Explore the vast range of titles available.

The volume Passives Cross-Linguistically provides analyses of passive constructions across different languages and populations from the interface perspectives between syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. In addition to the theoretical contributions, some experimental works are presented, which explore passives from psycholinguistic perspectives.

This research was conducted to scrutinise common errors of 9th graders in the use of English passive voice (EPV), which is a challenging aspect of learning English for most EFLL/ ESL learners. The participants were those who were learning at a secondary school in a Vietnamese rural region. The research analysed the EPV errors in 162 student tests, which include all EPV structures, namely simple passives with 'be', simple passives with 'get', complex passives with 'be', pseudo passives with 'get' or 'have', and stative passives. To better analyse the participants' performance, the test is divided into two main sections: 18 closed-ended test items and one open-ended writing task. The research results showed that these learners made the most misformation errors in both sections of the test. On the other hand, all the other types of errors accounted for the same fraction in the open-ended task, while misorder errors were the least common category in the closed-ended test items. Specifically, omission and addition errors are mainly caused by the participants being careless with the auxiliary verb 'be'. In contrast, the misformation subcategories are much more diverse, with using completely wrong passive structures and wrong past participles being the predominant faults in closed-ended and open-ended sections, respectively.

This study aims to investigate the effectiveness of explicit information (EI) in the context of Processing Instruction (PI) as an alternative to traditional teaching methods. PI encompasses explicit information and structured input activity (SI). However, the effectiveness of EI has been a subject of debate. To address this question, grade-7 students were divided into three groups: the complete Processing Instruction group, the explicit information only group, and the structured input activity only group. Following pre-tests and the implementation of different teaching instructions on English passive voice, the scores of the participants were analyzed for the immediate post-test and delayed post-test. The results suggested that although EI did not accelerate the acquisition of the form-meaning connection of English passive voice, it was beneficial for final performance similar to SI. The complete Processing Instruction, however, proved to be the most effective. This study suggests a possible association between the effectiveness of EI and the relative difficulty of the target item for language learners. Plain language summary This study aims to investigate the effectiveness of explicit information (EI) in the context of Processing Instruction (PI) as an alternative to traditional teaching methods. PI encompasses explicit information and structured input activity (SI). However, the effectiveness of EI has been a subject of debate. To address this question, grade-7 students were divided into three groups: the complete Processing Instruction group, the explicit information only group, and the structured input activity only group. Following pre-tests and the implementation of different teaching instructions on English passive voice, the scores of the participants were analyzed for the immediate post-test and delayed post-test. The results suggested that although EI did not accelerate the acquisition of the form-meaning connection of English passive voice, it was beneficial for final performance similar to SI. The complete Processing Instruction, however, proved to be the most effective. This study suggests a possible association between the effectiveness of EI and the relative difficulty of the target item for language learners. The limitations of the study include the potential impact of uncontrollable classroom distractions, the grouping of participants according to classes without accounting for variations in learning abilities, English proficiency levels, and the potential influence of self-directed learning outside the classroom.

This book analyzes the form and function of the English passive from a verb-based point of view. It takes the position that the various surface forms of the passive (with or without thematic subject, with or without object, with or without by-phrase, with or without auxiliary) have a common source and are determined by the interplay of the syntactic properties of the verb and general syntactic principles. Each structural element of the passive construction is examined separately, and the participle is considered the only defining component of the passive. Special emphasis is put on the existence of an implicit argument (ususally an agent) and its representation in the passive. A review of data from syntax, language acquisition, and psycholinguistics shows that the implicit agent is not just a conceptually understood argument. It is argued that it is represented at the level of argument structure and that this is what sets the passive apart from other patient-subject constructions. A corpus-based case study on the use of the passive in academic writing analyzes the use of the passive in this particular register. One of the findings is that about 20-25% of passives occur in constructions that do not require an auxiliary, a result that challenges corpus studies on the use of the passive that only consider full be-passives. It is also shown that new active-voice constructions have emerged that compete with the passive without having a more visible agent. The emergence of these constructions (such as \"This paper argues...\") is discussed in the context of changes in the rhetoric of scientific discourse. The book is mainly of interest to linguists and graduate students in the areas of English syntax, semantics, and pragmatics.

A radically new approach to argument structure in the minimalist program. In Arguments as Relations, John Bowers proposes a radically new approach to argument structure that has the potential to unify data from a wide range of different language types in terms of a simple and universal syntactic structure. In many ways, Bowers's theory is the natural extension of three leading ideas in the literature: the minimalist approach to Case theory (particularly Chomsky's idea that Case is assigned under the Agree function relation); the idea of introducing arguments in specifiers of functional categories rather than in projections of lexical categories; and the neo-Davidsonian approach to argument structure represented in the work of Parsons and others. Bowers pulls together these strands in the literature and shapes them into a unified theory. These ideas, together with certain basic assumptions—notably the idea that the initial order of merge of the three basic argument categories of Agent, Theme, and Affectee is just the opposite of what has been almost universally assumed in the literature—lead Bowers to a fundamental rethinking of argument structure. He proposes that every argument is merged as the specifier of a particular type of light verb category and that these functional argument categories merge in bottom-to-top fashion in accordance with a fixed Universal Order of Merge (UOM). In the hierarchical structures that result from these operations, Affectee arguments will be highest, Theme arguments next highest, and Agent arguments lowest—exactly the opposite of the usual assumption. Linguistic Inquiry Monographs 58

This monograph investigates how Japanese employs different structures found in the grammatical voice, both synchronically and diachronically. The Japanese voice system, especially the passive voice, has provided much interesting data for typological compa.

The monograph is a contribution to the study of the interactions between semantics, pragmatics, and syntax. Based on British National Corpus and Corpus of Contemporary American English, the study offers an analysis of English causative constructions with intransitive verbs of motion (secondary agent constructions), which have been dealt with so far only partially. The monograph is an interdisciplinary work, bringing new insights into cognitive linguistics (especially in the analysis of a causation of motion) and building on insights from psycholinguistics and philosophy of language. The monograph is designed for linguists and students of linguistics.

There have been plenty of research studies which have demonstrated the efficacy of focus on form (FonF) approach in language teaching. However, processing instruction as a kind of FonF approach has not been given due attention. As such, the present study is an attempt to shed more lights upon the effects of the processing instruction (PI) on EFL (English as a Foreign Language) learners’ acquisition of passive voice by comparing PI to dictogloss and an output instruction. The participants recruited for the study were 51 pre-intermediate level EFL students. The pretest revealed that there was no significant difference between the groups regarding passive voice knowledge. As to the treatment, the first group (n=17) received processing instruction, the second group (n=17) was exposed to dictogloss tasks, and the third (n=17) was given meaningful output instruction. In the immediate posttest, two types of tasks (interpretation and production) were used to assess the participants’ English passive voice comprehension and production. The findings indicated that the processing instruction group outperformed dictogloss and meaningful output instruction in both tasks, and thus it had a significantly positive effect on the comprehension and production of the English passive voice.

Language Acquisition in CLIL and Non-CLIL Settings builds a bridge between Second Language Acquisition and Learner Corpus Research (LCR) methodologies to take the evaluation of Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) to a new level.

No detailed description available for \"The Representation of Implicit and Dethematized Subjects\".