in particular, may be well positioned to address social factors that are empirically linked to negative sexual health outcomes, such as traditional social norms surrounding gender and sexuality. However, youth are seldom granted access to sexual education programs that explicitly address these issues. This study presents findings from a pretest-posttest survey of a sexual education program that did. It was designed for eighth graders (N=95) in the context of a school-community collaboration. The study assessed the links between several components of sexual empowerment, including gender ideology, sexual knowledge, and contraceptive beliefs. Findings link participation in the sexual education program to more progressive attitudes toward girls and women, less agreement with hegemonic masculinity ideology, and increases in sexual health and resource knowledge. Structural equation models suggest that traditional attitudes toward women were significantly related to hegemonic masculinity ideology among both boys and girls, which was in turn negatively related to safer contraceptive beliefs.

  1. Gender profiling: a gendered race perspective on person-position fit.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hall, Erika V; Galinsky, Adam D; Phillips, Katherine W

    2015-06-01

    The current research integrates perspectives on gendered race and person-position fit to introduce the concept of a gender profile. We propose that both the "gender" of a person's biological sex and the "gender" of a person's race (Asians are perceived as feminine and Blacks as masculine) help comprise an individual's gender profile-the overall femininity or masculinity associated with their demographic characteristics. We also propose that occupational positions have gender profiles. Finally, we argue that the overall gender profile of one's demographics, rather than just one's biological sex, determines one's fit and hirability for feminine or masculine occupational roles. The current five studies establish the gender profiles of different races and sexes, and then demonstrate that individuals with feminine-typed and masculine-typed gender profiles are selected for feminine and masculine positions, respectively. These studies provide new insights on who gets ahead in different environments. © 2015 by the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc.

  2. The time course from gender categorization to gender-stereotype activation.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zhang, Xiaobin; Li, Qiong; Sun, Shan; Zuo, Bin

    2018-02-01

    Social categorization is the foundation of stereotype activation, and the process from social categorization to stereotype activation is rapid. However, the time from social categorization to stereotype activation is unknown. This study involves a real-time measurement of the time course of gender-stereotype activation beginning with gender categorization using event-related potential technology with a face as the priming stimulus. We found that 195 ms after a face stimulus was presented, brain waves stimulated by male or female gender categorization showed a clear separation, with male faces stimulating larger N200 waves. In addition, 475 ms after a face stimulus appeared or 280 ms after the gendercategorization process occurred, gender-stereotype-consistent and gender-stereotype-inconsistent stimuli were distinct, with gender-stereotype-inconsistent stimuli inducing larger N400 waves. These results indicate that during gender-stereotype activation by face perception, gender categorization occurs approximately 195 ms after seeing a face stimulus and a gender stereotype is activated at approximately 475 ms.

  3. Gender Equality and Violent Behavior: How Neighborhood Gender Equality Influences the Gender Gap in Violence

    OpenAIRE

    Lei, Man-Kit; Simons, Ronald L.; Simons, Leslie Gordon; Edmond, Mary Bond

    2014-01-01

    Using a sample of 703 African American adolescents from the Family and Community Health Study (FACHS) along with census data from the year 2000, we examine the association between neighborhood-level gender equality and violence. We find that boys’ and girls’ violent behavior is unevenly distributed across neighborhood contexts. In particular, gender differences in violent behavior are less pronounced in gender-equalitarian neighborhoods compared to those characterized by gender inequality. We...

  4. Types of Grammatical Metaphors in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Nesa Nabifar

    2012-05-01

    Full Text Available Grammatical Metaphor (GM is one of the fresh language phenomena introduced by Halliday (1985 in the framework of functional grammar. Thompson (2004 states that the salient source of GM would be ‘Nominalization’ where a noun form attempts to represent a verb form or in other words, a verb form with its different process is represented in a noun form. He continues that any wording is ought to be either metaphorical or congruent wording. In this study the story of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban was explored in search of GMs deployed throughout the first two chapters.  This study tended to identify the instances of nominalization types of GM in the first two chapters of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and offer the congruent wording.  As the next step, the congruent wordings were compared with metaphorical wording in order to find out the lexical density of each wording. The lexical density was obtained by Concordance software. The result of study illustrated , in a very crystal-clear way, the advantage of GM in adult writing which is stated to be one of the noticeable points regarding GM by Halliday (1985.The result obtained statistically revealed that  the deployment of GM increases the lexical density, which again was claimed by Halliday (2004 as one of the other salient points about GM. Based on the findings of this study, some implications can be drawn for academic writing and reading as well as for teachers involved in writing and reading pedagogy.

  5. What is Gender Equality? A General Review of Gender Politics and Gendered Bodies in Sports

    OpenAIRE

    Ishida, Yoriko

    2016-01-01

    The aim of this paper is to analyze the connections among the concepts of sex, gender, and bodies because understanding their meanings is essential for gender studies and feminist theory, especially with relation to gender politics in sports.

  6. Voluntary agreements in environmental policy

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Torvanger, Asbjoern

    2001-01-01

    A typically voluntary agreement is signed between the authorities and an industrial sector in order to reduce the emission of environmentally harmful substances. There are many different types of agreements. Voluntary agreements are not strictly voluntary, since in the background there is often some kind of ''threat'' about taxation or fees if the industry is unwilling to cooperate. This type of agreements has become popular in many OECD countries during the last decades. In Norway there are only a few agreements of this type. Experience with the use of voluntary agreements as well as research show that they are less cost-effective than market-based instruments such as taxes and quota systems. If there are great restrictions on the use of taxes and quota systems because of information- or measurement problems, or because these instruments are not politically acceptable, then voluntary agreements may be an interesting alternative. Thus, voluntary agreements are best used as a supplement to other instruments in some niche areas of the environmental policy. In some cases, voluntary agreements may be used between two countries or at a regional level, for example within the EU

  7. Gender influence on perceptions of hostile environment sexual harassment.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Baird, C L; Bensko, N L; Bell, P A; Viney, W; Woody, W D

    1995-08-01

    Perceptions of sexual harassment were investigated as a function of perpetrators' and recipients' gender. Undergraduate students (100 women, 98 men) were presented 34 scenarios of men and women interacting at work. Participants were asked to read carefully each scenario and indicate on a scale anchored by 1 (strongly disagree) and 7 (strongly agree) their opinions as to whether the scenario represented an incident of sexual harassment. Analysis indicated that women rated "hostile environment" scenarios as more harassing than men, and male perpetrators were rated as more harassing than female perpetrators. Even though some scenarios were rated as more harassing than others, the full range of the 7-point scale was used on every scenario, indicating a lack of agreement on what constitutes harassment. This lack of agreement highlights the debate within the legal community about whether the "reasonable person" or the "reasonable woman" standard should be used to judge sexual harassment in the workplace.

  8. Unwrapping Court-Connected Mediation Agreements

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Adrian, Lin; Mykland, Solfrid

    2018-01-01

    Court-connected mediated agreements seem to both fulfil and fail the ideal of self-determination in mediation theory. In a study of 134 agreements from court-connected mediation, we found that the majority of agreements contain creative elements and display great variation in the provisions...... and understand them. The judicial language is well known for the drafters of the agreement but not the parties. Thus, court-connected mediation seems to fail aspects of self-determination when it comes to drafting agreements. We draw on new-institutional theory when we explore and explain this apparent...... they contain. These results indicate that the parties play an important role in crafting the substance of their agreements. However, we also found that the wording of the agreements is characterised by legal and bureaucratic language to the extent that people without legal training find it difficult to read...

  9. [Mother-child agreement regarding the depressive symptoms and the quality of life of the child and its influencing factors in children with and without depression].

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kiss, Eniko

    2010-01-03

    Mother-child agreement and influencing factors were studied in depressed and non-depressed children. We hypothesized that age and gender of the child and maternal depression influenced mother-child agreement; parents of depressed children underestimated the quality of life of their children; agreement was better in older and non-depressed children. We studied depressed children with Major Depressive Disorder (n = 354, mean age = 11.69 +/- 2.05 years), and non-depressed school-age children (n = 1695, mean age = 10.34 +/- 2.19 years). Psychiatric diagnosis was obtained by a semi-structured interview; depressive symptoms and quality of life were measured by self-reported questionnaires. Mother-child agreement about depressive symptoms increased as children got older. Mother-son reports showed significant difference, mother-daughter reports were similar. Depressed mothers reported more serious symptoms for their children. Depressed children's parent rated lower quality of life than children for themselves. Agreement was influenced by depression of the child and only marginally by age. Age and psychiatric illness of the examined person influences agreement, which finding may well be important in practice.

  10. Measuring implicit gender-role orientation: the gender initial preference task.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Stieger, Stefan; Burger, Christoph; Schiller, Franziska R; Schulze, Esther K; Voracek, Martin

    2014-01-01

    Individuals prefer their name letters over nonname letters, which is known as the name-letter effect (NLE). This research aimed to examine a possible NLE for gender-role orientation (GRO) by rating letters for their gender-typicality in an initial preference task (Gender-IPT). Indeed, a clear NLE appeared: Men rated their initials as more male-typical, whereas women rated them as more female-typical. The Gender-IPT showed good convergent validity with other direct and indirect (Gender Implicit Association Test) measures of GRO as well as predictive validity with sensation seeking and gender-typical everyday life behaviors. The Gender-IPT seems to be a useful and practical indirect measure to assess GRO in a short, convenient, and computer-independent way, complementing other indirect measures of GRO.

  11. Gender Differences in Depressive Symptom Profile: Results from Nationwide General Population Surveys in Korea.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kim, Ji-Hyun; Cho, Maeng Je; Hong, Jin Pyo; Bae, Jae Nam; Cho, Seong-Jin; Hahm, Bong-Jin; Lee, Dong-Woo; Park, Jong-Ik; Lee, Jun-Young; Jeon, Hong Jin; Chang, Sung Man

    2015-11-01

    This study investigated gender differences in symptom profiles of major depressive disorder (MDD) in the Korean general population. Data were pooled from the series of nationwide Korean Epidemiologic Catchment Area surveys conducted in 2001, 2006 and 2011, respectively. Of the 18,807 participants, 507 (397 women and 110 men) were diagnosed with MDD within the prior 12 months. In agreement with previous studies, women with MDD appeared to be more vulnerable to experiencing atypical depressive episodes defined as depression with two or more symptoms of fatigue, increased appetite and hypersomnia (P differences in symptomatology of MDD in the general Korean population, and the results are comparable to previous investigations from western societies. Assumingly, the intercultural similarity in female preponderance to atypical depression might reflect the common biological construct underlying the gender difference in mechanism of MDD. In clinical settings, gender differences of MDD should be carefully considered, because these features could be related with treatment response and drug side effects.

  12. Gender Roles, Gender (In)equality and Fertility: An Empirical Test of Five Gender Equity Indices

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Mills, M.

    2010-01-01

    The division of gender roles in the household and societal level gender (in)equality have been situated as one of the most powerful factors underlying fertility behaviour. Despite continued theoretical attention to this issue by demographers, empirical research integrating gender roles and equity in

  13. Gender Differences in Child Aggression : Relations With Gender-Differentiated Parenting and Parents' Gender-Role Stereotypes

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Endendijk, Joyce J.; Groeneveld, Marleen G.; van der Pol, Lotte D.; van Berkel, Sheila R.; Hallers-Haalboom, Elizabeth T.; Bakermans-Kranenburg, Marian J.; Mesman, Judi

    2017-01-01

    This longitudinal study examines the association between child gender and child aggression via parents' physical control, moderated by parents' gender-role stereotypes in a sample of 299 two-parent families with a 3-year-old child in the Netherlands. Fathers with strong stereotypical gender-role

  14. Latitude Reduction Based on Gender Categorization and Gender Stereotypes

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Skewes, Lea

    This dissertation consists of four articles; two articles which apply experimental methodologies from social psychology, and two articles which apply queer theory. These two different methodologies are applied in order to uncover different kinds of asymmetrical power relations driven by sex/gender...... to take a step back from our sex/gender categories, and unveil which effects categorizing by sex/gender has on people who are considered unintelligible by the categories. Therefore, this language philosophical perspective offers tools to analyse non-binary sexed/gendered people, and the sex/gender...... categorization. The social psychology methodology is applied in order to capture fundamental psychological mechanism at play in patriarchal society – striving to unveil gender inequalities between the binary categories of men and women. The queer theoretical meta-perspective is applied in order to allow us...

  15. Gender differences in trusting strangers: Role of the target's gender.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zhao, Na; Zhang, Jianxin

    2016-06-01

    Previous findings on gender differences in the behaviors of individuals, including trusting behaviors, are inconsistent. A criticism is that these studies neglect contextual factors. The present study aims to examine how the target's gender, as a primary context factor, influences the trusting behavior of individuals in one survey and two experimental situations. Results indicate that people tend to trust strangers of the opposite gender more than those of the same gender in mixed-gender situations. Furthermore, females trust females much more than males trust males. The results help people understand that when talking about gender differences in interpersonal situations, the gender identity of target persons should be considered. These findings are somewhat in conflict with those of previous studies conducted in Western cultures, and suggest that culture should also be explored in future studies on gender differences in interpersonal relationships. © 2016 The Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences and John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd.

  16. The acquisition of gender labels in infancy: implications for gender-typed play.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zosuls, Kristina M; Ruble, Diane N; Tamis-Lemonda, Catherine S; Shrout, Patrick E; Bornstein, Marc H; Greulich, Faith K

    2009-05-01

    Two aspects of children's early gender development-the spontaneous production of gender labels and gender-typed play-were examined longitudinally in a sample of 82 children. Survival analysis, a statistical technique well suited to questions involving developmental transitions, was used to investigate the timing of the onset of children's gender labeling as based on mothers' biweekly telephone interviews regarding their children's language from 9 through 21 months. Videotapes of children's play both alone and with mother during home visits at 17 and 21 months were independently analyzed for play with gender-stereotyped and gender-neutral toys. Finally, the relation between gender labeling and gender-typed play was examined. Children transitioned to using gender labels at approximately 19 months, on average. Although girls and boys showed similar patterns in the development of gender labeling, girls began labeling significantly earlier than boys. Modest sex differences in play were present at 17 months and increased at 21 months. Gender labeling predicted increases in gender-typed play, suggesting that knowledge of gender categories might influence gender typing before the age of 2. Copyright 2009 APA, all rights reserved

  17. Predicting word sense annotation agreement

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Martinez Alonso, Hector; Johannsen, Anders Trærup; Lopez de Lacalle, Oier

    2015-01-01

    High agreement is a common objective when annotating data for word senses. However, a number of factors make perfect agreement impossible, e.g. the limitations of the sense inventories, the difficulty of the examples or the interpretation preferences of the annotations. Estimating potential...... agreement is thus a relevant task to supplement the evaluation of sense annotations. In this article we propose two methods to predict agreement on word-annotation instances. We experiment with a continuous representation and a three-way discretization of observed agreement. In spite of the difficulty...

  18. Gender Role Attitude with an Emphasis on Ethnicity and Gender

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Leila Falahati

    2016-06-01

    Full Text Available Gender roles defined as the patterns of behavior which are approved by society and culture. In other words gender role is the way men and women doing to recognition as feminine and masculine and culture, and society accepted and encourage those behaviors as appropriate behavior for men and women. Present study aimed to study gender role attitude using Islamic gender role attitude scale. A sample of 400 male and female students at public universities including Allameh-Tabataba'i University, Tehran University and the University of Kurdistan was drawn. Respondents were selected using random sampling method and data were collected with questionnaire. Results revealed that there were no traditional gender role attitude among students and all the respondents have professional and liberal attitude toward gender roles. There were significant gender differences between male and female in gender role attitude so that female students have more liberal attitude. In terms of ethnicity there were gender differences in Fars and Lur attitude, so that male have professional and female have liberal attitude. Among Kurdish respondents, male and female have liberal attitude while among Turkish, both male and female have traditional-professional attitude.

  19. Gender Mainstreaming as a Knowledge Process: towards an understanding of perpetuation and change in gender blindness and gender bias

    OpenAIRE

    Cavaghan, Rosalind

    2012-01-01

    This thesis locates itself in wider developments in gender theory and examinations of the state’s production of gender inequality. It responds to two research problems in existing literature. Firstly, scholars have developed increasingly complex theorisations of the social construction of gender and the state’s role in it. This body of research has shown how gender blindness and gender bias in state policies produce inequality and how gender structures priorities, hierarchies and roles wit...

  20. Gender Identity in Autism: Sex Differences in Social Affiliation with Gender Groups.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cooper, Kate; Smith, Laura G E; Russell, Ailsa J

    2018-04-28

    High rates of gender variance have been reported in autistic people, with higher variance in autistic females than males. The social component of gender identity may be affected, with autistic females experiencing lower identification with and feeling less positively about their gender groups than controls. We measured gender identification, gender self-esteem, and aspects of gender expression (masculinity and femininity) in autistic natal males and females, and controls (N = 486). We found that autistic people had lower gender identification and gender self-esteem than controls, and autistic natal females had lower gender identification than autistic natal males and natal female controls. In conclusion, autistic people, particularly natal females, had lower social identification with and more negative feelings about a gender group.

  1. Parent-Child Agreement Using the Spence Children's Anxiety Scale and a Thermometer in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

    Science.gov (United States)

    May, T.; Cornish, K.; Rinehart, N. J.

    2015-01-01

    Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) experience high anxiety which often prompts clinical referral and requires intervention. This study aimed to compare parent and child reports on the Spence Children's Anxiety Scale (SCAS) and a child-reported “worry thermometer” in 88 children aged 8–13 years, 44 with ASD and 44 age, gender, and perceptual IQ matched typically developing children. There were no gender differences in child report on the SCAS and worry thermometers. Results indicated generally good correlations between parent and child self-reported SCAS symptoms for typically developing children but poor agreement in parent-child ASD dyads. The worry thermometer child-report did not reflect child or parent reports on the SCAS. Findings suggest 8–13-year-old children with ASD may have difficulties accurately reporting their anxiety levels. The clinical implications were discussed. PMID:25922765

  2. Can gender-fair language reduce gender stereotyping and discrimination?

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Sabine eSczesny

    2016-02-01

    Full Text Available Gender-fair language (GFL aims at reducing gender stereotyping and discrimination. Two principle strategies have been introduced to make languages gender-fair and to treat women and men symmetrically: neutralization and feminization. Neutralization is achieved, for example, by replacing male-masculine forms (policeman with gender-unmarked forms (police officer, whereas feminization relies on the use of feminine forms to make female referents visible (i.e., the applicant ... he or she instead of the applicant ... he. Integrating research on language structures, language policies, and individual language behavior, the present paper provides an overview of whether and under what circumstances GFL contributes to the reduction of gender stereotyping and discrimination.

  3. Influence of gender role attitudes on smoking and drinking among girls from Jujuy, Argentina.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mejia, Raul; Kaplan, Celia P; Alderete, Ethel; Gregorich, Steven E; Pérez-Stable, Eliseo J

    2013-09-01

    Evaluate effect of gender role attitudes on tobacco and alcohol use among Argentinean girls. Cross-sectional survey of 10th grade students attending 27 randomly selected schools in Jujuy, Argentina. Questions about tobacco and alcohol use were adapted from global youth surveys. Five items with 5-point response options of agreement-disagreement assessed attitude towards egalitarian (higher score) gender roles. 2133 girls, aged 13-18 years, 71% Indigenous, 22% mixed Indigenous/European, and 7% European responded. Of these, 60% had ever smoked, 32% were current smokers, 58% ever drinkers, 27% drank in previous month, and 13% had ≥5 drinks on one occasion. Mean response to the gender role scale was 3.49 (95% Confidence Intervals = 3.41-3.57) out of 5 tending toward egalitarian attitudes. Logistic regression models using the gender role scale score as the main predictor and adjusting for demographic and social confounders showed that egalitarian gender role was associated with ever smoking (Odds Ratio = 1.25; 95% Confidence Intervals 1.09-1.44), ever drinking (Odds Ratio = 1.24; 95% Confidence Intervals 1.10-1.40), drinking in prior month (Odds Ratio = 1.21; 95% Confidence Intervals 1.07-1.37) and ≥5 drinks on one occasion (Odds Ratio = 1.15; 95% Confidence Intervals 1.00-1.33), but was not significant for current smoking. Girls in Jujuy who reported more egalitarian gender role attitudes had higher odds of smoking or drinking. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  4. Pendidikan Gender Berbasis Sastra

    OpenAIRE

    Trianton, Teguh

    2015-01-01

    Recently, gender mainstreaming became most actual issue. One of its domains is on education. Practically, gender offered as important aspect on educational curriculum. From this point, emerge gender education discourse, namely an internalization process of gender equality issues through formal education. There are three important points on gender mainstreaming issue; first, gender education, two, gender issue on literary works, and three gender educations based on literary works.

  5. Transgender-inclusive measures of sex/gender for population surveys: Mixed-methods evaluation and recommendations.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bauer, Greta R; Braimoh, Jessica; Scheim, Ayden I; Dharma, Christoffer

    2017-01-01

    Given that an estimated 0.6% of the U.S. population is transgender (trans) and that large health disparities for this population have been documented, government and research organizations are increasingly expanding measures of sex/gender to be trans inclusive. Options suggested for trans community surveys, such as expansive check-all-that-apply gender identity lists and write-in options that offer maximum flexibility, are generally not appropriate for broad population surveys. These require limited questions and a small number of categories for analysis. Limited evaluation has been undertaken of trans-inclusive population survey measures for sex/gender, including those currently in use. Using an internet survey and follow-up of 311 participants, and cognitive interviews from a maximum-diversity sub-sample (n = 79), we conducted a mixed-methods evaluation of two existing measures: a two-step question developed in the United States and a multidimensional measure developed in Canada. We found very low levels of item missingness, and no indicators of confusion on the part of cisgender (non-trans) participants for both measures. However, a majority of interview participants indicated problems with each question item set. Agreement between the two measures in assessment of gender identity was very high (K = 0.9081), but gender identity was a poor proxy for other dimensions of sex or gender among trans participants. Issues to inform measure development or adaptation that emerged from analysis included dimensions of sex/gender measured, whether non-binary identities were trans, Indigenous and cultural identities, proxy reporting, temporality concerns, and the inability of a single item to provide a valid measure of sex/gender. Based on this evaluation, we recommend that population surveys meant for multi-purpose analysis consider a new Multidimensional Sex/Gender Measure for testing that includes three simple items (one asked only of a small sub-group) to assess gender

  6. Transgender-inclusive measures of sex/gender for population surveys: Mixed-methods evaluation and recommendations.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Greta R Bauer

    Full Text Available Given that an estimated 0.6% of the U.S. population is transgender (trans and that large health disparities for this population have been documented, government and research organizations are increasingly expanding measures of sex/gender to be trans inclusive. Options suggested for trans community surveys, such as expansive check-all-that-apply gender identity lists and write-in options that offer maximum flexibility, are generally not appropriate for broad population surveys. These require limited questions and a small number of categories for analysis. Limited evaluation has been undertaken of trans-inclusive population survey measures for sex/gender, including those currently in use. Using an internet survey and follow-up of 311 participants, and cognitive interviews from a maximum-diversity sub-sample (n = 79, we conducted a mixed-methods evaluation of two existing measures: a two-step question developed in the United States and a multidimensional measure developed in Canada. We found very low levels of item missingness, and no indicators of confusion on the part of cisgender (non-trans participants for both measures. However, a majority of interview participants indicated problems with each question item set. Agreement between the two measures in assessment of gender identity was very high (K = 0.9081, but gender identity was a poor proxy for other dimensions of sex or gender among trans participants. Issues to inform measure development or adaptation that emerged from analysis included dimensions of sex/gender measured, whether non-binary identities were trans, Indigenous and cultural identities, proxy reporting, temporality concerns, and the inability of a single item to provide a valid measure of sex/gender. Based on this evaluation, we recommend that population surveys meant for multi-purpose analysis consider a new Multidimensional Sex/Gender Measure for testing that includes three simple items (one asked only of a small sub-group to

  7. Transgender-inclusive measures of sex/gender for population surveys: Mixed-methods evaluation and recommendations

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bauer, Greta R.; Braimoh, Jessica; Scheim, Ayden I.; Dharma, Christoffer

    2017-01-01

    Given that an estimated 0.6% of the U.S. population is transgender (trans) and that large health disparities for this population have been documented, government and research organizations are increasingly expanding measures of sex/gender to be trans inclusive. Options suggested for trans community surveys, such as expansive check-all-that-apply gender identity lists and write-in options that offer maximum flexibility, are generally not appropriate for broad population surveys. These require limited questions and a small number of categories for analysis. Limited evaluation has been undertaken of trans-inclusive population survey measures for sex/gender, including those currently in use. Using an internet survey and follow-up of 311 participants, and cognitive interviews from a maximum-diversity sub-sample (n = 79), we conducted a mixed-methods evaluation of two existing measures: a two-step question developed in the United States and a multidimensional measure developed in Canada. We found very low levels of item missingness, and no indicators of confusion on the part of cisgender (non-trans) participants for both measures. However, a majority of interview participants indicated problems with each question item set. Agreement between the two measures in assessment of gender identity was very high (K = 0.9081), but gender identity was a poor proxy for other dimensions of sex or gender among trans participants. Issues to inform measure development or adaptation that emerged from analysis included dimensions of sex/gender measured, whether non-binary identities were trans, Indigenous and cultural identities, proxy reporting, temporality concerns, and the inability of a single item to provide a valid measure of sex/gender. Based on this evaluation, we recommend that population surveys meant for multi-purpose analysis consider a new Multidimensional Sex/Gender Measure for testing that includes three simple items (one asked only of a small sub-group) to assess gender

  8. Financing petroleum agreements

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Robson, C.J.V.

    1994-01-01

    This chapter describes the typical type of financing agreements which are currently used to finance North Sea petroleum projects whether they are in the cause of development or have been developed and are producing. It deals with the agreements which are entered into to finance borrowings for petroleum projects on a non-resource or limited resource basis. (UK)

  9. Agreement Workflow Tool (AWT)

    Data.gov (United States)

    Social Security Administration — The Agreement Workflow Tool (AWT) is a role-based Intranet application used for processing SSA's Reimbursable Agreements according to SSA's standards. AWT provides...

  10. Corporate values as related to occupation, gender, age, and company size.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Thumin, F J; Johnson, J H; Kuehl, C; Jiang, W Y

    1995-07-01

    A mail survey was used to study the perceived importance of 15 corporate values among advertising personnel, CPAs, and business school professors. Excellent customer service, ethical behavior, and product quality were perceived as highly important by all groups. Political activity and contribution to the community were seen as relatively unimportant. There was general agreement that it was more important to make a fair profit than to maximize profits. A number of corporate values were significantly related to occupational group, gender, age, and company size.

  11. Jak rozumíme kategorii gramatického rodu? Kdy je Češka Čech?

    Czech Academy of Sciences Publication Activity Database

    Čmejrková, Světla

    2008-01-01

    Roč. 77, 1/3 (2008), s. 41-54 ISSN 0037-6736. [Mezinárodní sjezd slavistů /14./. Ochrid, 10.09.2008-16.09.2008] R&D Projects: GA ČR GA405/06/1468; GA ČR GA405/06/1057 Institutional research plan: CEZ:AV0Z90610518 Keywords : gender linguistics * grammatical categories * generic masculine Subject RIV: AI - Linguistics

  12. Gender equity.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Shiva, M

    1999-01-01

    This paper focuses on gender equity. Gender equity is difficult to achieve when there is no economic, social, or political equity. The Gender Development Index evidenced this. There were a lot of instances where women are psychologically traumatized, whether it is through domestic rape, purchased sexual services in the red light area, and seduction or violation of neighbors, relatives, daughter or child. The economic changes linked with globalization and media's influence have worsened women's position. The policy for empowerment of women is an attempt toward ensuring equity. Furthermore, many women and women's organizations are trying to address these inequities; wherein they fight for strong acceptance of women's rights, social, economic, and political rights, as well as equities between gender and within gender.

  13. Gender Differences in Pay

    OpenAIRE

    Francine D. Blau; Lawrence M. Kahn

    2000-01-01

    We consider the gender pay gap in the United States. Both gender-specific factors, including gender differences in qualifications and discrimination, and overall wage structure, the rewards for skills and employment in particular sectors, importantly influence the gender pay gap. Declining gender differentials in the U.S., and the more rapid closing of the gender pay gap in the U.S. than elsewhere, appear to be primarily due to gender-specific factors. However, the relatively large gender pay...

  14. (Configuring gender in Bible translation: Cultural, translational and gender critical intersections

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Jeremy Punt

    2014-06-01

    Full Text Available The gendered intersection of cultural studies and Bible translation is under acknowledged. Accounting for gender criticism in translation work requires, besides responsible theory and practice of translation, also attention to interwoven gender critical aspects. After a brief investigation of the intersections between biblical, translation and gender studies, translation in a few Pauline texts with bearing on gender and sexuality are investigated.

  15. Why are Trade Agreements Regional?

    OpenAIRE

    Zissimos, Ben

    2007-01-01

    This paper shows how distance may be used to coordinate on a unique equilibrium in which trade agreements are regional. Trade agreement formation is modeled as coalition formation. In a standard trade model with no distance between countries, a familiar problem of coordination failure arises giving rise to multiple equilibria; any one of many possible trade agreements can form. With distance between countries, and through strategic interaction in tariff setting, regional trade agreements gene...

  16. Is it differences in language skills and working memory that account for girls being better at writing than boys?

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Lorna Bourke

    2012-03-01

    Full Text Available Girls are more likely to outperform boys in the development of writing skills. This study considered gender differences in language and working memory skills as a possible explanation for the differential rates of progress. Sixty-seven children (31 males and 36 females (M age 57.30 months participated. Qualitative differences in writing progress were examined using a writing assessment scale from the Early Years Foundation Stage Profile (EYFSP. Quantitative measures of writing: number of words, diversity of words, number of phrases/sentences and grammatical complexity of the phrases/sentences were also analysed. The children were also assessed on tasks measuring their language production and comprehension skills and the visuo-spatial, phonological, and central executive components of working memory. The results indicated that the boys were more likely to perform significantly less well than the girls on all measures of writing except the grammatical complexity of sentences. Initially, no significant differences were found on any of the measures of language ability. Further, no significant differences were found between the genders on the capacity and efficiency of their working memory functioning. However, hierarchical regressions revealed that the individual differences in gender and language ability, more specifically spoken language comprehension, predicted performance on the EYFSP writing scale. This finding accords well with the literature that suggests that language skills can mediate the variance in boys’ and girls’ writing ability.

  17. Gender compatibility, math-gender stereotypes, and self-concepts in math and physics

    Science.gov (United States)

    Koul, Ravinder; Lerdpornkulrat, Thanita; Poondej, Chanut

    2016-12-01

    [This paper is part of the Focused Collection on Gender in Physics.] Positive self-assessment of ability in the quantitative domains is considered critical for student participation in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics field studies. The present study investigated associations of gender compatibility (gender typicality and contentedness) and math-gender stereotypes with self-concepts in math and physics. Statistical analysis of survey data was based on a sample of 170 male and female high school science students matched on propensity scores based on age and past GPA scores in math. Results of MANCOVA analyses indicated that the combination of high personal gender compatibility with low endorsement of math-gender stereotypes was associated with low gender differentials in math and physics self-concepts whereas the combination of high personal gender compatibility with high endorsement of math-gender stereotypes was associated with high gender differentials in math and physics self-concepts. These results contribute to the recent theoretical and empirical work on antecedents to the math and physics identities critical to achieving gender equity in STEM fields.

  18. Level of Agreement and Factors Associated With Discrepancies Between Nationwide Medical History Questionnaires and Hospital Claims Data

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Yeon-Yong Kim

    2017-09-01

    Full Text Available Objectives The objectives of this study were to investigate the agreement between medical history questionnaire data and claims data and to identify the factors that were associated with discrepancies between these data types. Methods Data from self-reported questionnaires that assessed an individual’s history of hypertension, diabetes mellitus, dyslipidemia, stroke, heart disease, and pulmonary tuberculosis were collected from a general health screening database for 2014. Data for these diseases were collected from a healthcare utilization claims database between 2009 and 2014. Overall agreement, sensitivity, specificity, and kappa values were calculated. Multiple logistic regression analysis was performed to identify factors associated with discrepancies and was adjusted for age, gender, insurance type, insurance contribution, residential area, and comorbidities. Results Agreement was highest between questionnaire data and claims data based on primary codes up to 1 year before the completion of self-reported questionnaires and was lowest for claims data based on primary and secondary codes up to 5 years before the completion of self-reported questionnaires. When comparing data based on primary codes up to 1 year before the completion of self-reported questionnaires, the overall agreement, sensitivity, specificity, and kappa values ranged from 93.2 to 98.8%, 26.2 to 84.3%, 95.7 to 99.6%, and 0.09 to 0.78, respectively. Agreement was excellent for hypertension and diabetes, fair to good for stroke and heart disease, and poor for pulmonary tuberculosis and dyslipidemia. Women, younger individuals, and employed individuals were most likely to under-report disease. Conclusions Detailed patient characteristics that had an impact on information bias were identified through the differing levels of agreement.

  19. Level of Agreement and Factors Associated With Discrepancies Between Nationwide Medical History Questionnaires and Hospital Claims Data.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kim, Yeon-Yong; Park, Jong Heon; Kang, Hee-Jin; Lee, Eun Joo; Ha, Seongjun; Shin, Soon-Ae

    2017-09-01

    The objectives of this study were to investigate the agreement between medical history questionnaire data and claims data and to identify the factors that were associated with discrepancies between these data types. Data from self-reported questionnaires that assessed an individual's history of hypertension, diabetes mellitus, dyslipidemia, stroke, heart disease, and pulmonary tuberculosis were collected from a general health screening database for 2014. Data for these diseases were collected from a healthcare utilization claims database between 2009 and 2014. Overall agreement, sensitivity, specificity, and kappa values were calculated. Multiple logistic regression analysis was performed to identify factors associated with discrepancies and was adjusted for age, gender, insurance type, insurance contribution, residential area, and comorbidities. Agreement was highest between questionnaire data and claims data based on primary codes up to 1 year before the completion of self-reported questionnaires and was lowest for claims data based on primary and secondary codes up to 5 years before the completion of self-reported questionnaires. When comparing data based on primary codes up to 1 year before the completion of self-reported questionnaires, the overall agreement, sensitivity, specificity, and kappa values ranged from 93.2 to 98.8%, 26.2 to 84.3%, 95.7 to 99.6%, and 0.09 to 0.78, respectively. Agreement was excellent for hypertension and diabetes, fair to good for stroke and heart disease, and poor for pulmonary tuberculosis and dyslipidemia. Women, younger individuals, and employed individuals were most likely to under-report disease. Detailed patient characteristics that had an impact on information bias were identified through the differing levels of agreement.

  20. Electrophysiological correlates of second-language syntactic processes are related to native and second language distance regardless of age of acquisition

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Begoña eDíaz

    2016-02-01

    Full Text Available In the present study, we investigate how early and late L2 learners process L2 grammatical traits that are either present or absent in their native language (L1. Thirteen early (AoA = 4 years old and thirteen late (AoA = 18 years old Spanish learners of Basque performed a grammatical judgment task on auditory Basque sentences while their event-related brain potentials (ERPs were recorded. The sentences contained violations of a syntactic property specific to participants’ L2, i.e., ergative case, or violations of a syntactic property present in both of the participants’ languages, i.e., verb agreement. Two forms of verb agreement were tested: subject agreement, found in participants’ L1 and L2, and object agreement, present only in participants’ L2. Behaviorally, early bilinguals were more accurate in the judgment task than late L2 learners. Early bilinguals showed native-like ERPs for verb agreement, which differed from the late learners’ ERP pattern. Nonetheless, approximation to native-likeness was greater for the subject-verb agreement processing, the type of verb-agreement present in participants’ L1, compared to object-verb agreement, the type of verb-agreement present only in participants’ L2. For the ergative argument alignment, unique to L2, the two non-native groups showed similar ERP patterns which did not correspond to the natives’ ERP pattern. We conclude that non-native syntactic processing approximates native processing for early L2 acquisition and high proficiency levels when the syntactic property is common to the L1 and L2. However, syntactic traits that are not present in the L1 do not rely on native-like processing, despite early AoA and high proficiency.

  1. Can Gender-Fair Language Reduce Gender Stereotyping and Discrimination?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sczesny, Sabine; Formanowicz, Magda; Moser, Franziska

    2016-01-01

    Gender-fair language (GFL) aims at reducing gender stereotyping and discrimination. Two principle strategies have been employed to make languages gender-fair and to treat women and men symmetrically: neutralization and feminization. Neutralization is achieved, for example, by replacing male-masculine forms (policeman) with gender-unmarked forms (police officer), whereas feminization relies on the use of feminine forms to make female referents visible (i.e., the applicant… he or she instead of the applicant… he). By integrating research on (1) language structures, (2) language policies, and (3) individual language behavior, we provide a critical review of how GFL contributes to the reduction of gender stereotyping and discrimination. Our review provides a basis for future research and for scientifically based policy-making.

  2. Systems management of facilities agreements

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Blundell, A.

    1998-01-01

    The various types of facilities agreements, the historical obstacles to implementation of agreement management systems and the new opportunities emerging as industry is beginning to make an effort to overcome these obstacles, are reviewed. Barriers to computerized agreement management systems (lack of consistency, lack of standards, scarcity of appropriate computer software) are discussed. Characteristic features of a model facilities agreement management system and the forces driving the changing attitudes towards such systems (e.g. mergers) are also described

  3. Why "Gender" Disappeared from the Gender Gap: (Re-)Introducing Gender Identity Theory to Educational Gender Gap Research

    Science.gov (United States)

    Vantieghem, Wendelien; Vermeersch, Hans; Van Houtte, Mieke

    2014-01-01

    Educational gender gap research tries to explain the differential achievement of boys and girls at secondary school, which manifests in many western countries. Several explanatory frameworks are used for this purpose, such as masculinities theory. In this review article, the history of educational gender gap research in Anglo-Saxon literature and…

  4. Gender, Discourse, and "Gender and Discourse."

    Science.gov (United States)

    Davis, Hayley

    1997-01-01

    A critic of Deborah Tannen's book "Gender and Discourse" responds to comments made about her critique, arguing that the book's analysis of the relationship of gender and discourse tends to seek, and perhaps force, explanations only in those terms. Another linguist's analysis of similar phenomena is found to be more rigorous. (MSE)

  5. On social femininatives in Serbian and other Slavic languages

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Piper Predrag J.

    2016-01-01

    Full Text Available Social femininatives, such as Serbian pevačica, učiteljica, upravnica, available in all Slavic languages, have in recent decades become a subject of language policy based on political correctness in the field of gender relations. As part of this language policy, the requirement is put forward of creating feminine neologisms in respect of each masculine noun, designating a profession or social status. The use of the ideological and political criteria in order to change the grammatical structure of the language is typical of more or less all modern Slavic literary languages. A common feature of such language policy is their communicative and grammatical groundlessness. [Project of the Serbian Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development, Grant no. 178021: Opis i standardizacija savremenog srpskog jezika

  6. Does gender activism aggravate the superiority of one gender over ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    Does gender activism aggravate the superiority of one gender over the other? ... findings reveal that firstly, failure to value and embrace diversity by males, perpetuate gender discrimination. ... Keywords: Context, Culture, Structures, Systems ...

  7. An elusive goal? Gender equity and gender equality in health policy.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Payne, S

    2012-04-01

    Variations in the health of men and women are well known: men have poorer life expectancy than women in virtually every country, and there are differences between women and men in patterns of morbidity across the life course. These variations reflect both biology and gender, and health systems play a part through the services they offer. In recent years a number of national governments and international bodies have paid increasing attention to gender inequalities, and gender mainstreaming has been adopted by as a key policy objective at various levels of governance. While gender mainstreaming has resulted in some successes, analysis of the depth of change suggests a less optimistic view, reflecting the persistence of barriers to gender mainstreaming in health, which include a lack of resources, uncertainty over the goals of gender mainstreaming, and notional rather than genuine adoption of gender mainstreaming principles. Underlying these barriers however, is the use of bureaucratic and systems-based approaches to gender mainstreaming. The failure to challenge underlying gender relations of power allows gender strategies to become technocratic exercises which achieve results in terms of the boxes ticked, but not in relation to what matters: the health and health opportunities of both women and men. © Georg Thieme Verlag KG Stuttgart · New York.

  8. Mexican American Adolescents’ Gender Role Attitude Development: The Role of Adolescents’ Gender and Nativity and Parents’ Gender Role Attitudes

    Science.gov (United States)

    Updegraff, Kimberly A.; McHale, Susan M.; Zeiders, Katharine H.; Umaña-Taylor, Adriana J.; Perez-Brena, Norma J.; Wheeler, Lorey A.; Rodríguez De Jesús, Sue A.

    2014-01-01

    Gender development has long term implications for education and career endeavors and family formation behaviors, but we know very little about the role of sociocultural factors in developmental and individual differences. In this study, we investigated one domain of gender development, gender role attitudes, in Mexican American adolescents (N = 246; 51% female), using four phases of longitudinal data across eight years. Data were collected when adolescents averaged 12.51 years (SD = 0.58), 14.64 years (SD = 0.59), 17.72 years (SD = 0.57), and 19.60 years of age (SD = 0.66). Mothers’ and fathers’ gender role attitudes also were assessed in Phases 1, 3, and 4. Findings revealed that gender attitude development varied as a function of the interaction between adolescents’ nativity and gender. Among Mexico-born adolescents, females exhibited significant declines in traditional attitudes from early to late adolescence, but males’ attitudes were stable over time. U.S.-born females and males, in contrast, did not differ in their gender attitude trajectories. Examining the links between mothers’, fathers’, and adolescents’ gender role attitudes revealed within-person associations between mothers’ and adolescents’ gender role attitudes: on occasions when mothers reported more traditional attitudes relative to their own cross-time average, adolescents also reported more traditional attitudes than usual. In addition, fathers’ more traditional gender role attitudes were associated with daughters’, but not sons’, more traditional gender role attitudes at the between-person level. The discussion focuses on the interpretation of Mexican American adolescents’ gender role attitude development from a cultural ecological perspective. PMID:24777649

  9. Gender discrimination, gender disparities in obesity and human development.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ferretti, Fabrizio; Mariani, Michele

    2017-03-01

    Measuring gender inequality and women's empowerment is essential to understand the determinants of gender gaps, evaluate policies and monitor countries' progress. With this aim, over the past two decades, research has mainly been directed towards the development of composite indices. The purpose of this paper is to introduce a new and interdisciplinary perspective to the current debate on measuring gender inequality in human development. As a starting point, we develop a simple macroeconomic model of the interdependence between human development and gender inequality. We then introduce a biometric indicator, based on the ratio of female to male body mass index, to measure women's empowerment at the country level. Finally, by using the latest available data, we examine the ability of this biometric indicator to capture countries' performance in achieving gender equality. We obtain five main results: 1) we provide a theoretical framework to explain the joint determination of human development and gender inequality; 2) we show how to use this framework to simulate the impact of exogenous shocks or policy changes; 3) we demonstrate that exogenous changes have a direct and a multiplier effect on human development and gender inequality; 4) we find that the distribution of obesity between the female and male populations represents a useful proxy variable for measuring gender equality at the country level; 5) finally, we use these results to integrate and develop existing knowledge on the 'ecological' approach to the overweight and obesity pandemic.

  10. Gender discrimination, gender disparities in obesity and human development

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Fabrizio Ferretti

    2017-03-01

    Full Text Available Measuring gender inequality and women’s empowerment is essential to understand the determinants of gender gaps, evaluate policies and monitor countries’ progress. With this aim, over the past two decades, research has mainly been directed towards the development of composite indices. The purpose of this paper is to introduce a new and interdisciplinary perspective to the current debate on measuring gender inequality in human development. As a starting point, we develop a simple macroeconomic model of the interdependence between human development and gender inequality. We then introduce a biometric indicator, based on the ratio of female to male body mass index, to measure women’s empowerment at the country level. Finally, by using the latest available data, we examine the ability of this biometric indicator to capture countries’ performance in achieving gender equality. We obtain five main results: 1 we provide a theoretical framework to explain the joint determination of human development and gender inequality; 2 we show how to use this framework to simulate the impact of exogenous shocks or policy changes; 3 we demonstrate that exogenous changes have a direct and a multiplier effect on human development and gender inequality; 4 we find that the distribution of obesity between the female and male populations represents a useful proxy variable for measuring gender equality at the country level; 5 finally, we use these results to integrate and develop existing knowledge on the ‘ecological’ approach to the overweight and obesity pandemic.

  11. TRANSCENDENTAL ASPECTS OF GENDER

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Volodymyr V. Khmel

    2014-06-01

    Full Text Available This paper aims to analyze the basic principles of gender philosophy applying methodological tools of communicative pragmatics; to demonstrate how gender construct can provide gender humanism formation as one of the ideals of democratic society; to specify gender glossary terms such as “gender democracy”, “gender equality” and “gender justice”. Methodology. In order to investigate a theoretical framework in feminist philosophy, methodological tools of communicative pragmatics and discursive ethics that were elaborated by modern German philosophers J. Habermas, K.-O. Apel for analyzing ethical gender principles and their legitimation ways have been used in this research. Scientific novelty. Based on methodological differences in concepts of J. Habermas and K.-O. Apel, two opposite approaches to gender concept analysis – rational and pragmatic (Habermas and transcendental conceptual (K.-O. Apel have been found out. The article helps to specify the framework of categories and concepts. According to the legitimation way of gender ethical theory it was discovered that such notions as “gender democracy”, “gender equality” and “gender justice” do not have the same meanings. According to the analysis of communicative action program and consensus, the “gender equality” concept by Habermas is an artificial social construct that is methodologically grounded in cognitivism and diminishes the possibilities of gender values legitimation. According to K.-O. Apel, the concept of “gender justice” is based on transcendental moral and ethical sense of opposite genders unity and does not discharge unequal distribution of responsibilities and any invasion as well as represents certain extent of their difference. Conclusions. Fast growing gender changes in the society face ageold drawbacks of moral and spiritual principles of communities, taking into account social and cultural, national and gender identity. Thorough understanding of

  12. FFTF Authorization Agreement

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    DAUTEL, W.A.

    2000-01-01

    The purpose of the Authorization Agreement is to serve as a mechanism whereby the U.S. Department of Energy, Richland Operations Office (RL) and Fluor Hanford (FH) jointly clarify and agree to key conditions for conducting work safely and efficiently in the Fast Flux Test Facility (FFTF). Work must be accomplished in a manner that achieves high levels of quality while protecting the environment and the safety and health of workers and the public, and complying with applicable contractual and regulatory requirements. It is the intent of this Agreement to address those items of significant importance in establishing and supporting the FFTF Authorization Envelope, but this Agreement in no way alters the terms and conditions of the Project Hanford Management Contract (PHMC), Contract Number DE-AC06-96RL13200

  13. The Effect of Using Translation on Learning Grammatical Structures: A Case Study of Iranian Junior High School Students

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Hossein Ghaiyoomian

    2015-08-01

    Full Text Available Abstract The role of L1 in second/foreign language learning has been the subject of much debate and controversy. This article reports on a piece of research carried out in a junior high school in Isfahan, Iran. This study was conducted to examine the effect of using translation from L1 to L2 on the improvement of EFL learners' language accuracy. To fulfill the purpose of the study, 62 students in grade three of junior high school were chosen by means of administering an experimental made pre-test. The participants were divided into a control group and an experimental group. The experimental group received grammar exercises in translating some phrases and sentences from Persian into English related to the intended grammatical structures during the study period while the control group just did their textbook exercises. At the end, a post-test was given to the students and the mean scores of the two groups were identified. T-test revealed that the treatment had a considerable effect on students' language accuracy.

  14. Parent-Child Agreement Using the Spence Children’s Anxiety Scale and a Thermometer in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    T. May

    2015-01-01

    Full Text Available Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD experience high anxiety which often prompts clinical referral and requires intervention. This study aimed to compare parent and child reports on the Spence Children’s Anxiety Scale (SCAS and a child-reported “worry thermometer” in 88 children aged 8–13 years, 44 with ASD and 44 age, gender, and perceptual IQ matched typically developing children. There were no gender differences in child report on the SCAS and worry thermometers. Results indicated generally good correlations between parent and child self-reported SCAS symptoms for typically developing children but poor agreement in parent-child ASD dyads. The worry thermometer child-report did not reflect child or parent reports on the SCAS. Findings suggest 8–13-year-old children with ASD may have difficulties accurately reporting their anxiety levels. The clinical implications were discussed.

  15. Signalling in international environmental agreements. Using pre-agreement emission level as a signalling device

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Steiner, U.

    1997-12-31

    This paper addresses the question about strategic incentives in international environmental agreements and tries to give a positive description of how the design of the agreement influences the strategic behaviour of potential participants before they enter the treaty. A common feature of the design of agreements is that the reduction obligations (RO) are made contingent on a pre-agreement or baseline emission. As it is assumed that countries posses better information about their reduction costs than does the international body in charge of deciding the RO, countries might have incentives to signal higher costs by increasing their baseline emission, and thereby reducing the costs of entering the agreement. The appropriate analytical framework is to use a signalling game approach, where the pre-agreement emission level conveys information about the privately informed country`s reduction cost. In this paper two types of agreement design are considered, one with uniform obligations, and one with differentiated obligations. This enables us to make a comparison between two different reduction regimes. The result is that the predicted outcomes vary with regard to both the environmental effectiveness and the associated expected costs for the participating countries. This means that when private information is considered, the anticipation of a given institutional framework has significant impact on the resulting distortion of the total emission level, highlighting the necessity of taking this into consideration when future designs are proposed. (au)

  16. Signalling in international environmental agreements: Using pre-agreement emission level as a signalling device

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Steiner, U.

    1997-01-01

    This paper addresses the question about strategic incentives in international environmental agreements and tries to give a positive description of how the design of the agreement influences the strategic behaviour of potential participants before they enter the treaty. A common feature of the design of agreements is that the reduction obligations (RO) are made contingent on a pre-agreement or baseline emission. As it is assumed that countries posses better information about their reduction costs than does the international body in charge of deciding the RO, countries might have incentives to signal higher costs by increasing their baseline emission, and thereby reducing the costs of entering the agreement. The appropriate analytical framework is to use a signalling game approach, where the pre-agreement emission level conveys information about the privately informed country's reduction cost. In this paper two types of agreement design are considered, one with uniform obligations, and one with differentiated obligations. This enables us to make a comparison between two different reduction regimes. The result is that the predicted outcomes vary with regard to both the environmental effectiveness and the associated expected costs for the participating countries. This means that when private information is considered, the anticipation of a given institutional framework has significant impact on the resulting distortion of the total emission level, highlighting the necessity of taking this into consideration when future designs are proposed. (au)

  17. Gender Identity and Gender Confusion in Children

    Science.gov (United States)

    ... to be influenced by their identification with the males and females in their lives, the sense of being a girl or a boy (i.e. gender identity) cannot be changed. Gender Stereotypes Over time, society has recognized that stereotypes of ...

  18. Gender Equality a case study of Sweden : Gender Equality Gender Equity and policies of combating inequality at workplace to make the society equal.

    OpenAIRE

    Sultan, Tipu

    2010-01-01

    The paper analyses Gender Equality, Gender Equity and policies of combating inequality at workplace to make the society equal as a case study of Sweden. The aim of paper is see the gender equality, gender equity, discrimination against women at workplace and to describe the policies combating inequality in the welfare state of Sweden. This work highlights the gender equality in terms of institutionalizing gender equality, gender equity, gender and pay gap, parental leave, gender and the pensi...

  19. Lexical and grammatical development in trilingual speakers of isiXhosa, English and Afrikaans

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Anneke P. Potgieter

    2016-05-01

    Full Text Available Background: There is a dearth of normative data on linguistic development among child speakers of Southern African languages, especially in the case of the multilingual children who constitute the largest part of this population. This inevitably impacts on the accuracy of developmental assessments of such speakers. Already negative lay opinion on the effect of early multilingualism on language development rates could be exacerbated by the lack of developmental data, ultimately affecting choices regarding home and school language policies. Objectives: To establish whether trilinguals necessarily exhibit developmental delay when compared to monolinguals and, if so, whether this delay (1 occurs in terms of both lexical and grammatical development; and (2 in all three the trilinguals’ languages, regardless of input quantity. Method: Focusing on isiXhosa, South African English and Afrikaans, the study involved a comparison of 11 four-year-old developing trilinguals’ acquisition of vocabulary and passive constructions with that of 10 age-matched monolingual speakers of each language. Results: The trilinguals proved to be monolingual-like in their lexical development in the language to which, on average, they had been exposed most over time, that is, isiXhosa. No developmental delay was found in the trilinguals’ acquisition of passive constructions, regardless of the language of testing. Conclusion: As previously found for bilingual development, necessarily reduced quantity of exposure does not hinder lexical development in the trilinguals’ input dominant language. The overall lack of delay in their acquisition of the passive is interpreted as possible evidence of cross-linguistic bootstrapping and support for early multilingual exposure.

  20. Lexical and grammatical development in trilingual speakers of isiXhosa, English and Afrikaans

    Science.gov (United States)

    2016-01-01

    Background There is a dearth of normative data on linguistic development among child speakers of Southern African languages, especially in the case of the multilingual children who constitute the largest part of this population. This inevitably impacts on the accuracy of developmental assessments of such speakers. Already negative lay opinion on the effect of early multilingualism on language development rates could be exacerbated by the lack of developmental data, ultimately affecting choices regarding home and school language policies. Objectives To establish whether trilinguals necessarily exhibit developmental delay when compared to monolinguals and, if so, whether this delay (1) occurs in terms of both lexical and grammatical development; and (2) in all three the trilinguals’ languages, regardless of input quantity. Method Focusing on isiXhosa, South African English and Afrikaans, the study involved a comparison of 11 four-year-old developing trilinguals’ acquisition of vocabulary and passive constructions with that of 10 age-matched monolingual speakers of each language. Results The trilinguals proved to be monolingual-like in their lexical development in the language to which, on average, they had been exposed most over time, that is, isiXhosa. No developmental delay was found in the trilinguals’ acquisition of passive constructions, regardless of the language of testing. Conclusion As previously found for bilingual development, necessarily reduced quantity of exposure does not hinder lexical development in the trilinguals’ input dominant language. The overall lack of delay in their acquisition of the passive is interpreted as possible evidence of cross-linguistic bootstrapping and support for early multilingual exposure. PMID:27245133

  1. Lexical and grammatical development in trilingual speakers of isiXhosa, English and Afrikaans.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Potgieter, Anneke P

    2016-05-20

    There is a dearth of normative data on linguistic development among child speakers of Southern African languages, especially in the case of the multilingual children who constitute the largest part of this population. This inevitably impacts on the accuracy of developmental assessments of such speakers. Already negative lay opinion on the effect of early multilingualism on language development rates could be exacerbated by the lack of developmental data, ultimately affecting choices regarding home and school language policies. To establish whether trilinguals necessarily exhibit developmental delay when compared to monolinguals and, if so, whether this delay (1) occurs in terms of both lexical and grammatical development; and (2) in all three the trilinguals' languages, regardless of input quantity. Focusing on isiXhosa, South African English and Afrikaans, the study involved a comparison of 11 four-year-old developing trilinguals' acquisition of vocabulary and passive constructions with that of 10 age-matched monolingual speakers of each language. The trilinguals proved to be monolingual-like in their lexical development in the language to which, on average, they had been exposed most over time, that is, isiXhosa. No developmental delay was found in the trilinguals' acquisition of passive constructions, regardless of the language of testing. As previously found for bilingual development, necessarily reduced quantity of exposure does not hinder lexical development in the trilinguals' input dominant language. The overall lack of delay in their acquisition of the passive is interpreted as possible evidence of cross-linguistic bootstrapping and support for early multilingual exposure.

  2. Stereotyping gender

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Lassen, Inger

    2011-01-01

    , there is still some way to go before genuine gender equality and emancipation may become reality, in spite of Denmark’s image as egalitarian society. To try to explain this paradox, the paper explores gender perceptions by analysing how men and women talk about gender in focus group discussions and how the two...... gender categories evaluate themselves and the Other in their quest for social identities. Analysis of the focus group data indicates that, more often than not, the interviewees resort to stereotyping in their construction of identities. Using the Appraisal framework (Martin and White 2005) for analysing...... stereotypical categorizations made by the interviewees, the article argues that employees in the bank tend to reproduce and perpetuate a patriarchal management system in spite of various forces pulling in a new post-patriarchal direction where gender is just one of many identities....

  3. The Multiplicity of Gender

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Skewes, Lea

    2015-01-01

    people could quickly sum up the full pallet of meanings that comes with these gender categories. What does it mean to be a man or a woman? Is your sex/gender best captured by your biology (genitalia, hormones and chromosomes), your gender identity (the gender you perceive yourself to be) or your gender...... expression (how you chose to express your gender in clothes, jewelry, gestures, tone of voice)? Many people go through life never making those nuanced gender distinctions. However, where you situated yourself on the different gendered spectrums can have a significant effect on your life and well-being....

  4. Mexican-American adolescents' gender role attitude development: the role of adolescents' gender and nativity and parents' gender role attitudes.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Updegraff, Kimberly A; McHale, Susan M; Zeiders, Katharine H; Umaña-Taylor, Adriana J; Perez-Brena, Norma J; Wheeler, Lorey A; Rodríguez De Jesús, Sue A

    2014-12-01

    Gender development has long term implications for education and career endeavors and family formation behaviors, but we know very little about the role of sociocultural factors in developmental and individual differences. In this study, we investigated one domain of gender development, gender role attitudes, in Mexican-American adolescents (N = 246; 51 % female), using four phases of longitudinal data across 8 years. Data were collected when adolescents averaged 12.51 years (SD = 0.58), 14.64 years (SD = 0.59), 17.72 years (SD = 0.57), and 19.60 years of age (SD = 0.66). Mothers' and fathers' gender role attitudes also were assessed in Phases 1, 3, and 4. Findings revealed that gender attitude development varied as a function of the interaction between adolescents' nativity and gender. Among Mexico-born adolescents, females exhibited significant declines in traditional attitudes from early to late adolescence, but males' attitudes were stable over time. U.S.-born females and males, in contrast, did not differ in their gender attitude trajectories. Examining the links between mothers', fathers', and adolescents' gender role attitudes revealed within-person associations between mothers' and adolescents' gender role attitudes: on occasions when mothers reported more traditional attitudes relative to their own cross-time average, adolescents also reported more traditional attitudes than usual. In addition, fathers' more traditional gender role attitudes were associated with daughters', but not sons', more traditional gender role attitudes at the between-person level. The discussion focuses on the interpretation of Mexican-American adolescents' gender role attitude development from a cultural ecological perspective.

  5. Multilateral and bilateral agreements

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Koponen, H.

    1993-01-01

    Finland has made both multilateral and bilateral agreements on the exchange of information related to radiation safety. The first arrangements for international agreements and exchange of information were made after the Chernobyl accident. In 1987, Finland joined the convention on early notification of a nuclear power accident coordinated by International Atomic Energy Agency. The convention is applied to accidents that cause of may cause emissions of radioactive substances that might affect the radiation safety of another country. Besides the convention on early notification, some other individual agreements have also been made. These include the International Nuclear Event Scale (INES) system and power companies own information exchange systems. Finland has conducted bilateral agreements with the Nordic countries and the Soviet Union on the notification of accidents and exchange of nuclear power plant information. Today, Russia answers for the Soviet Union's contractual obligations. (orig.)

  6. 48 CFR 1642.7001 - Management agreement.

    Science.gov (United States)

    2010-10-01

    ... EMPLOYEES HEALTH BENEFITS ACQUISITION REGULATION CONTRACT MANAGEMENT CONTRACT ADMINISTRATION Management Agreement (in Lieu of Novation Agreement) 1642.7001 Management agreement. When it is in the best interest of... day-to-day performance of the contract. Examples of situations in which a Management Agreement may be...

  7. The Gendered Family Process Model: An Integrative Framework of Gender in the Family.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Endendijk, Joyce J; Groeneveld, Marleen G; Mesman, Judi

    2018-05-01

    This article reviews and integrates research on gender-related biological, cognitive, and social processes that take place in or between family members, resulting in a newly developed gendered family process (GFP) model. The GFP model serves as a guiding framework for research on gender in the family context, calling for the integration of biological, social, and cognitive factors. Biological factors in the model are prenatal, postnatal, and pubertal androgen levels of children and parents, and genetic effects on parent and child gendered behavior. Social factors are family sex composition (i.e., parent sex, sexual orientation, marriage status, sibling sex composition) and parental gender socialization, such as modeling, gender-differentiated parenting, and gender talk. Cognitive factors are implicit and explicit gender-role cognitions of parents and children. Our review and the GFP model confirm that gender is an important organizer of family processes, but also highlight that much is still unclear about the mechanisms underlying gender-related processes within the family context. Therefore, we stress the need for (1) longitudinal studies that take into account the complex bidirectional relationship between parent and child gendered behavior and cognitions, in which within-family comparisons (comparing behavior of parents toward a boy and a girl in the same family) are made instead of between-family comparisons (comparing parenting between all-boy families and all-girl families, or between mixed-gender families and same-gender families), (2) experimental studies on the influence of testosterone on human gender development, (3) studies examining the interplay between biology with gender socialization and gender-role cognitions in humans.

  8. Competition for Assistance Agreements

    Science.gov (United States)

    It is EPA policy to promote competition in the award of assistance agreements to the maximum extent practicable.When assistance agreements are awarded competitively, it is EPA policy that the competitive process be fair and open & that no applicant receive

  9. 29 CFR 1908.10 - Cooperative Agreements.

    Science.gov (United States)

    2010-07-01

    ... CONSULTATION AGREEMENTS § 1908.10 Cooperative Agreements. (a) Who may make Agreements. The Assistant Secretary... consultation services to private sector employers. (3) Renegotiation of existing Agreements funded under this part shall be initiated within 30 days of the effective date of these revisions. (c) Contents of...

  10. Gender issues in translation

    OpenAIRE

    ERGASHEVA G.I.

    2015-01-01

    The following research is done regarding gender in translation dealing specifically with the issue of the translators’ gender identity and its effect on their translations, as well as on how gender itself is translated and produced. We will try to clarify what gender is, how gender manifests itself in the system of language, and what problems translators encounter when translating or producing gender-related materials

  11. Nuclear arbitration: Interpreting non-proliferation agreements

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Tzeng, Peter

    2015-01-01

    At the core of the nuclear non-proliferation regime lie international agreements. These agreements include, inter alia, the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, nuclear co-operation agreements and nuclear export control agreements.1 States, however, do not always comply with their obligations under these agreements. In response, commentators have proposed various enforcement mechanisms to promote compliance. The inconvenient truth, however, is that states are generally unwilling to consent to enforcement mechanisms concerning issues as critical to national security as nuclear non-proliferation.3 This article suggests an alternative solution to the non-compliance problem: interpretation mechanisms. Although an interpretation mechanism does not have the teeth of an enforcement mechanism, it can induce compliance by providing an authoritative interpretation of a legal obligation. Interpretation mechanisms would help solve the non-compliance problem because, as this article shows, in many cases of alleged non-compliance with a non-proliferation agreement, the fundamental problem has been the lack of an authoritative interpretation of the agreement, not the lack of an enforcement mechanism. Specifically, this article proposes arbitration as the proper interpretation mechanism for non-proliferation agreements. It advocates the establishment of a 'Nuclear Arbitration Centre' as an independent branch of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and recommends the gradual introduction of arbitration clauses into the texts of non-proliferation agreements. Section I begins with a discussion of international agreements in general and the importance of interpretation and enforcement mechanisms. Section II then discusses nuclear non-proliferation agreements and their lack of interpretation and enforcement mechanisms. Section III examines seven case studies of alleged non-compliance with non-proliferation agreements in order to show that the main problem in many cases

  12. Gender remix

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Prieur, Annick

    2002-01-01

    of a subjective identity. Based on interviews with children of immigrants from patriarchal societies living in Norway, one of the countries in the world where gender equality has reached furthest, the article reveals the tension they experience between the ways gender issues are dealt with in their families......Values and practices regarding sex and gender are among the most fundamental constituents of a society?s symbolic system as well as of an individual?s self. Gendered ways of behavior are symbolic markers of ethnicity, both in a process of labeling from the outside and in the construction...... and in the surrounding society. Their gender constructions cannot be understood only in light of cultural influence, as if on a scale running from conformity to parents? culture to conformity to Norwegian culture. There is something really new in the making ­ new combinations and new creations ­ reflecting...

  13. Gender remix

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Prieur, Annick

    2002-01-01

    Values and practices regarding sex and gender are among the most fundamental constituents of a society?s symbolic system as well as of an individual?s self. Gendered ways of behavior are symbolic markers of ethnicity, both in a process of labeling from the outside and in the construction...... of a subjective identity. Based on interviews with children of immigrants from patriarchal societies living in Norway, one of the countries in the world where gender equality has reached furthest, the article reveals the tension they experience between the ways gender issues are dealt with in their families...... and in the surrounding society. Their gender constructions cannot be understood only in light of cultural influence, as if on a scale running from conformity to parents? culture to conformity to Norwegian culture. There is something really new in the making ­ new combinations and new creations ­ reflecting...

  14. Gender Stereotyping in Family

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Muhammad Hussain

    2015-07-01

    Full Text Available Gender stereotyping and gender role development is one of the debatable concerns to sociologists especially those who are interested in sociology of gender. This study attempts to investigate the role of family inculcating gender stereotyping in Pakhtun culture and its impact on gender role development conducted in public-sector universities of Malakand Division, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan. The data were collected through in-depth interview method using interview guide as a tool of data collection. A sample size of 24 respondents consisting male and female students and teachers (8 samples from each university through purposive sampling technique was selected from three universities in the region, that is, University of Malakand, University of Swat, and Shaheed Benazir Bhutto University Sharingal (main campus. The collected information has been analyzed qualitatively where primary information has been linked with secondary data for further elaboration and attainment of grounded facts. The study reveals that gender stereotyping and gender role formation are sociocultural and relational constructs, which are developed and inculcated in the institutional network, social interaction, and social relationships especially in family. The study indicated that in family sphere, gender stereotyping and gender role formation are the outcome of gender socialization, differential familial environment, and parents’ differential role with children. The study recommends that gender-balanced familial environment, adopting the strategy of gender mainstreaming and positive role of media, can overcome gender stereotyping and reduce its impacts on gender and social role formation.

  15. 48 CFR 2831.109 - Advance agreements.

    Science.gov (United States)

    2010-10-01

    ... proposed agreement. The approved determination will be placed in the contract file. (c) All advance... the agreements. Advance agreements will be signed by both the contractor and the contracting officer, and made a part of the contract file. Copies of executed advance agreements will be distributed to the...

  16. Parenting-by-gender interactions in child psychopathology: attempting to address inconsistencies with a Canadian national database

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Thabane Lehana

    2010-01-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background Research has shown strong links between parenting and child psychopathology. The moderating role of child gender is of particular interest, due to gender differences in socialization history and in the prevalence of psychiatric disorders. Currently there is little agreement on how gender moderates the relationship between parenting and child psychopathology. This study attempts to address this lack of consensus by drawing upon two theories (self-salience vs. gender stereotyped misbehaviour to determine how child gender moderates the role of parenting, if at all. Methods Using generalized estimating equations (GEE associations between three parenting dimensions (hostile-ineffective parenting, parental consistency, and positive interaction were examined in relationship to child externalizing (physical aggression, indirect aggression, and hyperactivity-inattention and internalizing (emotional disorder-anxiety dimensions of psychopathology. A sample 4 and 5 year olds from the National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth (NLSCY were selected for analysis and followed over 6 years (N = 1214. Two models with main effects (Model 1 and main effects plus interactions (Model 2 were tested. Results No child gender-by-parenting interactions were observed for child physical aggression and indirect aggression. The association between hostile-ineffective parenting and child hyperactivity was stronger for girls, though this effect did not reach conventional levels of statistical significance (p = .059. The associations between parenting and child emotional disorder did vary as a function of gender, where influences of parental consistency and positive interaction were stronger for boys. Discussion Despite the presence of a few significant interaction effects, hypotheses were not supported for either theory (i.e. self-salience or gender stereotyped misbehaviour. We believe that the inconsistencies in the literature regarding child gender

  17. Dementia and the gender trouble?: Theorising dementia, gendered subjectivity and embodiment.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sandberg, Linn J

    2018-06-01

    Despite person-centred approaches increasingly focusing on looking at the person in dementia instead of the pathology, the role of gender in dementia has been little explored. This article discusses how pervasive discourses on a loss of self and dementia as abject are interwoven with a de-gendering of persons with dementia. The cultural anxiety that dementia evokes in terms of loss of bodily and cognitive control could also be linked to a failure to normatively and intelligibly express gender when living with dementia. As a way to sustain personhood for people with dementia and challenge discourses on people with dementia as 'non-people', person-centred approaches have emphasised the collaborative work of carers, relatives and persons with dementia. Often implicitly, this also involves a 're-gendering' of persons with dementia where gendered biographies and pasts are upheld and gendered embodied selfhood is maintained through, for example, dress, hair and other aspects of appearance. This re-gendering could be of great significance for people with dementia to become intelligible as persons. Still, dementia studies must further consider non-normative expressions of gender and involve feminist theorising on gender as a power asymmetry since some embodiments and selves are more likely to be sustained in dementia than others. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  18. Gender Stereotype Susceptibility

    Science.gov (United States)

    Pavlova, Marina A.; Weber, Susanna; Simoes, Elisabeth; Sokolov, Alexander N.

    2014-01-01

    Gender affects performance on a variety of cognitive tasks, and this impact may stem from socio-cultural factors such as gender stereotyping. Here we systematically manipulated gender stereotype messages on a social cognition task on which no initial gender gap has been documented. The outcome reveals: (i) Stereotyping affects both females and males, with a more pronounced impact on females. Yet an explicit negative message for males elicits a striking paradoxical deterioration in performance of females. (ii) Irrespective of gender and directness of message, valence of stereotype message affects performance: negative messages have stronger influence than positive ones. (iii) Directness of stereotype message differentially impacts performance of females and males: females tend to be stronger affected by implicit than explicit negative messages, whereas in males this relationship is opposite. The data are discussed in the light of neural networks underlying gender stereotyping. The findings provide novel insights into the sources of gender related fluctuations in cognition and behavior. PMID:25517903

  19. Gender stereotype susceptibility.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Pavlova, Marina A; Weber, Susanna; Simoes, Elisabeth; Sokolov, Alexander N

    2014-01-01

    Gender affects performance on a variety of cognitive tasks, and this impact may stem from socio-cultural factors such as gender stereotyping. Here we systematically manipulated gender stereotype messages on a social cognition task on which no initial gender gap has been documented. The outcome reveals: (i) Stereotyping affects both females and males, with a more pronounced impact on females. Yet an explicit negative message for males elicits a striking paradoxical deterioration in performance of females. (ii) Irrespective of gender and directness of message, valence of stereotype message affects performance: negative messages have stronger influence than positive ones. (iii) Directness of stereotype message differentially impacts performance of females and males: females tend to be stronger affected by implicit than explicit negative messages, whereas in males this relationship is opposite. The data are discussed in the light of neural networks underlying gender stereotyping. The findings provide novel insights into the sources of gender related fluctuations in cognition and behavior.

  20. Gendered globalization

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Milwertz, Cecilia Nathansen; Cai, Yiping

    2017-01-01

    Both the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and Nordic countries (Sweden, Iceland, Denmark, Norway and Finland) view gender equality as a social justice issue and are politically committed towards achieving gender equality nationally and internationally. Since China has taken a proactive position...... on globalization and global governance, gender equality is possibly an area that China may wish to explore in collaboration with the Nordic countries....