Journal articles on the topic 'Mean sentence complexity'
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1
PUDLÁK, PAVEL. "INCOMPLETENESS IN THE FINITE DOMAIN." Bulletin of Symbolic Logic 23, no. 4 (December 2017): 405–41. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/bsl.2017.32.
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AbstractMotivated by the problem of finding finite versions of classical incompleteness theorems, we present some conjectures that go beyondNP≠coNP. These conjectures formally connect computational complexity with the difficulty of proving some sentences, which means that high computational complexity of a problem associated with a sentence implies that the sentence is not provable in a weak theory, or requires a long proof. Another reason for putting forward these conjectures is that some results in proof complexity seem to be special cases of such general statements and we want to formalize and fully understand these statements. Roughly speaking, we are trying to connect syntactic complexity, by which we mean the complexity of sentences and strengths of the theories in which they are provable, with the semantic concept of complexity of the computational problems represented by these sentences.We have introduced the most fundamental conjectures in our earlier works [27, 33–35]. Our aim in this article is to present them in a more systematic way, along with several new conjectures, and prove new connections between them and some other statements studied before.
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Wang, Sue, and Tammy Slater. "Syntactic Complexity of EFL Chinese Students’ Writing." English Language and Literature Studies 6, no. 1 (February 26, 2016): 81. http://dx.doi.org/10.5539/ells.v6n1p81.
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<p>Syntactic complexity as an indicator in the study of English learners’ language proficiency has been frequently employed in language development assessment. Using the Syntactic Complexity Analyzer, developed by Lu (2010), this article collected data representing the syntactic complexity indexes from the writing of Chinese non-English major students and from the writing of proficient users of English on a similar task. The results indicate that there is a significant difference in the use of complex nominals, the mean length of sentences, and the mean length of clauses between the writings of EFL Chinese students and more proficient users. This study provides suggestions for EFL writing teaching, particularly writing at the sentence level.</p>
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Khushik, Ghulam Abbas, and Ari Huhta. "Syntactic complexity in Finnish-background EFL learners’ writing at CEFR levels A1–B2." European Journal of Applied Linguistics 10, no. 1 (March 1, 2022): 142–84. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/eujal-2021-0011.
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Abstract The increasing importance of the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) has led to research on the linguistic characteristics of its levels, as this would help the application of the CEFR in the design of teaching materials, courses, and assessments. This study investigated whether CEFR levels can be distinguished with reference to syntactic complexity (SC). 14- and 17-year-old Finnish learners of English (N=397) wrote three writing tasks which were rated against the CEFR levels. The ratings were analysed with multi-facet Rasch analysis and the texts were analysed with automated tools. Findings suggest that the clearest separators at lower CEFR levels (A1–A2) were the mean sentence and T-unit length, variation in sentence length, infinitive density, clauses per sentence or T-unit, and verb phrases per T-unit. For higher levels (B1–B2) they were modifiers per noun phrase, mean clause length, complex nominals per clause, and left embeddedness. The results support previous findings that the length of and variation in the longer production units (sentences, T-units) are the SC indices that most clearly separate the lower CEFR levels, whereas the higher levels are best distinguished in terms of complexity at the clausal and phrasal levels.
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Tse, Shek Kam, Carol Chan, Sin Mee Kwong, and Hui Li. "Sex differences in syntactic development: Evidence from Cantonese-speaking preschoolers in Hong Kong." International Journal of Behavioral Development 26, no. 6 (November 2002): 509–17. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01650250143000463.
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Utterances produced during spontaneous play activities by 180 Cantonese-speaking children, ranging in age from 3 to 5 years, were analysed with the focus on declaratives. Syntactic development was gauged in terms of changes in the mean length of utterance, sentence type and structure, syntactic complexity, and verb pattern, and age-related develpments in these were found. Significant sex differences were found in syntactic development, with girls outperforming boys in mean utterance length, some sentence types and structures, and syntactic complexity, with a significant age by sex interaction in the group of 4-year-olds. The period between age 3 and age 4 was identified as critical for syntactic development, as many linguistic changes occurred in this time. Growth in the ability to use compound sentences was found to be the most significant contributor to increased mean length of utterance. Biological, psychological, and sociocontextual factors influencing these sex differences in language performance are explored and discussed. The generality of the educational implications is discussed.
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McKenna, Megan M., and Pamela A. Hadley. "Assessing Sentence Diversity in Toddlers At-Risk for Language Disorders." Perspectives on Language Learning and Education 21, no. 4 (November 2014): 159–72. http://dx.doi.org/10.1044/lle21.4.159.
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Purpose: The purpose of this article is to introduce clinicians to an approach for assessing toddlers' sentence diversity and using criterion-referenced expectations to identify toddlers at-risk for clinically significant delays in grammatical development between 30 and 36 months of age. Method: Five at-risk toddlers were identified from an archival database. Mean length of utterance (MLU), grammatical complexity, and sentence diversity measures at 30 months of age were then used to evaluate the grammatical abilities of the at-risk children. Results: Three participants had MLUs of 1.50 or more standard deviations below the mean which alone would be sufficient for raising clinical concern. Although the other two toddlers had MLUs above 1.50, assessment of sentence diversity identified them as at-risk. The sentence diversity findings were also consistent with low grammatical complexity scores. Discussion: The clinical usefulness of a sentence-focused approach for assessment, intervention planning, and progress monitoring are discussed.
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O’Connor, Claire, and Fiona E. Gibbon. "Familiarity of Speaker Accent on Irish Children’s Performance on a Sentence Comprehension Task." Journal of Clinical Speech and Language Studies 18, no. 1 (September 1, 2011): 1–17. http://dx.doi.org/10.3233/acs-2011-18104.
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Objective: This study sought to determine whether children’s performance on a sentence comprehension task is affected when sentences are spoken in an unfamiliar native accent. Method: Fifty typically developing school-aged children living in Southern Ireland (Cork) participated; 25 in a younger group (mean 7;08 years) and 25 in an older group (mean 9;09 years). The children completed a computer-based comprehension task during which 20 sentences were spoken in a Cork accent (familiar) and 20 in a Tyrone accent (unfamiliar). The sentences were matched for syllable length and syntactic complexity. Main results: The younger children made significantly more errors when sentences were spoken in an unfamiliar accent. The older children made a similar number of incorrect responses to both familiar and unfamiliar accents. Conclusion: Younger children’s performance on comprehension tasks may be reduced when sentences are spoken in an unfamiliar accent. Possible explanations and the clinical implications are discussed.
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THORDARDOTTIR, ELIN T., ROBIN S. CHAPMAN, and LAURA WAGNER. "Complex sentence production by adolescents with Down syndrome." Applied Psycholinguistics 23, no. 2 (June 2002): 163–83. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0142716402002011.
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The use of complex syntax was investigated in narrative language samples of older children and adolescents with Down syndrome (n = 24) and a group of typically developing children matched on mean length of utterance. Both groups used conjoined and subordinate sentence forms and did not differ significantly in either the proportion of utterances containing complex sentences or in the variety of complex sentence types used. The analysis of developmental patterns suggested a similar order of acquisition across groups. The findings indicate that syntactic development in individuals with Down syndrome continues into late adolescence and is not limited to simple syntax. This study does not support earlier findings of a critical period effect in syntactic development in Down syndrome based on age or syntactic complexity.
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Tyack, Dorothy L., and Robert H. Gottsleben. "Acquisition of Complex Sentences." Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools 17, no. 3 (July 1986): 160–74. http://dx.doi.org/10.1044/0161-1461.1703.160.
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Language samples were collected from 110 linguistically normal children ages 1–8 to 4–9. Data analysis indicated a direct relationship between chronological age, mean length of utterance, and percent of complex sentences. Analysis of the complex sentences in each sample indicated subcategories for each type of complexity. These subcategories appeared to have their own order of acquisition. When the children initially produced a certain type of complex sentence, they did not produce all of its subcategories. Often these remaining subcategories did not appear until after other types of embedding.
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Liu, Kanglong, and Muhammad Afzaal. "Syntactic complexity in translated and non-translated texts: A corpus-based study of simplification." PLOS ONE 16, no. 6 (June 24, 2021): e0253454. http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0253454.
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This study approaches the investigation of the simplification hypotheses in corpus-based translation studies from a syntactic complexity perspective. The research is based on two comparable corpora, the English monolingual part of COCE (Corpus of Chinese-English) and the native English corpus of FLOB (Freiburg-LOB Corpus of British English). Using the 13 syntactic complexity measures falling into five subconstructs (i.e. length of production unit, amount of subordination, amount of coordination, phrasal complexity and overall sentence complexity), our results show that translation as a whole is less complex compared to non-translation, reflected most prominently in the amount of subordination and overall sentence complexity. Further pairwise comparison of the four subgenres of the corpora shows mixed results. Specifically, the translated news is homogenous to native news as evidenced by the complexity measures; the translated genres of general prose and academic writing are less complex compared to their native counterparts while translated fiction is more complex than non-translated fiction. It was found that mean sentence length always produced a significant effect on syntactic complexity, with higher syntactic complexity for longer sentence lengths in both corpora. ANOVA test shows a highly significant main effect of translation status, with higher syntactic complexity in the non-translated texts (FLOB) than the translated texts (COCE), which provides support for the simplification hypothesis in translation. It is also found that, apart from translation status, genre is an important variable in affecting the complexity level of translated texts. Our study offers new insights into the investigation of simplification hypothesis from the perspective of translation from English into Chinese.
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Abouchacra, Kim, Janet Koehnke, Joan Besing, and Tomasz Letowski. "Sentence Recognition in the Presence of Competing Speech Messages Presented in Audiometric Booths with Reverberation Times of 0.4 and 0.6 Seconds." Archives of Acoustics 36, no. 1 (February 1, 2011): 3–14. http://dx.doi.org/10.2478/v10168-011-0001-4.
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AbstractThis study examined whether differences in reverberation time (RT) between typical sound field test rooms used in audiology clinics have an effect on speech recognition in multi-talker environments. Separate groups of participants listened to target speech sentences presented simultaneously with 0-to-3 competing sentences through four spatially-separated loudspeakers in two sound field test rooms having RT = 0:6 sec (Site 1:N= 16) and RT = 0:4 sec (Site 2:N= 12). Speech recognition scores (SRSs) for the Synchronized Sentence Set (S3) test and subjective estimates of perceived task difficulty were recorded. Obtained results indicate that the change in room RT from 0.4 to 0.6 sec did not significantly influence SRSs in quiet or in the presence of one competing sentence. However, this small change in RT affected SRSs when 2 and 3 competing sentences were present, resulting in mean SRSs that were about 8-10% better in the room with RT = 0:4 sec. Perceived task difficulty ratings increased as the complexity of the task increased, with average ratings similar across test sites for each level of sentence competition. These results suggest that site-specific normative data must be collected for sound field rooms if clinicians would like to use two or more directional speech maskers during routine sound field testing.
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Wang, Weilu, Manfu Duan, and Hongmei Zhang. "Corpus-based Development of Syntactic Complexity in EFL Writing." SHS Web of Conferences 152 (2023): 04001. http://dx.doi.org/10.1051/shsconf/202315204001.
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Syntactic complexity has long been taken as a significant factor in determining writing quality by EFL learners. And researchers in recent years have made a lot of efforts to devise and verify a wide range of factors or indicators for the purpose of measuring syntactic complexity or predicting EFL writing quality. The present study discussed bases itself on a self-built learner corpus with data collected over three years, with the aim of determining the applicable indices for predicting beginner writing quality. Based on previous research, the present study takes into account such factors as unit length, verb-VAC complexity, and clausal complexity. The results of pairwise comparisons by year indicate that there are significant differences for some indices but not for others. In terms of unit length, the three indicators of mean length of sentence, mean length of Tuni, and mean length of clause can serve as the main descriptive variables for the development of the language of beginners; for clausal complexity, seven indices: coordinate phrases per T-unit, verb phrases per T-unit, clauses per T-unit, coordinate phrases per clause, complex nominals per Tunit, complex nominals per clause and T-units per sentence, are the reliable indicators for beginner writing development. But indices for noun phrase complexity and verb-VAC complexity show no significant difference in the Kruskal-Wallis tests. The findings provide proof for the conclusion that knowledge and skills of modification, coordination, and subordination form the real difficulties for EFL beginners. It provides implications for coursebook design and classroom teaching where beginners are supposed to focus more on breeding awareness and skills in these aspects.
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Blake, Joanna, Wendy Austin, Marsha Cannon, Amanda Lisus, and Annabel Vaughan. "The Relationship between Memory Span and Measures of Imitative and Spontaneous Language Complexity in Preschool Children." International Journal of Behavioral Development 17, no. 1 (March 1994): 91–107. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/016502549401700106.
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Preschool children, aged 2 to 5 years, were given a memory task that required them to repeat a list of animal names and a sentence imitation task. A sample of their spontaneous speech was also recorded. Word span was found to predict sentence imitation scores across the whole preschool age range. Word span and chronological age (CA), together, also predicted the mean length of utterance in spontaneous speech in younger preschool children. In a replication with children aged 2 to 3 years, word span predicted mean length or utterance (MLU) better than both CA and mental age (MA). These results extend previous findings regarding the relationship between word span and language imitation to younger preschool children. They also support the notion of a memory constraint on early spontaneous language. Increasing mastery of linguistic rules appears to obviate a memory constraint on spontaneous language, at least with these measures.
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Kover, Sara T., and Leonard Abbeduto. "Syntactic Ability of Girls With Fragile X Syndrome: Phonological Memory and Discourse Demands on Complex Sentence Use." American Journal on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities 124, no. 6 (November 1, 2019): 511–34. http://dx.doi.org/10.1352/1944-7558-124.6.511.
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Abstract This study was designed to establish the extent of delay in complex sentence use by females with fragile X syndrome (FXS) and to identify sources of variability among individuals. Females with FXS (n = 16; 10;2–15;7) and younger typically developing girls (n = 17; 4;1–8;11) were group-wise matched on nonverbal cognition and receptive syntax. Language samples (conversation and narration) yielded syntactic complexity in terms of mean length of C-unit (MLCU) and Developmental Level sentence coding (DLevel; Rosenberg & Abbeduto, 1987). Complex syntax was not weaker than developmental expectations; however, MLCU was lower than expected for age. Phonological memory and verbal working memory correlated with measures of syntactic complexity in narration. Discourse demands may play an important role in the language produced by females with FXS.
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Tong, Nga-Yui, and Hui Li. "Do Girls Outperform Boys in Early Syntactic Development? Negative Evidence from Mandarin-Speaking Preschoolers." Languages 7, no. 4 (November 2, 2022): 281. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/languages7040281.
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This study aimed to verify the sex differences seen in our previous study on early syntactic development among Cantonese-speaking children with the same corpus design but a different Chinese language: Mandarin. The utterances produced during half-hour play activities by 192 Beijing children, ranging from 3 to 6 years, were collected in the Early Child Mandarin Corpus and analyzed in this study. Their syntactic development was measured in terms of mean length of utterance (MLU), sentence type and structure, syntactic complexity, and verb pattern. The statistical analyses indicated significant age differences in MLU, sentence types and structures, and syntactic complexity. However, no sex or age-by-sex differences in MLU were found. This negative evidence indicates that sex difference is neither universal nor cross-language. The implications for early childhood education and future studies are discussed.
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Binger, Cathy, Jennifer Kent-Walsh, Nancy Harrington, and Quinn C. Hollerbach. "Tracking Early Sentence-Building Progress in Graphic Symbol Communication." Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools 51, no. 2 (April 7, 2020): 317–28. http://dx.doi.org/10.1044/2019_lshss-19-00065.
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Purpose As is the case with children who rely on spoken language, speech-language pathologists must support and track the expressive language development of children with complex communication needs who use graphic symbols to communicate. This research note presents a framework of the progression of expressive English sentence development using graphic symbols and introduces possible approaches for measuring and analyzing graphic symbol use. Method Current issues in measuring graphic symbol utterances are explored, and a range of measures designed to analyze individual graphic symbol utterances as well as larger samples of utterances are presented. Results Both the Graphic Symbol Utterance and Sentence Development Framework and suggested measures are based on years of graphic symbol intervention research, including two large ongoing research studies of preschoolers with severe speech impairments. Our framework adapts the work of Hadley (2014) to depict expressive language progression from early symbol combinations to childlike and adultlike sentences and highlights developmental patterns unique to graphic symbol productions. Adaptations of existing measures (such as mean length of utterance) as well as measures unique to graphic symbol analyses are presented and discussed. Conclusion To accurately track changes in early graphic symbol utterance growth and complexity, a multidimensional approach, which includes analyses such as symbol relevance, word class diversity, and lexical diversity, is recommended.
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CADIME, Irene, Célia S. MOREIRA, Ana Lúcia SANTOS, Carla SILVA, Iolanda RIBEIRO, and Fernanda Leopoldina VIANA. "The development of vocabulary and grammar: a longitudinal study of European Portuguese-speaking toddlers." Journal of Child Language 46, no. 04 (March 14, 2019): 653–81. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0305000919000060.
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AbstractThe goals of this study were to analyze the growth and stability of vocabulary, mean length of the three longest utterances (MLLUw), and sentence complexity in European Portuguese-speaking children aged 1;4–2;6, to explore differences in growth as a function of personal and family-related variables, and to investigate the inter-relationships among the three language dimensions. Fifty-one European Portuguese-speaking toddlers were longitudinally assessed at 1;4, 1;9, 2;1, and 2;6, through parent reports. Exponential growth models best described acquisition patterns during this period, but the vocabulary growth accelerated across the full age-range, whereas the growth of grammar dimensions accelerated mainly after 1;9. High variability was observed in the scores, but the toddlers’ relative positions were mostly stable over time. Gender approached significance as a predictor of vocabulary growth. Maternal educational level did not predict the growth of any of the three language dimensions. Both vocabulary and MLLUw predicted sentence complexity.
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Liu, Xinmiao, and Haiyan Wang. "A Study of Syntactic Complexity in Language Production by Chinese-Speaking Older Adults." Studies in Linguistics and Literature 3, no. 1 (January 25, 2019): 79. http://dx.doi.org/10.22158/sll.v3n1p79.
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<span style="font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: ??; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: ZH-CN; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;" lang="EN-US"><em>The syntactic complexity of language production changes as a result of ageing. In this study, we made a comparison between Chinese-speaking older and younger adults in terms of the syntactic complexity in spoken language production. To assess the level of syntactic complexity of language production, we applied the traditional measures of syntactic complexity such as sentence length, verbal fluency and the distribution of subordinate clauses. Results indicated that older adults showed a decline in the mean number of clauses, the proportion of right-branching clauses and verbal fluency. These findings indicate that there was a decline in syntactic complexity in spoken language production among Chinese-speaking older adults.</em></span>
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Streim, Nancy W., and Robin S. Chapman. "The effects of discourse support on the organization and production of children's utterances." Applied Psycholinguistics 8, no. 1 (March 1987): 55–66. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0142716400000060.
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ABSTRACTThis study asked whether lexical availability affects the length, complexity, order of mention, and fluency of children's utterances. Lexical availability was manipulated through discourse support (present or absent) and word frequency (high or low) for 40 target nouns. Length was indexed by mean number of words per communication unit. Complexity was indexed by mean number of verbs per communication unit. Earlier mention was measured by mean number of words preceding the target word in each communication unit. Thirty-six subjects, aged 4, 6, and 8, described 40 illustrations containing a high or low frequency target noun referent. In the discourse support condition, provided for one half of the target words, subjects named the target word prior to the description task. Results showed that the number of responses containing the target word varied with age, word frequency and discourse support condition; length of responses varied with age and its interaction with discourse support; earlier mention varied with age and discourse support condition; and fluency varied with discourse support condition. The results are discussed from the viewpoint of Bock's process model of sentence production.
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Basha, M. John, and K. P. Kaliyamurthie. "An Improved Similarity Matching based Clustering Framework for Short and Sentence Level Text." International Journal of Electrical and Computer Engineering (IJECE) 7, no. 1 (February 1, 2017): 551. http://dx.doi.org/10.11591/ijece.v7i1.pp551-558.
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Text clustering plays a key role in navigation and browsing process. For an efficient text clustering, the large amount of information is grouped into meaningful clusters. Multiple text clustering techniques do not address the issues such as, high time and space complexity, inability to understand the relational and contextual attributes of the word, less robustness, risks related to privacy exposure, etc. To address these issues, an efficient text based clustering framework is proposed. The Reuters dataset is chosen as the input dataset. Once the input dataset is preprocessed, the similarity between the words are computed using the cosine similarity. The similarities between the components are compared and the vector data is created. From the vector data the clustering particle is computed. To optimize the clustering results, mutation is applied to the vector data. The performance the proposed text based clustering framework is analyzed using the metrics such as Mean Square Error (MSE), Peak Signal Noise Ratio (PSNR) and Processing time. From the experimental results, it is found that, the proposed text based clustering framework produced optimal MSE, PSNR and processing time when compared to the existing Fuzzy C-Means (FCM) and Pairwise Random Swap (PRS) methods.
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McArdle, Rachel A., Richard H. Wilson, and Christopher A. Burks. "Speech Recognition in Multitalker Babble Using Digits, Words, and Sentences." Journal of the American Academy of Audiology 16, no. 09 (October 2005): 726–39. http://dx.doi.org/10.3766/jaaa.16.9.9.
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The purpose of this mixed model design was to examine recognition performance differences when measuring speech recognition in multitalker babble on listeners with normal hearing (n = 36) and listeners with hearing loss (n = 72) utilizing stimulus of varying linguistic complexity (digits, words, and sentence materials). All listeners were administered two trials of two lists of each material in a descending speech-to-babble ratio. For each of the materials, recognition performances by the listeners with normal hearing were significantly better than the performances by the listeners with hearing loss. The mean separation between groups at the 50% point in signal-to-babble ratio on each of the three materials was ~8 dB. The 50% points for digits were obtained at a significantly lower signal-to-babble ratio than for sentences or words that were equivalent. There were no interlist differences between the two lists for the digits and words, but there was a significant disparity between QuickSIN™ lists for the listeners with hearing loss. A two-item questionnaire was used to obtain a subjective measurement of speech recognition, which showed moderate correlations with objective measures of speech recognition in noise using digits (r = .641), sentences (r = .572), and words (r = .673).
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Gagarina, Natalia, Stefanie Gey, and Natalie Sürmeli. "Identifying early preschool bilinguals at risk of DLD: a composite profile of narrative and sentence repetition skills." ZAS Papers in Linguistics 62 (September 12, 2019): 168–89. http://dx.doi.org/10.21248/zaspil.62.2019.448.
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For this study one hundred sixty-seven Russian-/Turkish-German preschool children were tested with a battery of language proficiency tests in both languages. On the basis of 1.5 SD below monolingual norm for L2 German and 1.25 SD below bilingual mean for either home language, 9 children at risk of developmental language disorders (DLD) (mean age of 4 years and 5 months) were identified and 16 age-matched TD children were selected out of the cohort. All these children were tested with the LITMUS-MAIN and –SR tests in German. The results across TD and at risk of DLD group were compared. TD clearly outperformed at risk of DLD in SR. In elicited narratives, macrostructure and microstructure were scrutinized across groups. Similar to the previous findings, our results show significant differences between at risk of DLD und TD in the microstructure, e.g. total number of word tokens and verb-based communication units and SR. For the macrostructure, TD outperformed at risk children only for story complexity. The study expands our knowledge on the cut-off criteria for the identification of bilinguals at risk of DLD, scrutinized very early narratives for bilinguals at risk of DLD features and questions the similarity of cognitive skills in TD and at risk of DLD children.
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Kapantzoglou, Maria, Gerasimos Fergadiotis, and M. Adelaida Restrepo. "Language Sample Analysis and Elicitation Technique Effects in Bilingual Children With and Without Language Impairment." Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 60, no. 10 (October 17, 2017): 2852–64. http://dx.doi.org/10.1044/2017_jslhr-l-16-0335.
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Purpose This study examined whether the language sample elicitation technique (i.e., storytelling and story-retelling tasks with pictorial support) affects lexical diversity (D), grammaticality (grammatical errors per communication unit [GE/CU]), sentence length (mean length of utterance in words [MLUw]), and sentence complexity (subordination index [SI]), which are commonly used indices for diagnosing primary language impairment in Spanish–English-speaking children in the United States. Method Twenty bilingual Spanish–English-speaking children with typical language development and 20 with primary language impairment participated in the study. Four analyses of variance were conducted to evaluate the effect of language elicitation technique and group on D, GE/CU, MLUw, and SI. Also, 2 discriminant analyses were conducted to assess which indices were more effective for story retelling and storytelling and their classification accuracy across elicitation techniques. Results D, MLUw, and SI were influenced by the type of elicitation technique, but GE/CU was not. The classification accuracy of language sample analysis was greater in story retelling than in storytelling, with GE/CU and D being useful indicators of language abilities in story retelling and GE/CU and SI in storytelling. Conclusion Two indices in language sample analysis may be sufficient for diagnosis in 4- to 5-year-old bilingual Spanish–English-speaking children.
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Eichenauer, Anja, Uwe Baumann, Timo Stöver, and Tobias Weissgerber. "Interleaved Acoustic Environments: Impact of an Auditory Scene Classification Procedure on Speech Perception in Cochlear Implant Users." Trends in Hearing 25 (January 2021): 233121652110141. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/23312165211014118.
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Clinical speech perception tests with simple presentation conditions often overestimate the impact of signal preprocessing on speech perception in complex listening environments. A new procedure was developed to assess speech perception in interleaved acoustic environments of different complexity that allows investigation of the impact of an automatic scene classification (ASC) algorithm on speech perception. The procedure was applied in cohorts of normal hearing (NH) controls and uni- and bilateral cochlear implant (CI) users. Speech reception thresholds (SRTs) were measured by means of a matrix sentence test in five acoustic environments that included different noise conditions (amplitude modulated and continuous), two spatial configurations, and reverberation. The acoustic environments were encapsulated in a randomized, mixed order single experimental run. Acoustic room simulation was played back with a loudspeaker auralization setup with 128 loudspeakers. 18 NH, 16 unilateral, and 16 bilateral CI users participated. SRTs were evaluated for each individual acoustic environment and as mean-SRT. Mean-SRTs improved by 2.4 dB signal-to-noise ratio for unilateral and 1.3 dB signal-to-noise ratio for bilateral CI users with activated ASC. Without ASC, the mean-SRT of bilateral CI users was 3.7 dB better than the SRT of unilateral CI users. The mean-SRT indicated significant differences, with NH group performing best and unilateral CI users performing worse with a difference of up to 13 dB compared to NH. The proposed speech test procedure successfully demonstrated that speech perception and benefit with ASC depend on the acoustic environment.
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MARJANOVIČ-UMEK, LJUBICA, URŠKA FEKONJA-PEKLAJ, and GREGOR SOČAN. "Early vocabulary, parental education, and the frequency of shared reading as predictors of toddler's vocabulary and grammar at age 2;7: a Slovenian longitudinal CDI study." Journal of Child Language 44, no. 2 (March 28, 2016): 457–79. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0305000916000167.
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AbstractThe aim of this longitudinal study, carried out on a sample of Slovenian-speaking toddlers, was to analyze developmental changes and stability in early vocabulary development; to establish relations between toddler's vocabulary and grammar; and to analyze the effects of parental education and the frequency of shared reading on toddlers' vocabulary and grammar. The sample included fifty-one toddlers, aged 1;4 at the time of the first, and 2;7 at the time of the last, assessment. Toddlers' vocabulary and grammar were assessed six times during a 15-month period using the Slovenian adaptation of the CDI. Our findings suggest great individual differences in both size and rate of toddlers' vocabulary development. Toddlers' vocabulary scores remained relatively stable across a 3-month period. Early vocabulary at 1;7 predicted vocabulary, sentence complexity, and mean length of utterance (MLU) at 2;7, while the frequency of shared reading mediated the effect of parental education on toddlers' vocabulary and grammar at 2;7.
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Marjanovič-Umek, Ljubica, and Urška Fekonja-Peklaj. "Gender Differences in Children’s Language: A Meta-Analysis of Slovenian Studies." Center for Educational Policy Studies Journal 7, no. 2 (June 30, 2017): 97–111. http://dx.doi.org/10.26529/cepsj.171.
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Child gender has been proved to affect toddlers’/children’s language development in several studies, but its effect was not found to be stable across different ages or various aspects of language ability. The effect of gender on toddler’s, children’s and adolescents’ language ability was examined in the present meta-analysis of ten Slovenian studies (nine cross-sectionalstudies and one longitudinal study). The ten studies were published between 2004 and 2016 and included a total of 3,657 toddlers, children and adolescents, aged from 8 months to 15 years. The language outcome measures refer to different aspects of language ability, including vocabulary, mean length of utterance, sentence complexity, language expression andcomprehension, storytelling ability and metalinguistic awareness. Across the studies, language ability was assessed using different approaches and instruments, most of which were standardised on samples of Slovenianspeaking children. Based on the reported arithmetic means and standard deviations, the effect sizes of gender for each of the included studies werecalculated, as well as the average effect size of gender across the different studies. The findings of the meta-analysis showed that the effect size of gender on toddlers’/children’s/adolescents’ language largely depended on their age and the aspect of language measured. The effect sizes increased with children’s increasing age. All significant effects proved to be in favour of girls. The findings were interpreted in relation to the characteristics of language development and social cultural factors that can contribute togender differences in language ability.
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Mokhtari, Farzaneh, Yalda Kazemi, Awat Feizi, and Philip Dale. "Psychometric Properties of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories-III (CDI-III) in 30 to 37 Months Old Persian-Speaking Children." Journal of Rehabilitation 23, no. 3 (October 1, 2022): 372–91. http://dx.doi.org/10.32598/rj.23.3.3166.3.
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Objective Early language skills predict the child’s future language skills and literacy. So, screening and assessment of speech and language at an early age are important. One cost-effective way of assessing a child’s communication is through parents reporting tools. MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories (CDIs) are the most widely used forms by professionals in more than 70 live languages worldwide to screen children’s communication skills. The main purpose of this study was to provide the Persian version of the third form of CDI (CDI-III) and determine its psychometric properties, including face and content validity and internal consistency in 30 to 37 months old Iranian Persian-speaking children. Materials & Methods In a cross-sectional methodological study of instrument validation, a Persian-adapted form of CDI-III was developed. At first, the English form was adapted to Persian, and a Delphi method was used to provide the initial list of the items. The face and content validity rates were examined by asking the opinion of ten Persian-speaking speech and language pathologists with at least three years of clinical experience in the field of child speech/language development and disorders. The final form was compiled based on the results of the content validity ratio (CVR) and content validity index (CVI) of the items. The final form consisted of three sections, including vocabulary, sentences, and use of sentences. The parents of 356 Persian-speaking children aged 30 to 37 months recruited by multi-stage cluster random sampling from health centers in Isfahan City were asked to complete the form. The Kuder-Richardson coefficient assessed internal consistency, and the Spearman coefficient examined correlation. Results The items with CVIs≥0.7 and CVRs≥0.6 remained, and other items were reviewed or removed based on the suggestions of panelists and developers. The final form included 100 words, 22 pairs of sentences, and 16 questions about using sentences. A total of 356 children (mean±SD age: 34.03±2.12 months) were included in the study. According to the English CDI-III guidelines, the data were divided into four age groups with two-month intervals: 30-31, 32-33, 34-35, and 36-37. The internal consistency of the whole form was 0.97, and internal consistency values of vocabulary, sentences, and sentence usage were calculated as 0.98, 0.88, and 0.88, respectively. The Spearman correlation values between the scores of the form sections and each section with age indicated a significant positive correlation between all sections of the form. Also, the significant positive correlation between age and all three parts showed that the number of expressive words, the grammatical complexity of sentences, and the proper use of sentences increase with age. Conclusion The Persian CDI-III form possesses a good face and content validity and internal consistency to be used as a valid tool for screening language competence of 30-37 months old Persian-speaking children. The results of the mean and standard deviation of the current study can be used as a comparison for screening children suspected of being language deficient.
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Grädel, Erich, Phokion G. Kolaitis, and Moshe Y. Vardi. "On the Decision Problem for Two-Variable First-Order Logic." Bulletin of Symbolic Logic 3, no. 1 (March 1997): 53–69. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/421196.
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AbstractWe identify the computational complexity of the satisfiability problem for FO2, the fragment of first-order logic consisting of all relational first-order sentences with at most two distinct variables. Although this fragment was shown to be decidable a long time ago, the computational complexity of its decision problem has not been pinpointed so far. In 1975 Mortimer proved that FO2 has the finite-model property, which means that if an FO2-sentence is satisiable, then it has a finite model. Moreover, Mortimer showed that every satisfiable FO2-sentence has a model whose size is at most doubly exponential in the size of the sentence. In this paper, we improve Mortimer's bound by one exponential and show that every satisfiable FO2-sentence has a model whose size is at most exponential in the size of the sentence. As a consequence, we establish that the satisfiability problem for FO2 is NEXPTIME-complete.
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Montag, Jessica L. "Differences in sentence complexity in the text of children’s picture books and child-directed speech." First Language 39, no. 5 (May 22, 2019): 527–46. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0142723719849996.
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Reading picture books to pre-literate children is associated with improved language outcomes, but the causal pathways of this relationship are not well understood. The present analyses focus on several syntactic differences between the text of children’s picture books and typical child-directed speech, with the aim of understanding ways in which picture book text may systematically differ from typical child-directed speech. The analyses show that picture books contain more rare and complex sentence types, including passive sentences and sentences containing relative clauses, than does child-directed speech. These differences in the patterns of language contained in picture books and typical child-directed speech suggest that one important means by which picture book reading may come to be associated with improved language outcomes is by providing children with types of complex language that might be otherwise rare in their input.
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Bieck, Richard, Valentina Wildfeuer, Viktor Kunz, Martin Sorge, Markus Pirlich, Max Rockstroh, and Thomas Neumuth. "Generation of surgical reports using keyword-augmented next sequence prediction." Current Directions in Biomedical Engineering 7, no. 2 (October 1, 2021): 387–90. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/cdbme-2021-2098.
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Abstract The documentation of a surgical procedure remains a time-consuming task that surgeons must incorporate into their daily routine. However, since a surgical report should be produced immediately after the operation with all impressions of the procedure in mind, a means of automation assistance should be provided. We, therefore, propose a method that generates surgical reports based on keywords stated during the procedure. Our report generation is based on a sequence-tosequence model that is trained on sentence pairs of two consecutive sentences in a surgical report. The known sentence is augmented with a keyword based on the following surgical action to be documented and is then passed into a language model to generate the next sentence. In this way, the complexity of predicting a vast number of possible surgical report phrasings is reduced to a next sentence prediction task. For the language model, an encoder-decoder structure was used with bidirectional 2-layer Long-Short Term Memory (LSTM) units for both components and an attention layer between input and output sentences. The training data consisted of 50 ear-,nose- and throat surgery (ENT) reports with 1500 sentences. The model training was performed in a k-fold cross-validation study with k = 10 and cross-entropy loss as the objective function. The generated reports were investigated using NIST, ROUGE, and METEOR metrics. Additionally, three medical experts identified the report content regarding plausibility and text errors. The trained models reached an accuracy of 0.82 for the next sentence predictions. The generated reports show consistent sentence structures and keyword correspondence for about 70 % of provided keyword sequences. The NIST, ROUGE, and METEOR metrics reached 0.65, 0.71, and 0.64, respectively. The model underperformed for not yet known keyword sequences and shows signs of overfitting when keyword sequences deviate from the baseline of the training set. Our approach for the keyword-augmented generation of surgical reports shows the potential of reducing the text generation complexity by providing a sequence of anchor words. However, the automated generation of surgical reports remains a difficult task due to individual report phrasings and the high variance in keyword sequences.
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Caesar, Lena G., and Marie Kerins. "Language and Literacy Predictors of Dialect Density Among School-Age African American Children From Two Geographic Regions." Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools 51, no. 3 (July 15, 2020): 807–20. http://dx.doi.org/10.1044/2020_lshss-19-00063.
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Purpose The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between oral language, literacy skills, age, and dialect density (DD) of African American children residing in two different geographical regions of the United States (East Coast and Midwest). Method Data were obtained from 64 African American school-age children between the ages of 7 and 12 years from two geographic regions. Children were assessed using a combination of standardized tests and narrative samples elicited from wordless picture books. Bivariate correlation and multiple regression analyses were used to determine relationships to and relative contributions of oral language, literacy, age, and geographic region to DD. Results Results of correlation analyses demonstrated a negative relationship between DD measures and children's literacy skills. Age-related findings between geographic regions indicated that the younger sample from the Midwest outscored the East Coast sample in reading comprehension and sentence complexity. Multiple regression analyses identified five variables (i.e., geographic region, age, mean length of utterance in morphemes, reading fluency, and phonological awareness) that accounted for 31% of the variance of children's DD—with geographic region emerging as the strongest predictor. Conclusions As in previous studies, the current study found an inverse relationship between DD and several literacy measures. Importantly, geographic region emerged as a strong predictor of DD. This finding highlights the need for a further study that goes beyond the mere description of relationships to comparing geographic regions and specifically focusing on racial composition, poverty, and school success measures through direct data collection.
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Wofford, Mary Claire, Jessica Cano, J. Marc Goodrich, and Lisa Fitton. "Tell or Retell? The Role of Task and Language in Spanish–English Narrative Microstructure Performance." Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools 53, no. 2 (April 11, 2022): 511–31. http://dx.doi.org/10.1044/2021_lshss-21-00055.
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Purpose: This study examined performance of dual language learners (DLLs) on Spanish- and English-language narrative story retells and unique tells. Transcription and analysis focused on comparisons of common microstructural language sample measures in Spanish and English across tasks. Each language sample measure was evaluated for its possible convergence with norm-referenced standardized assessments for DLL children. Method: Spanish–English DLLs ( N = 133) enrolled in English-only kindergarten or first-grade classrooms completed two-language sample tasks (one in each language), which were transcribed and analyzed using Systematic Analysis of Language Transcripts (Miller & Iglesias, 2017) for measures of syntactic complexity (mean length of utterance [MLU] in words), lexical diversity (number of different words [NDW]), and grammaticality (percent grammatical utterances [PGU]). Students also completed a norm-referenced sentence repetition task (Peña et al., 2014) and expressive vocabulary assessment (Martin, 2013). Results: Comparison of story retells and unique stories revealed similar performance on MLU, NDW, and PGU across elicitation techniques, with one exception: NDW in Spanish was higher in the story retell condition. Predictive models revealed several differences in the relations between the microstructure measures and norm-referenced language measures by elicitation technique, although neither context demonstrated a consistent advantage across all metrics. Conclusions: Measures derived from story retells and unique tells offer practical findings for speech-language pathologists and other educators to use in assessment of early grade DLLs. This work increases knowledge of procedural differences across narrative assessments and their influence on language variables, supporting school-based speech-language pathologists in making assessment decisions for DLLs on their caseload. Supplemental Material: https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.19191278
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Noel Aziz Hanna, Patrizia. "Language processing and the evolution of rhythmic patterns: Asymmetries in binary stress systems." Cognitive Linguistics 24, no. 1 (January 28, 2013): 115–34. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/cog-2013-0004.
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AbstractRhythmic stress is assigned automatically in everyday speech. Usually, it is produced without conscious planning of which syllables have to be stressed. However, the ‘grammaticalisation’ of rhythmic patterns is the result of language processing. It is the outcome of a selective process which is proposed to lead to a preference or dispreference for specific rhythmic structures. In the languages of the world, judging by the typological data available, some rhythmic patterns seem to be completely avoided – even if this means an increase of complexity within a stress system. Focussing on asymmetries in binary stress systems, it is suggested in this paper that processing limitations in speech production motivate stress patterns. It is also demonstrated that the domain of the prosodic word is insufficient for a motivation of these asymmetries. Since one-word sentences are not the rule, but the exception, asymmetries find their motivation on the level of the sentence.
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Svystun, N. O. "COMPOUND SENTENCES OF PURPOSE AND CAUSE AS A KIND OF POLYMEMBER STRUCTURES WITH THE DIRECT CAUSATIVE MEANING: STRUCTURAL AND SEMANTIC ASPEKT (on the material of the novels of Vasyl Skliar “Chornyi Voron”, “Marusia”)." PRECARPATHIAN BULLETIN OF THE SHEVCHENKO SCIENTIFIC SOCIETY Word, no. 3(55) (April 12, 2019): 73–80. http://dx.doi.org/10.31471/2304-7402-2019-3(55)-73-80.
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Topicality of the research is due to the scientific need to systematize the reasons of syntactic structures in the studies which influence the choice of the writer. On this basis, the need of clarifying the factors that influenced the choice of writers is updated. This means that researchers pay attention not only to structural, semantic and communicative features of complex sentences, but special attention is paid to the study of their writing potential. Of course, expressive features and functions of complex sentences that are directly involved in their formulation and design composition are shown in fiction. In the contextual environment we are able to explore more features of such syntactic structures. Among the constructions that were not the subject of this comprehensive analysis, there are complex sentences with subordinate goals and causes as a variety of sentences dismembered with a value of condition in the novels by Vasyl Shklyar "Black Raven", "Marusya". The object of our scientific research is complex sentences with subordinate goals and causes as a variety of segmented structure sentences with the value of condition in the novels by Vasyl Shklyar "Black Raven", "Marusya".
The material of study includes novels by Vasyl Shklyar "Black Raven", in which "Marusya" 71 complex sentences of purpose, (33%), and 27 sentences of contractors reasons, (26%) of all complex sentences segmented structure with the value of condition. Were these singled out sentence structures perform a variety of functions: they help express the author’s attitude to the depicted events, reveal the inner world of the hero, a true atmosphere of sincere conversation. Complex sentences with subordinate causes in the analyzed Vasyl Shklyar novels are also represented, though not distinguished by the diversity of communication. They dominate in the stories of the characters, monologues and dialogues, landscape descriptions. These designs clearly differentiate artistic speech, eliminate ambiguity of complexity. Their functioning, semantic and stylistic role is regulated by individual author's style. Most sentences contain emotional and evaluative component, help to outline the spiritual ideals of the writer, his inner world and feelings. Certified units demonstrate the wealth of author’s artistic language. In this work we described only two types of sentences. Similar scientific research may be subject to further detailed studies and scientific interests.
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Durand, Arnaud, Neil D. Jones, Johann A. Makowsky, and Malika More. "Fifty years of the spectrum problem: survey and new results." Bulletin of Symbolic Logic 18, no. 4 (December 2012): 505–53. http://dx.doi.org/10.2178/bsl.1804020.
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AbstractIn 1952, Heinrich Scholz published a question in The Journal of Symbolic Logic asking for a characterization of spectra, i.e., sets of natural numbers that are the cardinalities of finite models of first order sentences. Günter Asser in turn asked whether the complement of a spectrum is always a spectrum. These innocent questions turned out to be seminal for the development of finite model theory and descriptive complexity. In this paper we survey developments over the last 50-odd years pertaining to the spectrum problem. Our presentation follows conceptual developments rather than the chronological order. Originally a number theoretic problem, it has been approached by means of recursion theory, resource bounded complexity theory, classification by complexity of the defining sentences, and finally by means of structural graph theory. Although Scholz' question was answered in various ways, Asser's question remains open.
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Riley, Ellyn A., and Arthur Owora. "Relationship Between Physiologically Measured Attention and Behavioral Task Engagement in Persons With Chronic Aphasia." Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 63, no. 5 (May 22, 2020): 1430–45. http://dx.doi.org/10.1044/2020_jslhr-19-00016.
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Purpose Persons with aphasia (PWAs) have been shown to have impaired attention skills that may interfere with their ability to successfully participate in speech and language therapy. Fluctuations in attention can be detected using physiological measures such as electroencephalography (EEG), but these measures can be impractical for clinical use. The primary purpose of this study was to investigate observable behavioral signs of attention as a means of measuring within-session fluctuations in attention by comparing behavioral ratings to physiological changes. Other aims were to understand the relationship between observable behaviors and task performance and to determine whether syntactic complexity influences behavioral attention. Method Ten PWAs and 10 neurologically healthy adults underwent a sentence-reading task with 45 active and 45 passive sentences while video/audio and EEG data were recorded continuously. EEG data for each trial were classified into one of four levels of attention using a classification algorithm (Berka et al., 2004), and video/audio data were scored for accuracy and behavioral engagement by two trained speech-language pathologist students using a behavioral rating scale of inattention (Whyte et al., 1996). Results Results showed that behavioral engagement was significantly correlated with task performance, with higher engagement scores associated with fewer errors. Behavioral engagement did not differ based on syntactic complexity for either group, but PWAs had significantly lower behavioral engagement scores when they were in lower/distracted states of physiologically measured vigilant attention. Conclusion Behavioral observation may provide an alternative means of detecting clinically significant lapses in attention during aphasia therapy.
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BERTINI, CESARINO, and ROBERTO LEPORINI. "QUANTUM COMPUTATIONAL FINITE-VALUED LOGICS." International Journal of Quantum Information 05, no. 05 (October 2007): 641–65. http://dx.doi.org/10.1142/s0219749907003109.
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The theory of logical gates in quantum computation has suggested new forms of quantum logic, called quantum computational logics. The basic semantic idea is the following: the meaning of a sentence is identified with a quantum information quantity, represented by a quregister (a system of qudits) or, more generally, by a mixture of quregisters (called qumix), whose dimension depends on the logical complexity of the sentence. At the same time, the logical connectives are interpreted as logical operations defined in terms of quantum logical gates. Physical models of quantum computational logics can be built by means of Mach-Zehnder interferometers.
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AbuSeileek, Ali Farhan. "The effect of using an online-based course on the learning of grammar inductively and deductively." ReCALL 21, no. 3 (September 2009): 319–36. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s095834400999005x.
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AbstractThis study aims at exploring the effectiveness of using an online-based course on the learning of sentence types inductively and deductively. To achieve this purpose, a computer-mediated course was designed. The sample of the study consists of four groups taught under four treatments of grammar: (1) with computer-based learning inductively, (2) with computer-based learning deductively, (3) with non-computer-based learning inductively, and (4) with non-computer-based learning deductively. A pre-test/post-test design (between-subject) is used to investigate the effect of two factors: method (computer-based learning vs. non-computer-based learning) and technique (induction vs. deduction) on the students’ learning of sentence types. The results reveal a new manner of enhancing grammar learning based on the level of language structure complexity. The computer-based learning method is found to be functional for more complex and elaborate structures, like the complex sentence and compound complex sentence, and more complicated grammar structures need to be taught by means of the deductive technique. None of the inductive and deductive techniques is reported to be more practical with simple grammar structures such as the simple sentence and compound sentence.
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Tribushinina, Elena. "Comprehension of degree modifiers by pre-school children: What does it mean to be ‘a bit cold’?" Folia Linguistica 48, no. 1 (May 1, 2014): 255–76. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/flin.2014.008.
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Abstract Although even young infants were shown to have some understanding of (adjectival) scalarity, studies of children’s spontaneous speech suggest that the acquisition of scalar semantics may not yet be completed by the time children enter primary school. In the present study, this hypothesis is tested by investigating the comprehension of diminishers (‘a bit’) and consequential degree modifiers (‘too’) modifying relative adjectives (long, warm) in a group of 5-year-old Dutch-speaking children. Based on earlier production studies, it is hypothesized that by age 6 children are adult-like in their comprehension of ‘too’ and not yet target-like in the comprehension of ‘a bit’ modifying relative adjectives. The results of the comprehension experiment demonstrate that some children have already acquired the semantics of both ‘too’ and ‘a bit’, whereas others still have trouble understanding combinations of relative adjectives with each of these degree adverbs. Furthermore, poor comprehenders need more time to process sentences with ‘a bit’ compared to the same sentences with ‘too’, presumably revealing a greater conceptual complexity of diminishers. These findings are consistent with the idea that the acquisition of scalarity has a protracted time course
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Roszko, Danuta, and Roman Roszko. "A net presentation of Lithuanian sentences containing verbal forms with the grammatical suffix -dav-." Cognitive Studies | Études cognitives, no. 14 (September 4, 2014): 173–82. http://dx.doi.org/10.11649/cs.2014.014.
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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.
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Jones, F. "Subject, topic, given and salient: sentence-beginnings in Latin." Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society 37 (1992): 81–105. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0068673500001541.
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This paper summarises the results of an investigation into sentence-beginnings made as part of an attempt to find an approach to word order which would be effective in revealing linguistic continuity as well as coping with the complexity of facts. Its point of origin is the intuition that for a native speaker the process of understanding what is said or written ought to be, at least within reasonable limits, both continuous and in some way in keeping with the order in which the utterance or text is presented.Utterances are linear and temporal, and the ear passes what it receives to the brain in a sequential order that matches the auditory stimulus itself, a fact reflected in the way we write and read; it would be anomalous (though by no means impossible within certian limitations) if the brain were toprocessthe incoming material in some other order. It is therefore worth considering the order in which discourse elements are represented.
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Lattermann, Christina, Rosalee C. Shenker, and Elin Thordardottir. "Progression of Language Complexity During Treatment With the Lidcombe Program for Early Stuttering Intervention." American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology 14, no. 3 (August 2005): 242–53. http://dx.doi.org/10.1044/1058-0360(2005/024).
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The Lidcombe Program is an operant treatment for early stuttering. Outcomes indicate that the program is effective; however, the underlying mechanisms leading to a successful reduction of stuttering remain unknown. The purpose of this study was to determine whether fluency achieved with the Lidcombe Program was accompanied by concomitant reduction of utterance length and decreases in linguistic complexity. Standardized language tests were administered pretreatment to 4 male preschool children. Spontaneous language samples were taken 2 weeks prior to treatment, at Weeks 1, 4, 8, and 12 during treatment, and 6 months after the onset of treatment. Samples were analyzed for mean length of utterance (MLU), percentage of simple and complex sentences, number of different words (NDW), and percentage of syllables stuttered. Analysis revealed that all participants presented with language skills in the average and above average range. The children achieved an increase in stutter-free speech accompanied by increases in MLU, percentage of complex sentences, and NDW. For these preschool children who stutter, improved stutter-free speech during treatment with the program appeared to be achieved without a decrease in linguistic complexity. Theoretical and clinical implications are discussed.
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Rosen, Eric. "Some Aspects of Model Theory and Finite Structures." Bulletin of Symbolic Logic 8, no. 3 (September 2002): 380–403. http://dx.doi.org/10.2178/bsl/1182353894.
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Model theory is concerned mainly, although not exclusively, with infinite structures. In recent years, finite structures have risen to greater prominence, both within the context of mainstream model theory, e.g., in work of Lachlan, Cherlin, Hrushovski, and others, and with the advent of finite model theory, which incorporates elements of classical model theory, combinatorics, and complexity theory. The purpose of this survey is to provide an overview of what might be called the model theory of finite structures. Some topics in finite model theory have strong connections to theoretical computer science, especially descriptive complexity theory (see [26, 46]). In fact, it has been suggested that finite model theory really is, or should be, logic for computer science. These connections with computer science will, however, not be treated here.It is well-known that many classical results of ‘infinite model theory’ fail over the class of finite structures, including the compactness and completeness theorems, as well as many preservation and interpolation theorems (see [35, 26]). The failure of compactness in the finite, in particular, means that the standard proofs of many theorems are no longer valid in this context. At present, there is no known example of a classical theorem that remains true over finite structures, yet must be proved by substantially different methods. It is generally concluded that first-order logic is ‘badly behaved’ over finite structures.From the perspective of expressive power, first-order logic also behaves badly: it is both too weak and too strong. Too weak because many natural properties, such as the size of a structure being even or a graph being connected, cannot be defined by a single sentence. Too strong, because every class of finite structures with a finite signature can be defined by an infinite set of sentences. Even worse, every finite structure is defined up to isomorphism by a single sentence. In fact, it is perhaps because of this last point more than anything else that model theorists have not been very interested in finite structures. Modern model theory is concerned largely with complete first-order theories, which are completely trivial here.
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Jean-Baptiste, Rachel, Harriet B. Klein, Danielle Brates, and Nelson Moses. "What’s happening? And other questions obligating complete sentences as responses." Child Language Teaching and Therapy 34, no. 2 (October 30, 2017): 191–202. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0265659017735960.
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This study was designed to examine the strength of question types to obligate complete responses from children, and the effect of age and play context. Participants were typically developing children (mean ages 2;8, 3;4 and 4;7), who engaged in play with three speech-language pathologists in play contexts. Questions posed to the children were coded by semantic content (Epistemic, Procedural Action, External State, and Causal). Children’s responses were coded for syntactic complexity (complete or incomplete sentences). The effect of question type on response was analysed. All questions yielded high proportions of complete responses, which increased with age. There were no statistically significant differences between question type and completeness of response except for a significant difference found for External State when multi-verb responses were analysed. The results support the use of these question types in play settings with children to promote expression of complete sentences.
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HUNDT, MARIANNE, DAVID DENISON, and GEROLD SCHNEIDER. "Relative complexity in scientific discourse." English Language and Linguistics 16, no. 2 (June 1, 2012): 209–40. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s1360674312000032.
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Variation and change in relativization strategies are well documented. Previous studies have looked at issues such as (a) relativizer choice with respect to the semantics of the antecedent and type of relative, (b) prescriptive traditions, (c) variation across text types and regional varieties, and (d) the role that relative clauses play in the organization of information within the noun phrase.In this article, our focus is on scientific writing in British and American English. The addition of American scientific texts to the ARCHER corpus gives us the opportunity to compare scientific discourse in the two national varieties of English over the whole Late Modern period. Furthermore, ARCHER has been parsed, and this kind of syntactic annotation facilitates the retrieval of information that was previously difficult to obtain. We take advantage of new data and annotation to investigate two largely unrelated topics: relativizer choice and textual organization within the NP.First, parsing facilitates easy retrieval of relative clauses which were previously difficult to retrieve from plain-text corpora by automatic means, namely that- and zero relatives. We study the diachronic change in relativizer choice in British and American scientific writing over the last three hundred years; we also test for the accuracy of the automatically retrieved data. In addition, we trace the development of the prescriptive aversion to which in restrictive relatives (largely peculiar to American English).Second, the parsed data allow us to investigate development in the structure of the NP in this genre, including not only phrasal but also clausal modification of the head noun. We examine the contribution of relative clauses to NP complexity, sentence length and structure. Structural changes within the NP, we argue, are related to the increased professionalization of the scientific publication process.
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Mohammed, Mazin Jasim, Mohammed Hassan, and Khalid Shamkhi. "Sentence Length and Complexity in Hemingway's Short story : A Clean, Well-Lighted Place : A Stylistic study." لارك 1, no. 10 (May 25, 2019): 41–57. http://dx.doi.org/10.31185/lark.vol1.iss10.876.
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The term style is somehow difficult to define . The difficulty arises from the fact that it is acquiring several interpretations . Such interpretations might refer to abstract notions such as " style of deviations " ; or " style is choice " or a distinct personality (the style of Shakespeare ) ; or to periods ( the baroque style ) and the like ( Galperine , 1977:11).
Carter and Nashe (1990:36) argue that style can be recognized because it stands out in one way or another from a standard . This view simply means style can be seen as deviation . However , such a view cannot be taken for granted since norms are very difficult to standardize . Wales (1990 ) [quoted in Missikova ,2003] in her famous book A Dictionary of Stylistics listed the most common characteristics of style as follows :
Style refers to the manner of expression in writing and speaking .
Style can be seen as variation in language use , whether literary or non-literary . The term register is commonly used for such variations in linguistic features found in non-literary situations ,
such as legal language , advertising , etc.
Style is seen as distinctive of register , genre or period.
Style is defined in terms of choice of items , and their distribution and
patterning .
As deviation from a norm , style is a concept that is used traditionally in literary stylistics , since literary language is more deviant than non-literary language use .
To sum up , Warner (1961:1) ; Garvin (1964:112) go on to state that in spite of the different interpretations of the term style , the simplest interpretation is that is a manner of expressing one's thoughts and feelings in words .
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McGee, Vann. "The complexity of the modal predicate logic of “true in every transitive model of ZF”." Journal of Symbolic Logic 62, no. 4 (December 1997): 1371–78. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2275648.
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Robert Solovay [8] investigated the version of the modal sentential calculus one gets by taking “□ϕ” to mean “ϕ is true in every transitive model of Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory (ZF).” Defining an interpretation to be a function * taking formulas of the modal sentential calculus to sentences of the language of set theory that commutes with the Boolean connectives and sets (□ϕ)* equal to the statement that ϕ* is true in every transitive model of ZF, and stipulating that a modal formula ϕ is valid if and only if, for every interpretation *, ϕ* is true in every transitive model of ZF, Solovay obtained a complete and decidable set of axioms.In this paper, we stifle the hope that we might continue Solovay's program by getting an analogous set of axioms for the modal predicate calculus. The set of valid formulas of the modal predicate calculus is not axiomatizable; indeed, it is complete .We also look at a variant notion of validity according to which a formula ϕ counts as valid if and only if, for every interpretation *, ϕ* is true. For this alternative conception of validity, we shall obtain a lower bound of complexity: every set which is in the set of sentences of the language of set theory true in the constructible universe will be 1-reducible to the set of valid modal formulas.
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Desch, Karl, Jun Z. Li, Scott Kim, Naomi Laventhal, David Siemieniak, and David Ginsburg. "How Informed Is Informed Consent?" Blood 116, no. 21 (November 19, 2010): 2556. http://dx.doi.org/10.1182/blood.v116.21.2556.2556.
Full textAbstract:
Abstract Abstract 2556 The informed consent process is a critical component of human subject protection in biomedical research, with the goals of informing participants of the purpose of the study, as well as the likely risks, benefits and alternatives. The signed informed consent document (ICD) is a required legal disclosure which documents that the informed consent process has taken place and provides research subjects with comprehensive information about their role in a study. Despite efforts to optimize the ICD, only limited data are available regarding the utilization of these documents by participants in biomedical research. We measured the time taken by participants, in a genetic study of hematologic traits, to review a 2833 word online ICD prior to indicating consent. ICDs were generated utilizing standard templates provided by the University of Michigan IRB with the addition of a hyperlink at word 2254 of the ICD that read “If you are reading this form, please click on this sentence”. Identification of the hyperlink, as a proxy for thorough reading of the ICD, was recorded. The study was approved by the University of Michigan IRB (IRBMED# 2005-0080.) A total of 1209 subjects were recruited from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor student population from 2/12/08 to 1/30/09. Age ranged from 14 to 35 years with a mean of 21. Standard reading speeds predicted a range of 567 to 850 seconds to read the full ICD text. The distribution of consent times was heterogeneous, heavily weighted toward times that would suggest little to no reading of the ICD. Twenty-eight percent of participants consented within ten seconds. Only 78 participants (6.4%) took longer than the minimum estimated reading time (566 seconds) to indicate consent. The hyperlink was identified by 2.2% of participants with a median reading time of 621 seconds, significantly longer than those who did not (52 seconds, p<3×10−11). Additionally, significant differences in consent time were noted for sex, age, and downloading of the ICD PDF file. Our results demonstrate that the majority of participants in this study (93.6%) provided consent without spending sufficient time to thoroughly read and comprehend the ICD. The 6.4% of participants with consent times greater than the minimum predicted ICD reading times is likely a significant overestimate of ICD comprehension since the consent interval recorded could also include time spent on other distracting activities. In conclusion, these observations imply that the consent by subjects to participate in this and many other low-risk studies is unlikely to have been as truly informed as originally intended by the investigators and the IRB. This lack of truly informed consent is also likely to extend beyond research studies, to include ICDs used for treatment in the routine clinical care setting. These data suggest that current ICDs, particularly for low-risk studies, may no longer serve the intended informed consent purpose and that ICD length and complexity should be reassessed. Disclosures: No relevant conflicts of interest to declare.
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Nagy, Judit. "Discourse Intonation and Information Structure: An Empirical Study of Existential There Constructions in Non-native Spontaneous Speech." Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Philologica 8, no. 2 (December 1, 2016): 139–53. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/ausp-2016-0023.
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Abstract The management of given and new information is one of the key components of accomplishing coherence in oral discourse, which is claimed to be a problematic area for language learners (Celce-Murcia, Dörnyei, and Thurrell 1995: 14). Research on discourse intonation proposes that instead of the given/new dichotomy, givenness should be viewed as a continuum, with different types of accessibility (Baumann & Grice 2006). Moreover, Prince (1992) previously categorized information structure into Hearer-old/Hearer-new and Discourse-old/Discourse-new information. There is consensus on the fact that focus or prominence associated with new information is marked with nuclear pitch accent, and its main acoustic cue, fundamental frequency (f0) (Ward & Birner 2001: 120). Non-native intonation has been reported to display numerous differences in f0 range and patterns compared to native speech (Wennerstrom 1994; Baker 2010). This study is an attempt to address the issue of marking information structure in existential there sentences by means of f0 in non-native spontaneous speech. Data originates from task-based interactions in the Wildcat Corpus of Native- and Foreign-Accented English (Van Engen et al. 2010). This paper examines two issues: (1) information structure in relation to the notions of givenness and different types of accessibility (Baumann & Grice 2006) and to Prince’s (1992) multidimensional taxonomy and (2) the use of f0 peaks to mark the prominence of new information. Several differences were measured among native speakers regarding the use of f0, sentence type, and complexity.
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van der Velde, Frank, and Marc de Kamps. "Neural blackboard architectures of combinatorial structures in cognition." Behavioral and Brain Sciences 29, no. 1 (February 2006): 37–70. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0140525x06009022.
Full textAbstract:
Human cognition is unique in the way in which it relies on combinatorial (or compositional) structures. Language provides ample evidence for the existence of combinatorial structures, but they can also be found in visual cognition. To understand the neural basis of human cognition, it is therefore essential to understand how combinatorial structures can be instantiated in neural terms. In his recent book on the foundations of language, Jackendoff described four fundamental problems for a neural instantiation of combinatorial structures: the massiveness of the binding problem, the problem of 2, the problem of variables, and the transformation of combinatorial structures from working memory to long-term memory. This paper aims to show that these problems can be solved by means of neural “blackboard” architectures. For this purpose, a neural blackboard architecture for sentence structure is presented. In this architecture, neural structures that encode for words are temporarily bound in a manner that preserves the structure of the sentence. It is shown that the architecture solves the four problems presented by Jackendoff. The ability of the architecture to instantiate sentence structures is illustrated with examples of sentence complexity observed in human language performance. Similarities exist between the architecture for sentence structure and blackboard architectures for combinatorial structures in visual cognition, derived from the structure of the visual cortex. These architectures are briefly discussed, together with an example of a combinatorial structure in which the blackboard architectures for language and vision are combined. In this way, the architecture for language is grounded in perception. Perspectives and potential developments of the architectures are discussed.
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Gorban, Oksana, Marina Kosova, and Elena Sheptukhina. "Structural Markup of Official Documents in Diachronic Linguistic Corpus: Problems and Solutions." Vestnik Volgogradskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta. Serija 2. Jazykoznanije, no. 4 (December 2021): 5–18. http://dx.doi.org/10.15688/jvolsu2.2021.4.1.
Full textAbstract:
The research relevance is determined by the need to annotate official documents of Don Cossack Host written in the middle of the 18 th century and kept in "Mikhailovsky Stanitsa Ataman" archive fund of the State Archive of the Volgograd Region (SAVR, fund 332, inventory 1), so as to compile a linguistic corpus. The authors characterize the problems of the deposited documentary text structural division. These difficulties occur due to the specifics of the form, the dynamics of genres and the syntactical peculiarities of business communication in the middle of the 18 th century. It is revealed that the complexity of documentary text division depends on the degree of its narrativity. The choice of a structural-semantic segment that coincides with a sentence or several closely connected sentences as a layout unit is motivated. A complex method of document segmentation for the structural markup is justified. The approach is based on genre parameterization of documents and their syntactic segmentation. It has been established that the segment boundaries can be indicated by the complex of graphic symbols, speech formulas that perform the function of details of payments, lexical and grammatical means. As a result of the study, it has been shown that the succession of procedures implemented for text segmentation, and targeted at genre and speech organization of the document identification, makes it possible to present in the diachronic corpus the information, which is necessary and sufficient for the user to conclude about the properties of the document text and its units.