Dissertations / Theses: 'Lexical system of English'

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Tåqvist, Marie. ""Another thing" : Discourse-organising nouns in advanced learner English." Doctoral thesis, Karlstads universitet, Institutionen för språk, litteratur och interkultur, 2016. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:kau:diva-41085.

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This study examines the use of discourse-organising nouns (DONs), such as fact, issue, and problem, in Swedish advanced students’ academic writing in second language (L2) English, and in what ways texts produced by the L2 students resemble or differ from those produced by advanced native-speaker (L1) students and from expert writing in this respect. The study uses corpus linguistic methodology and is set within the frameworks of Halliday’s systemic-functional linguistics and Granger’s Contrastive Interlanguage Analysis. Results show both similarities and differences across the writer groups. Noteworthy similarities include overall frequencies of DONs and their modifiers. Differences include variety of usage and register appropriacy. These differences were often the largest between the L2 student writing and the expert writing, though findings suggest that both student groups can usefully be thought of as learners of academic writing in English in this respect. Specifically, the students’ usage was found to be less varied than the expert writing, and to be characterised by more frequent use of semantically vague nouns (e.g., thing and fact) and nouns marking attitude and involvement (e.g., opinion and question). Other central findings include the tendency, on the part of the students, to use DONs less frequently in syntactic structures prototypical of formal academic prose, and to use them more frequently in structures with the potential to express stance, compared to the expert writing. The study also found more frequent use of evaluative modifiers of DONs in the student writing. In sum, the L2 student writing and, to a lesser extent, the L1 student writing, was found to approximate the corpus of expert writing in many respects, but with less variety, fewer markers of formality, and more frequent occurrences of interpersonal features in their use of DONs. The result is discourse that can in part be characterised as vague and subjective, as well as involved and informal.
This study examines the use of discourse-organising nouns (DONs), such as fact, issue, and problem, in Swedish advanced students’ academic writing in second language (L2) English, and in what ways texts produced by the L2 students resemble or differ from those produced by advanced native-speaker students and from expert writing in this respect. Results show both similarities and differences across the writer groups. Noteworthy similarities include overall frequencies of DONs and their modifiers. Differences include variety of usage and register appropriacy. In short, the L2 student writing and, to a lesser extent, the L1 student writing, was found to approximate the corpus of expert writing in many respects, but with less variety, fewer markers of formality, and more frequent occurrences of interpersonal features in their use of DONs. The result is discourse that can in part be characterised as vague and subjective, as well as involved and informal. These differences were often the largest between the L2 student writing and the expert writing, though findings suggest that both student groups can usefully be thought of as learners of academic writing in English in this respect.

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Park, Eun Jeong. "The Effectiveness of Corpus-Aided Instruction Using Lexical Bundles to Improve Academic Writing in Instructed Second Language Acquisition: A Multimethod Research Design." The Ohio State University, 2019. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1556003595087828.

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Riha, Helena. "Lettered Words and Roman Letter Characters in Chinese Writing: A Study Of Alphabetic Writing in Chinese Newswires." The Ohio State University, 2008. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1222045556.

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Holmes, Jasper Willem. "Lexical properties of English verbs." Thesis, University College London (University of London), 2005. http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1444789/.

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The central claim of this thesis is that the combinatorial properties of words are determined by their lexical structures. I argue that the lexicalist position follows from the Word Grammar (WG) analytical framework. This framework, developed by Hudson (1984, 1990, 1994, 2003), is the one that I adopt in the linguistic descriptions in the thesis, and the further development of the framework is a significant part of the work. I consider the work of a number of writers, some of whom take a similar lexicalist position. I show how the lexicalist assumption, together with the analytical properties of WG, provides for a meaningful and explanatory analysis of a number of grammatical patterns, including the interaction between verbs of motion and their satellites, the syntactic and semantic behaviour of resultative expressions and alternation between causative and unaccusative uses of verbs. A detailed analysis of the meanings of verbs and prepositions provides the means for predicting their syntactic and semantic behaviour in the relevant constructions. I concentrate on English chiefly because it is my own first language, but also because of the body of existing work, including corpuses, in or on English which provides a basis for the work in the second part. I do consider data from other languages when they show illuminating similarities or differences to the patterns found in English. I concentrate on the structure and behaviour of verbs since they often stand at the centre of grammatical structures, determining to a large extent the relationships among the elements that surround them. However, it is of course impossible to study the behaviour of verbs without also considering the properties of those other elements. Considerable time is spent on the relationships between verbs and other argument-taking words, including prepositions, particles and adjectives.

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McMahon, April M. S. "Constraining lexical phonology : evidence from English vowels." Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 1989. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.236336.

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Paetzold, Gustavo Henrique. "Lexical simplification for non-native English speakers." Thesis, University of Sheffield, 2016. http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/15332/.

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Lexical Simplification is the process of replacing complex words in texts to create simpler, more easily comprehensible alternatives. It has proven very useful as an assistive tool for users who may find complex texts challenging. Those who suffer from Aphasia and Dyslexia are among the most common beneficiaries of such technology. In this thesis we focus on Lexical Simplification for English using non-native English speakers as the target audience. Even though they number in hundreds of millions, there are very few contributions that aim to address the needs of these users. Current work is unable to provide solutions for this audience due to lack of user studies, datasets and resources. Furthermore, existing work in Lexical Simplification is limited regardless of the target audience, as it tends to focus on certain steps of the simplification process and disregard others, such as the automatic detection of the words that require simplification. We introduce a series of contributions to the area of Lexical Simplification that range from user studies and resulting datasets to novel methods for all steps of the process and evaluation techniques. In order to understand the needs of non-native English speakers, we conducted three user studies with 1,000 users in total. These studies demonstrated that the number of words deemed complex by non-native speakers of English correlates with their level of English proficiency and appears to decrease with age. They also indicated that although words deemed complex tend to be much less ambiguous and less frequently found in corpora, the complexity of words also depends on the context in which they occur. Based on these findings, we propose an ensemble approach which achieves state-of-the-art performance in identifying words that challenge non-native speakers of English. Using the insight and data gathered, we created two new approaches to Lexical Simplification that address the needs of non-native English speakers: joint and pipelined. The joint approach employs resource-light neural language models to simplify words deemed complex in a single step. While its performance was unsatisfactory, it proved useful when paired with pipelined approaches. Our pipelined simplifier generates candidate replacements for complex words using new, context-aware word embedding models, filters them for grammaticality and meaning preservation using a novel unsupervised ranking approach, and finally ranks them for simplicity using a novel supervised ranker that learns a model based on the needs of non-native English speakers. In order to test these and previous approaches, we designed LEXenstein, a framework for Lexical Simplification, and compiled NNSeval, a dataset that accounts for the needs of non-native English speakers. Comparisons against hundreds of previous approaches as well as the variants we proposed showed that our pipelined approach outperforms all others. Finally, we introduce PLUMBErr, a new automatic error identification framework for Lexical Simplification. Using this framework, we assessed the type and number of errors made by our pipelined approach throughout the simplification process and found that combining our ensemble complex word identifier with our pipelined simplifier yields a system that makes up to 25% fewer mistakes compared to the previous state-of-the-art strategies during the simplification process.

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Baker, Kirk. "Multilingual Distributional Lexical Similarity." The Ohio State University, 2008. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1221752517.

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Meziane, Amel. "The lexical problems and lexical strategies of Tunisian learners in French and English writing." Thesis, University of Essex, 2012. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.571504.

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Process-based studies investigating composing behavior in Ll and L2/L3 writing have generally focused on the way writers plan, formulate,' revise and edit their written compositions. They, however, paid little attention to the lexical problems those writers were aware of and how they endeavored to solve them using communication strategies. This study examines a) the lexical problems (types and rates per 100 words) that Tunisian students noticed when writing argumentative essays in French (L2) and English (L3) in an exam- simulated situation as well as b) the various lexical strategies (types and percentages) they used to solve their lexical problems. Their c) notice ability is also examined and a new measure of the notice phenomenon is suggested. The variation of a, band c was looked at in relation to the three factors under-investigation namely language (L2 vs. L3), lexical proficiency and course level (Baccalaureat students vs. EFL majors). Background questionnaire together with vocabulary tests, think-aloud protocols, retrospective interviews and subjects' L2 and L3 essays constitute the main research instruments. Quantitative and qualitative results show that different types of competence-based problems (lexical gaps and problems originating from incomplete mastery of known words) and performance-based problems (retrieval problems and perceived problems of words inappropriateness and repetition) were identified in the process of both L2 and L3 writing. The frequency of some lexical problems varied across languages (e.g. lexical .gaps), lexical proficiency (e.g. lexical gaps and mastery of aspects of known words) and course level (e.g. retrieval of word aspect problems in L2 writing). With regards to lexical strategies, subjects had recourse to a) target language-based strategies b) mediator language-based strategies i.e. using lexical knowledge of other languages they learnt/are still learning c) reading information already available in the compositions and d) non- linguistic strategies such as message abandonment, ignoring, and postponing. Lexical proficiency played a crucial role in determining the percentages of. target language-based and mediator language-based strategies. The notice ability turned out to be weak and its variation was dependent only on subjects' lexical proficiency in English.

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Jim, Mei-hang. "A study of lexical errors in Cantonese ESL students' writing." Click to view the E-thesis via HKUTO, 2005. http://sunzi.lib.hku.hk/hkuto/record/B31602812.

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Kiriakos, Bernard. "Detection of lexical stress in English isolated words." Thesis, McGill University, 1988. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=61710.

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Dekova, Rositsa. "Lexical encoding of verbs in English and Bulgarian." Doctoral thesis, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Department of Modern Foreign Languages, 2006. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:no:ntnu:diva-2199.

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Chen, Long. "Lexical strategies of advanced Chinese learners of English." Marburg Tectum-Verl, 2005. http://deposit.ddb.de/cgi-bin/dokserv?id=2798635&prov=M&dok_var=1&dok_ext=htm.

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Bahumaid, Showqi Ali. "Lexical interference of English in colloquial Aden Arabic." Thesis, University of Exeter, 1990. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.276867.

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Tanskanen, Sanna-Kaisa. "Collaborating towards coherence : lexical cohesion in English discourse /." Amsterdam : J. Benjamins, 2006. http://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb402124160.

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Ahmed, Zinab Ali Aboulgasem. "English lexical collocation knowledge of Libyan university students." Thesis, Bangor University, 2012. https://research.bangor.ac.uk/portal/en/theses/english-lexical-collocation-knowledge-of-libyan-university-students(39628868-c2a8-4855-9fcf-973751683516).html.

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One of the most challenging problems for EFL students is to be able to express themselves not just grammatically but also acceptably and naturally in English in appropriate contexts. The ability to produce acceptable and natural expressions in English is closely related to the EFL students' competence in collocation- which words go together in normal usage. This study therefore investigated Libyan EFL university students' lexical collocation use. It also aims to examine how learners' L1 (Arabic) influences their production of collocations. It analyzes their problems in the usage of six patterns of lexical collocations: verb+ noun. noun+ verb noun+ noun adjective+ noun verb +adverb adverb+ adjective. Participants of the present study were 185 Libyan university students majoring in English at the department of English language at Al-Jabal Al-Gharbi University. Data for the study was collected from a multiple-cho ice test consisted of 60 items and a translation task comprised of 28 items alongside a self- responding quest ionnaire. The data were examined and the results revealed that the informants' ability is lower than expected. The findings also showed that Libyan university students do have problems with English lexical collocations in both reception and production of all patterns of lex ical collocations. Results also indicated that learners' Ll and their amount of exposure to English had a strong influence on the learners' acquisition of English lexical collocations. The findings of this study have some immediate implications for both language learners and teachers of EFL/ESL as well as for writers of materials.

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Pace-Sigge, Michael. "Evidence of lexical priming in spoken Liverpool English." Thesis, University of Liverpool, 2010. http://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/7873/.

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This thesis is about two things. Firstly, drawing on Michael Hoey’s Lexical Priming, it aims to extend the research represented in that book – into the roots of the concept of priming and into how far Hoey’s claims are valid for spoken English corpora. The thesis traces the development of the concept of priming, which was initially work done by computational analysts, psychologists and psycho-linguists, to present a clearer picture of what priming means and in how far the phenomenon of priming has been proven to be a salient model of how man’s mind works. Moving on from that, I demonstrate how this model can be adapted to provide a model of language generation and use as Sinclair (2004) and Hoey (2003 etc.) have done, leading to the linguistic theory of Lexical Priming. Secondly, throughout the thesis two speech communities are compared: a general community of English speakers throughout the UK and a specific community, namely the Liverpool English (Scouse) speakers of Liverpool, UK. In the course of this work, a socio-economic discussion highlights the notion of Liverpool Exceptionalism and, grounded in the theory of lexical priming, I aim to show through corporaled research that this Exceptionalism manifests itself, linguistically, through (amongst other things) specific use of particular words and phrases. I thus research the lexical use of Liverpool speakers in direct comparison to the use by other UK English speakers. I explore the use of “I” and people, indefinite pronouns (anybody, someone etc.), discourse markers (like, really, well, yeah etc.) amongst other key items of spoken discourse where features of two varieties of English may systematically differ. The focus is on divergence found in their collocation, colligation, semantic preference and their lexically driven grammatical patterns. Comparing casual spoken Liverpool English with the casual spoken (UK) English found in the Macmillan and BNC subcorpora, this study finds primings in the patterns of language use that appear in all three corpora. Beyond that, there are primings of language use that appear to be specific to the Liverpool English corpus. With Scouse as the example under the microscope, this is an exploration into how speakers in different speech communities use the same language – but differently. It is not only the phonetic realisation, or the grammatical or lexical differences that define them as a separate speech group – it is the fact that they use the same lexicon in a distinct way. This means that lexical use, rather than just lexical stock, is a characterising feature of dialects.

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Li, Carrie. "Is lexical richness an essential criterion in judging a piece of writing?" Hong Kong : University of Hong Kong, 1997. http://sunzi.lib.hku.hk/hkuto/record.jsp?B19004291.

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Scarna, Antonina. "Lexical processing in monolinguals and bilinguals." Thesis, University of York, 1999. http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/10883/.

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Cummings, Patrick Jean. "A study of lexical innovations in Hong Kong English." Thesis, Click to view the E-thesis via HKUTO, 2007. http://sunzi.lib.hku.hk/hkuto/record/B38437867.

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Lam, Yat-kin, and 林日堅. "Intelligent lexical access based on Chinese/English text queries." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 2005. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B30445474.

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ALTURKI, Fadwi Waleed. "LEXICAL KNOWLEDGE OF VERB-PARTICLE BY SAUDI ENGLISH LEARNERS." OpenSIUC, 2015. https://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/theses/1609.

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Verb-particle constructions are one of the most complex components of the English language. Understanding and producing such difficult constructs in a second language (L2) is a challenge for L2 learners of English. This research was based on the study by Blais and Gonnerman (2013). The purpose of the current study was to measure American and Saudi participants' sensitivity to the degree of semantic similarity between verb/verb-particle constructions. The survey of similarity ratings was administered to 107 American native English speakers and 67 Saudi English learners. The participants were asked to rate 78 items based on their knowledge of the semantic similarity between verb/verb-particle pairs. Results revealed two major findings; American native speakers and Saudi English learners did not behave consistently with the similarity rating task, and the results did not support the previous categorizations of 78 items that established by Blais and Gonnerman. Extrapolating from these findings, it appears that similarity judgments of verb/verb-particle pairs may be sample-specific, even among native speakers. Therefore, it is questionable whether Blais and Gonnerman's instrument can be used to reliably compare the judgments of different samples of native and non-native speakers.

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Worlock, Pope Catherine. "Placing come and go : locating the lexical item." Thesis, University of Nottingham, 2015. http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/29077/.

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By examining language simultaneously along the paradigmatic and syntagmatic axes, Sinclair (2004a) identified the lexical item as an object of the discourse comprising an obligatory core and semantic prosody, and optional collocates, colligates and semantic preferences. This research investigates Sinclair’s theoretical model by locating the lexical items that are associated with the complementary verbs come and go in the spoken and written discourses in a selection of the International Corpora of English (ICE). The corpora selected are ICE-Canada, -GB, -India and –Jamaica. This research is innovative in that it adapts Sinclair’s methodology to examine high frequency lexical items across different discourses and different World Englishes It establishes that there is a significantly greater difference in frequency of the lexical items associated with come and go within the different discourses of the ICE corpora in comparison to between the ICE corpora. It replaces the core with the node, it introduces structural preference and discourse preference as co-selection components of the lexical item, and it substitutes semantic force for the term semantic prosody as defined by Sinclair: the ‘reason why [the item] is chosen’ (Sinclair 2004a: 144). Thus the lexical item comprises an obligatory node and semantic force, and optional collocates, colligates, structural preferences, semantic preferences and discourse preferences. As a consequence of these theoretical and methodological adaptations, this research shows that semantic forces with the associated co-selection components can function in tandem and that semantic forces, again with the associated co-selection components, can function in layers. The research concludes that the lexical item is not an identifiable object in the discourse, but it is the syntagmatic realisations of a paradigmatic choice.

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Ranbom, Larissa J. "Lexical representation of phonological variation in spoken word recognition." Diss., Online access via UMI:, 2005. http://wwwlib.umi.com/dissertations/fullcit/1425750.

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Sun, Jennifer Y. (Jennifer Yiling). "A system for automated lexical mapping." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2005. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/33083.

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Thesis (S.M.)--Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, 2005.
Includes bibliographical references (leaves 19-20).
Merging of clinical systems and medical databases, or aggregation of information from disparate databases, frequently requires a process where vocabularies are compared and similar concepts are mapped. Using a normalization phase followed by a novel alignment stage inspired by DNA sequence alignment methods, automated lexical mapping can map terms from various databases to standard vocabularies such as UMLS (Unified Medical Language System) and SNOMED (the Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine). This automated lexical mapping was evaluated using a real-world database of consultation letters from Children's Hospital Boston. The first phase involved extracting the reason for referral from the consultation letters. The reasons for referral were then mapped to SNOMED. The alignment algorithm was able to map 72% of equivalent concepts through lexical mapping alone. Lexical mapping can facilitate the integration of data from diverse sources and decrease the time and cost required for manual mapping and integration of clinical systems and medical databases.
by Jennifer Y. Sun.
S.M.

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Blekher, Marina. "Word-type effects in the lexical processing of Russian-English and French-English bilinguals." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 2000. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk2/ftp02/NQ59935.pdf.

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Koul, Ashok K. "Lexical borrowings in Kashmiri /." Delhi : Indian Institute of Language Studies, 2008. http://opac.nebis.ch/cgi-bin/showAbstract.pl?u20=8186323295.

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Originally presented as the author's thesis (doctoral)--Kurukshetra University, 1986.
Originaltitel: A linguistic study of loan words in Kashmiri, Titel der Originaldiss. Includes bibliographical references (p. [103]-104).

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Arthur, Jillian Mary, and n/a. "A lexical cartography of twentieth century Australia." University of Canberra. Resource, Environmental & Heritage Sciences, 1999. http://erl.canberra.edu.au./public/adt-AUC20060602.125646.

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This thesis looks at the relation between the English language and the Australian place. I have studied the vocabulary used by English speakers in Australia in the twentieth century of this geographical place and its environment, and how this vocabulary both constructs multiple and sometimes contesting 'Australias' and positions the settler in particular relations to this place. Although English has occupied Australia for over a century by the time this study begins, the analysis exposes the tensions, the gaps and the unease present in the use of a European language in the Australian place.

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Fultz, Audrey Liljestrand. "Prosody in lexical and syntactic disambiguation in English-French interlanguage." [Bloomington, Ind.] : Indiana University, 2009. http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:dissertation&res_dat=xri:pqdiss&rft_dat=xri:pqdiss:3380078.

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Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of French & Italian Studies, 2009.
Title from PDF t.p. (viewed on Jul 12, 2010). Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 70-12, Section: A, page: 4660. Adviser: Laurent P. Dekydtspotter.

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Echeverría, Daniela, Gregorio Godoy, Carolina Norambuena, Marcela Rivera, Quirian Sani, Eduardo Tapia, Consuelo Toro, Katherine Varas, and Javiera Zamora. "Acquisition of Lexical Competence in English as a Second Language." Tesis, Universidad de Chile, 2007. http://repositorio.uchile.cl/handle/2250/110496.

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Lee, Yunhyun. "Lexical Stress Features Affecting the Recognition of English Loanwords in Korean by Native English Hearers." Scholar Commons, 2017. https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd/7419.

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Unlike some Asian languages (e.g., Korean), English has lexical stress manifested by four acoustic features: duration, intensity, F0 (pitch), and vowel quality. Lexical stress has been known to have significant influences on native English speakers’ recognition of spoken words. According to Cutler (2015), lexical stress has both suprasegmental and segmental features: Suprasegmental features include duration, intensity, and F0 while vowel quality is considered a segmental feature. However, it is still unclear which lexical features are more responsible for spoken word recognition. This study examined which features, suprasegmental features or vowel quality of English, are a more significant influencer in spoken word recognition using English loanwords in Korean, which lack the prominence of any syllable realized by these features. Additionally, this study investigated the claimed advantage of the strong-weak stress pattern over a weak-strong pattern. To that end, two experiments were conducted. First, a parallel acoustic comparison was made between disyllabic English words and their corresponding English loanwords in Korean in order to investigate whether Korean has lexical stress features similar to those of English. 10 Korean and 10 English native speakers read 20 disyllabic words: the English loanwords in Korean by Korean participants and the source English words by American participants. The results showed that the differences of acoustic values between the syllables of the English words were significantly larger than those of the English loanwords. That is, the relative prominence of the stressed syllable over the unstressed syllable in English was not found in Korean. Additionally, the results indicated that Korean does not have a reduced vowel such as /ə/ in English, which is a critical feature of English vowel quality. In Experiment II, 16 English loanwords were used to create three versions of a spoken word recognition experiment, which was administered using the online survey platform, Qualtrics. Each version had a different type of manipulation: unmanipulated English loanwords, English loanwords with suprasegemental manipulation or English loanwords with vowel quality manipulation. 117 American English hearers identified the spoken words of one of the versions assigned to them; their success rates and reaction times (RT) were recorded. A binominal regression test was used for the analysis of success rates, and the Kruskal-Wallis H test for the response times. The results indicated that as far as success rates are concerned, both suprasegmental features and vowel quality play a role in recognizing spoken English words. However, when these two features were compared, vowel quality seemed to be a much stronger player. As for stress patterns, no significant differences were found in success rates across the three sets of manipulation. Moreover, this study did not find any significant difference in RTs either across the three manipulation sets or the two stress patterns. This study offered many applied implications in ESL, especially for teaching English pronunciation in Korea.

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Moriyama, Hiizu. "An examination of the lexical group feorm and its cognates." Thesis, King's College London (University of London), 1998. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.286303.

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Kearns, Kimberly Anne. "Lexical extension and overextension by blind children." Thesis, University of British Columbia, 1990. http://hdl.handle.net/2429/29139.

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This study investigated lexical extension and overextension by three blind children, ages 1;8, 2;1 and 2;5, who had vocabularies of at least 50 words but did not yet produce two-word utterances. Theories of semantic development take it for granted that vision provides the child with access to a great deal of the information necessary for the development of meaning, including much of the knowledge about size, shape, and movement of referents. Through vision, the child is able to form concepts on which word meaning is based, and extend the domain of application of words from original referents by recognizing other instances of that word. Despite this, surprisingly little research has focused on semantic development by blind children. Results of the few relevant studies indicate that blind children rarely extend or overextend their words, and attribute this inability to either (1) a lack of experience with other similar referents, or (2) an inability to form categories that underlie lexical extension and overextension. The blind children were given objects to name during a play session. These objects were (1) new examples of an item the child already named, providing opportunity for the child to extend known words to proper, novel referents, or (2) members of a different nominal category, but differing from an item the child already named in one or two criterial features, thus providing opportunity for the child to overextend. Data on spontaneous extension and overextension was also collected through analysis of utterances produced during experimental sessions and reported in parental diaries. Results indicated that all children extended and overextended their words, both spontaneously and in experiments; visual impairment did not prevent the children from recognizing other exemplars of a referent, or from applying words they knew to objects similar to original referents but, on the basis of criterial features, members of other nominal categories. Performance during two sorting tasks indicated that the children did not have impaired ability to form categories—all three children displayed classificatory behaviour during the sorting activities.
Medicine, Faculty of
Audiology and Speech Sciences, School of
Graduate

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Golmann, Malcolm. "Investigating British and American English : Dictionary research and corpus investigation." Thesis, Stockholm University, Department of English, 2009. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:su:diva-8701.

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The aim of this Magister Degree Project has been to investigate if can corpora be used to investigate patterns of lexical distribution and/or borrowing from one variety to another. Another aim has been to investigate how well classification of lexical items as either “British” or “American” supported by evidence from corpora of English.

In order to accomplish these aims sets of lexical items have been examined in two ways: first through dictionary research and “dictionary dating”, and second through the use of such English corpora as the British National Corpus (BNC), the United Kingdom Web Archiving Consortium (ukWaC), and the TIME Corpus of American English. The results of this research suggest that the simplistic labelling of certain items as “American” versus “British” is sometimes misleading, and that corpus investigations on their own, though useful, may not be entirely sufficient in this context.

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Juknevičienė, Rita. "Lexical Bundles in Non-Native Speaker and Native Speaker Written English." Doctoral thesis, Lithuanian Academic Libraries Network (LABT), 2011. http://vddb.laba.lt/obj/LT-eLABa-0001:E.02~2011~D_20110307_144834-16208.

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The study presents a contrastive analysis of learner language which is represented by written English of the Lithuanian EFL learners and native speakers of English. The material for the study comes from three corpora of learner language: two Lithuanian corpora consist of student essays written by first-year students and third-/fourth-year students of English Philology while the native speaker corpus is a selection of argumentative essays from the LOCNESS corpus. The study involves structural and functional analyses of lexical bundles retrieved from the three corpora. The findings of the study show that written English produced by the learners of the lower proficiency levels bears more features typical of spoken English. As the level of proficiency increases, the number of verbal bundles gives way to bundles incorporating noun and prepositional phrases which are more characteristic of the written variety of the language. As regards the distribution of lexical bundles across the functional types, the study proves that the Lithuanian learners pay more attention to discourse organization and expression of stance while in the native speaker material the proportion of referential lexical bundles, used to express propositions, is much more prominent. The study also involves an analysis of phrasal expressions recurring in the lexical bundles. The conclusions and implications of the research may be particularly useful to the practice of ELT/EFL in Lithuania while certain insights of... [to full text]
Disertacijoje aprašomas gretinamasis leksinių samplaikų tyrimas lietuvių gimtosios kalbos vartotojų ir gimtakalbių anglų kalbos vartotojų rašytinėje anglų kalboje. Tyrime naudoti trys skirtingų kalbos mokėjimo lygių vartotojų anglų kalbos tekstynai: pirmakursių studentų ir vyresniųjų kursų studentų, kurių gimtoji kalba – lietuvių, rašiniai, bei anglų gimtosios kalbos vartotojų, t. y. įvairių Didžiosios Britanijos ir JAV universitetų studentų rašiniai. Leksinių samplaikų struktūrinė analizė parodė, jog žemesnio mokėjimo lygio mokinių kalboje dažniau pasitaiko veiksmažodinių samplaikų, o aukštesnio lygio mokinių kalboje – vardažodinių. Tai rodo, jog žemesnio mokėjimo lygio mokinių kalba artimesnė sakytinei anglų kalbai, kuriai būdingos veiksmažodinės leksinės samplaikos. Kylant kalbos mokėjimo lygiui, mokinių rašytinėje kalboje randasi daugiau vardažodinių leksinių samplaikų, kurios dažnesnės rašytiniame diskurse. Funkcinė leksinių samplaikų analizė atskleidė, jog kylant mokinių kalbos mokėjimo lygiui nuosekliai kinta ir tam tikrų kalbos funkcijų raiška: žemesnio lygio mokiniai daugiau dėmesio skiria diskurso organizavimo ir autoriaus pozicijos raiškai, o aukštesnio lygio mokinių kalboje dažnesni referentiniai pasakymai, perteikiantys teksto propozicinį turinį. Leksinių samplaikų analizė pagal jose realizuojamus frazinius junginius atskleidė lietuvių gimtosios kalbos vartotojams būdingų frazinių junginių vartojimo ypatumų. Tyrimo išvados ir taikomoji vertė siejamos su anglų... [toliau žr. visą tekstą]

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Utgof, Darja. "The Perception of Lexical Similarities Between L2 English and L3 Swedish." Thesis, Linköping University, Department of Culture and Communication, 2008. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:liu:diva-15874.

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The present study investigates lexical similarity perceptions by students of Swedish as a foreign language (L3) with a good yet non-native proficiency in English (L2). The general theoretical framework is provided by studies in transfer of learning and its specific instance, transfer in language acquisition.

It is accepted as true that all previous linguistic knowledge is facilitative in developing proficiency in a new language. However, a frequently reported phenomenon is that students see similarities between two systems in a different way than linguists and theoreticians of education do. As a consequence, the full facilitative potential of transfer remains unused.

The present research seeks to shed light on the similarity perceptions with the focus on the comprehension of a written text. In order to elucidate students’ views, a form involving similarity judgements and multiple choice questions for formally similar items has been designed, drawing on real language use as provided by corpora. 123 forms have been distributed in 6 groups of international students, 4 of them studying Swedish at Level I and 2 studying at Level II.

The test items in the form vary in the degree of formal, semantic and functional similarity from very close cognates, to similar words belonging to different word classes, to items exhibiting category membership and/or being in subordinate/superordinate relation to each other, to deceptive cognates. The author proposes expected similarity ratings and compares them to the results obtained. The objective measure of formal similarity is provided by a string matching algorithm, Levenshtein distance.

The similarity judgements point at the fact that intermediate similarity values can be considered problematic. Similarity ratings between somewhat similar items are usually lower than could be expected. Besides, difference in grammatical meaning lowers similarity values significantly even if lexical meaning nearly coincides. Thus, the obtained results indicate that in order to utilize similarities to facilitate language learning, more attention should be paid to underlying similarities.

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Caink, Andrew David. "The lexical interface : closed class items in south Slavic and English." Thesis, Durham University, 1998. http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/5026/.

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This thesis argues for a minimalist theory of dual lexicalization. It presents a unified analysis of South Slavic and English auxiliaries and accounts for the distribution of South Slavic clitic clusters. The analysis moves much minor cross-linguistic variation out of the syntax into the lexicon and the level of Phonological Form. Following a critique of various approaches to lexical insertion in Chomskyan models, we adapt Emonds' (1994, 1997) theory of syntactic and phonological lexicalization for a model employing bare phrase structure. We redefine 'extended projection' in this theory, and revise the mechanism of 'Alternative Realization', whereby formal features associated with (possibly null) XP may be realised on another node. Pronominal clitics are one example of Alternative Realization. We claim that the Serbian/Croatian/Bosnian clitic cluster is phonologically lexicalized on the highest head in the extended projection. The clitic auxiliaries in SCB are not auxiliaries, but the altemative realization of features in 1º without categorial specification, hence the distribution of the clitic cluster as a whole. We show how a verb's extended projection may be extended by 'restructuring' verbs, allowing clitic climbing. In Bulgarian/Macedonian, the clausal clitic cluster appears on the highest [+V] head in the extended projection, determined by the categorial specifications of the auxiliaries. In the DP, the possessive dative clitic forms a clitic cluster with the determmer, its distribution determined by the realization of the Dº feature. SCB and Bulgarian clitic clusters require a phonological host in the domain of lexicalization: phonological lexicalization into the Wackemagel Position occurs as a 'last resort'. The treatment of auxiliaries and restructuring verbs m English and South Slavic derives from their lexical entries. Dual lexicalization and bracketing of features in the lexicon allows variation in trace licensing, optional word orders, and minor language-specific phonological idiosyncrasies.

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Mearns, Adam Jonathan. "The lexical representation of monsters and devils in Old English literature." Thesis, University of Newcastle Upon Tyne, 2003. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.251987.

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Klassen, Kimberly. "Investigating the lexical load of proper names for L2 English readers." Thesis, Cardiff University, 2018. http://orca.cf.ac.uk/115343/.

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The central question addressed is whether proper names present a strain for second language (L2) readers. Answering this question helps to establish the soundness of a widely held assumption in L2 vocabulary research, that L2 readers can easily recognise and understand proper names from the form (capitalisation) and function (context) in a text. The investigation is motivated by classroom experience that contradicts this assumption, suggesting a need for reconsideration of how proper names are handled in L2 vocabulary research and language pedagogy. The assumption was approached from three angles using a series of experiments. First,interviews were conducted to investigate how L2 readers perceive proper names and what strategies they use. Another study investigated how L2 readers approach unfamiliar proper names while reading, and found some L2 readers treat proper names as vocabulary to check in a dictionary. The second direction investigated the effect of L2 proper names on higher-level comprehension processes. Two studies compared the effect of culturally familiar and unfamiliar proper names on comprehension, and found no effect for culturally familiar proper names on global comprehension. The third approach considered proper name processing in terms of lower-level reading skills (i.e. word recognition and sub-skills). A study was conducted to determine to what extent L2 readers can identify proper names in context and found that participants were not very successful at using context to identify proper names. Three main claims are based on these results. First, proper names can disrupt reading in that some L2 readers treat them as unknown vocabulary to look up. Second, proper names do not seem to impact global comprehension. Third, L2 readers are not very successful in correctly identifying proper names from context. Based on these results, L2 vocabulary researchers and teachers should consider the potential burden proper names can place on L2 readers.

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Zhang, J. "Lexical richness and accommodation in oral English examinations with Chinese examiners." Thesis, University of the West of England, Bristol, 2014. http://eprints.uwe.ac.uk/24511/.

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Lexical assessment and lexical accommodation in oral examinations are new research dimensions, which have both theoretical and empirical values, however they are still much neglected. The present research aims to investigate: first, whether or not and how (if so) the measures of lexical richness can differentiate between candidates of three different grades of Graded Examinations in Spoken English of Other Languages (GESE) and whether or not those measures can differentiate good performers from poor performers at the same grade of GESE; second, whether or not and to what extent (if so) Chinese examiners accommodate to the candidates at the lexical level. 180 samples from Grade 2, 5 and 7 GESE were collected. All the data were transcribed into Codes for Human Analysis of Transcripts (CHAT) format for the Child Language Data Exchange System (CHILDES) (MacWhinney 2000) for analysis. First, the lexical measures of Token, Type, Guiraud, Guiraud Advanced (AG) and D of both candidates and examiners were obtained and analyses were conducted to investigate the relationship among them. Secondly, qualitative data were collected from interviews with GESE examiners to interpret the quantitative results. The quantitative results indicate that: 1) all the lexical measures can differentiate candidates of Grade 2 from Grade 5 and can differentiate candidates of Grade 2 from Grade 7 as well. However, there is no significant difference between Grade 5 and Grade 7 candidates' lexical variables. 2) In Grade 2 and Grade 5, all the candidates' lexical variables can distinguish between the qualified and poor performers of the same grade. Only Type, D and AG can differentiate between the qualified and poor candidates in Grade 7. 3) All the GESE score variables are correlated with each other, which shows a halo effect; the only GESE score variables that correlate with all candidate lexical variables in the pooled data is Focus. 4) The examiner variables cannot differentiate between qualified performers and poor performers in the same grade. 5) The only lexical variable that reflects the examiner’s lexical accommodation to the candidate is AG. The qualitative analyses indicate that the GESE examiners employ special characteristics in vocabulary assessment and the data also explain some of the quantitative results. It was found that the Chinese local examiners of GESE might apply meaningful and relevant input and the general communicative ability of the candidate as reliable overall rating strategies, and factors that affected the performance of the Grade 7 candidates are also discussed. The findings may not only shed light on a better understanding of the constructs of vocabulary knowledge and lexical richness, the accommodation the Chinese examiners conducted on candidates, but also provide insight into the design and improvement of examination procedures and training of Chinese oral examiners.

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Thériault, Mélissa. "The development of lexical complexity in sixth-grade intensive English students." Thèse, Université Laval, 2015. http://constellation.uqac.ca/3245/1/ThxE9riault_uqac_0862N_10117.pdf.

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The present study investigated the development of lexical complexity (LC) in sixth-grade intensive English (IE) students (n = 56) over the course of a five-month program. More specifically, the study analysed oral narratives produced at two points in time (at the beginning and at the end of the intensive period) in order to determine to what extent the program promotes the development of LC. Moreover, the study also compared the progress made by low-level and high-level students to examine whether lexical development differs as a result of differences in initial levels of second-language (L2) proficiency. Findings revealed improvement in LC for all students over the course of the five-month program, but no clear advantage for either of the two proficiency groups. L'étude avait pour but d'examiner le développement de la complexité lexicale chez des élèves de sixième année du primaire (n = 56) participant à un programme d'anglais intensif d'une durée de cinq mois. Plus précisément, grâce à une épreuve de narration réalisée au début et à la fin du programme, l'étude a permis de déterminer à quel point un programme intensif favorise le développement de la complexité lexicale. De plus, l'étude a permis de comparer les progrès réalisés par deux groupes d'apprenants, soit un groupe fort et un groupe faible, pour déterminer si le niveau de compétence initial influence le développement de la complexité lexicale d'un apprenant. Les principaux résultats ont montré un développement de la complexité lexicale chez tous les apprenants, sans toutefois établir de différence entre le progrès fait par l'un ou l'autre des groupes.

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Iyer, Gowri Krovi. "Cross-linguistic studies of lexical access and processing in monolingual English and bilingual Hindī-English speakers." Connect to a 24 p. preview or request complete full text in PDF format. Access restricted to SDSU campuses, 2006. http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/ucsd/fullcit?p3237601.

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Fear, William J. "The bilingual's lexicon : an investigation into the lexical level processing in Welsh-English/English-Welsh bilinguals." Thesis, Cardiff University, 1999. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.342566.

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Parel, Rolande. "Lexical inferencing strategies of low proficiency second language learners." Thesis, Lancaster University, 1999. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.322816.

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Leung, Yau-keung. "Lexical networks and foreign language vocabulary acquisition." Hong Kong : University of Hong Kong, 1997. http://sunzi.lib.hku.hk/hkuto/record.jsp?B18810664.

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Benom, Carey. "An empirical study of English 'through' : lexical semantics, polysemy, and the correctness fallacy /." view abstract or download file of text, 2007. http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=1404336481&sid=1&Fmt=2&clientId=11238&RQT=309&VName=PQD.

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Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2007.
Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 342-374). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.

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Onysko, Alexander. "Anglicisms in German : borrowing, lexical productivity, and written codeswitching /." Berlin [u.a.] : de Gruyter, 2007. http://deposit.d-nb.de/cgi-bin/dokserv?id=2891393&prov=M&dokv̲ar=1&doke̲xt=htm.

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Cane, Graeme. "A linguistic description of spoken Brunei English in the 1990s." Thesis, University of Strathclyde, 1993. http://oleg.lib.strath.ac.uk:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=21242.

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The thesis discusses the variety of English that is spoken today in Brunei Darussalam and assesses its status as a 'New English'. Using a corpus of spoken data which was recorded and transcribed by the author, the thesis attempts to produce an empirically based linguistic description of the grammatical, lexical and discourse features found in spoken Brunei English and to discuss the ways in which these features differ from the equivalent features in Standard British English. The final part of the study is concerned with the pedagogical and language planning implications of recognizing the existence of a Bruneian variety of English, and with proposing an appropriate English language teaching model for the Bruneian education system.

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Cheung, Sin-lin Isabelle. "A study of lexical errors in South-Asian Non-Chinese speaking children's writing." Click to view the E-thesis via HKUTO, 2006. http://sunzi.lib.hku.hk/hkuto/record/B36863658.

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Chung, Young Hee. "The lexical tone system of North Kyungsang Korean /." The Ohio State University, 1991. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1487687959967913.

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Jim, Mei-hang, and 詹美恒. "A study of lexical errors in Cantonese ESL students' writing." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 2005. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B31602812.

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Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Lexical system of English'

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