Showing papers on "Plural published in 2009"

Plural forms versus franchise and company-owned systems: A DEA approach of hotel chain performance

Abstract: Plural form tends to be the most popular organization form in retail and service networks compared to purely franchised or purely company-owned systems. In the first part, this paper exposes the evolution of researchers’ state of mind from the way of thinking which considers franchising and ownership as substitutable organizational forms to theories which analyze the utilization of both franchise and company arrangements. The paper describes the main attempts to explain theoretically the superiority of plural forms. In the second part, the paper discusses the hypothesis which says that there is a relationship between the organizational form of the chain and its efficiency score. It is demonstrated through the application of a data envelopment analysis method on French hotel chains that plural form networks are in average more efficient than strictly franchised and wholly owned chains. The Kruskal–Wallis test which is a distribution-free rank-order statistic is used to statistically verify this relationship. The result does not permit the rejection of the null hypothesis regarding whether an organizational form is more efficient than another one. Hence, this paper opens prospects for researches aiming at testing the organizational form effect on different samples and with other methods.

A theory of individual-level predicates based on blind mandatory scalar implicatures

Abstract: Predicates such as tall or to know Latin, which intuitively denote permanent properties, are called individual-level predicates. Many peculiar properties of this class of predicates have been noted in the literature. One such property is that we cannot say #John is sometimes tall. Here is a way to account for this property: this sentence sounds odd because it triggers the scalar implicature that the alternative John is always tall is false, which cannot be, given that, if John is sometimes tall, then he always is. This intuition faces two challenges. First: this scalar implicature has a weird nature, since it must be surprisingly robust (otherwise, it could be cancelled and the sentence rescued) and furthermore blind to the common knowledge that tallness is a permanent property (since this piece of common knowledge makes the two alternatives equivalent). Second: it is not clear how this intuition could be extended to other, more complicated properties of individual-level predicates. The goal of this paper is to defend the idea of an implicature-based theory of individual-level predicates by facing these two challenges. In the first part of the paper, I try to make sense of the weird nature of these special mismatching implicatures within the recent grammatical framework for scalar implicatures of Chierchia (Structures and beyond, 2004) and Fox (2007). In the second part of the paper, I show how this implicature-based line of reasoning can be extended to more complicated properties of individual-level predicates, such as restrictions on the interpretation of their bare plural subjects, noted in Carlson (Reference to kinds in English. Doctoral dissertation, University of Massachusetts at Amherst, 1977), Milsark (Linguistic Analysis 3.1: 1–29, 1977), and Fox (Natural Language Semantics 3: 283–341, 1995); restrictions on German word order, noted in Diesing (Indefinites, 1992); and restrictions on Q-adverbs, noted in Kratzer (The Generic Book, ed. Carlson and Pelletier, 125–175, 1995).

Error Analysis of the Written English Essays of Secondary School Students in Malaysia: A Case Study

Abstract: This study examines errors in a corpus of 72 essays written by 72 participants. The participants are Form Four Malay students who are studying at a secondary school in Malaysia; 37 male and 35 female. They have experienced approximately the same number of years of education through primary and secondary education in Malaysia. All of the participants come from non-English speaking background and hardly communicate in English outside the school. The instrument used for this study was participants’ written essays and Markin software. All of the errors in the essays were identified and classified into various categorizations. The results of the study show that six most common errors committed by the participants were singular/plural form, verb tense, word choice, preposition, subject-verb agreement and word order. These aspects of writing in English pose the most difficult problems to participants. This study has shed light on the manner in which students internalize the rules of the target language, which is English. Such an insight into language learning problems is useful to teachers because it provides information on common trouble-spots in language learning which can be used in the preparation of effective teaching materials.

To be or not to be … a plurilingual speaker

Abstract: The bi/plurilingual person is a unique speaker–hearer who should be studied as such and not always in comparison with the monolingual. As such, unilingual linguistic models and perspectives based on the idea that bilingualism is a duplication of competences in two languages (or more) are unsuitable to describe plural practices in multilingual societies. This is a criticism we formulated over the years (Ludi & Py, 1986, 2003). The contribution discusses the relevance of alternative models, concepts and theoretical frameworks in the study of multi/plurilingualism and their potential in language studies and the understanding of second and third-language acquisition. We also discuss how these models and concepts find their way into classroom practice and language policies.

Bilingual children's sensitivity to specificity and genericity: Evidence from metalinguistic awareness

Abstract: A number of recent studies have argued that bilingual children's language comprehension and production may be affected by cross-linguistic influence. The overall aim of this study was to investigate whether the ability to judge the grammaticality of a construction in one language is affected by knowledge of the corresponding construction in the other language. We investigated how English–Italian and Spanish–Italian bilingual children and monolingual peers judged the grammaticality of plural NPs in specific and generic contexts in English and in Italian. We also explored whether language of the community, age, and the typological relatedness of the bilinguals’ two languages significantly affected their performance. While performance in English was overall poor, no significant differences existed between the English–Italian bilinguals and the monolinguals. In contrast, we found that knowledge of English affected the bilinguals’ ability to discriminate between grammatical and ungrammatical sentences in Italian. The English–Italian bilinguals were significantly less accurate than both the monolinguals and the Spanish–Italian bilinguals in a task where they simply had to rely on the local definite article cue to reject ungrammatical bare plurals in generic contexts. Language of the community and age also played a significant role in children's accuracy.

Is the Acquisition Order of Grammatical Morphemes Impervious to L1 Knowledge? Evidence From the Acquisition of Plural ‐s, Articles, and Possessive ’s

Abstract: In SLA, it has been often assumed that the effect of the first language (L1) is not very strong in the acquisition of grammatical morphemes (e.g., Ellis, 1994; Mitchell & Myles, 2004). However, such an assumption has not been systematically examined in the literature. This article reviews the morpheme studies conducted with native speakers of Japanese, Korean, Chinese, and Spanish to test the effect of the L1 in the acquisition of grammatical morphemes. The review reveals that although Spanish L1 learners’ acquisition order generally conforms to the “so-called” natural order (Krashen, 1977), native speakers of Japanese, Korean, and Chinese mostly acquire plural –s and articles later than, and possessive ’s earlier than, is predicted by the natural order. This indicates that learners can acquire a grammatical morpheme later or earlier than predicted by the natural order, depending on the presence or absence of the equivalent category in their L1. This suggests that L1 transfer is much stronger than is portrayed in many SLA textbooks and that the role of L1 in morpheme acquisition must be reconsidered.

Number-neutral bare plurals and the multiplicity implicature

Abstract: Bare plurals (dogs) behave in ways that quantified plurals (some dogs) do not. For instance, while the sentence John owns dogs implies that John owns more than one dog, its negation John does not own dogs does not mean “John does not own more than one dog”, but rather “John does not own a dog”. A second puzzling behavior is known as the dependent plural reading; when in the scope of another plural, the ‘more than one’ meaning of the plural is not distributed over, but the existential force of the plural is. For example, My friends attend good schools requires that each of my friends attend one good school, not more, while at the same time being inappropriate if all my friends attend the same school. This paper shows that both these phenomena, and others, arise from the same cause. Namely, the plural noun itself does not assert ‘more than one’, but rather the plural denotes a predicate that is number neutral (unspecified for cardinality). The ‘more than one’ meaning arises as an scalar implicature, relying on the scalar relationship between the bare plural and its singular alternative, and calculated in a sub-sentential domain; namely, before existential closure of the event variable. Finally, implications of this analysis will be discussed for the analysis of the quantified noun phrases that interact with bare plurals, such as indefinite numeral DPs (three boys), and singular universals (every boy).

Culture and First-Person Pronouns

Abstract: Priming research has shown that repeated exposures to first-person singular pronouns (I, my, me, mine) activate an individualistic orientation, whereas first-person plural pronouns (we, our, us, ours) activate a collectivistic orientation. However, little research has been done to explore the opposite direction of influence such that one's cultural orientation determines one's choice between first-person singular versus plural pronouns. The authors conducted three studies to examine the effects of one's cultural orientation on one's use of first-person possessive pronouns. Results show that, compared to their individualistic counterparts, participants who have a collectivistic orientation, chronically or temporarily by priming, preferred to use first-person plural possessive pronouns.

Development of Nominal Inflection in First Language Acquisition: A Cross-Linguistic Perspective

Abstract: IntroductionUrsula Stephany and Maria D. Voeikova Early development of number in the Spanish nounCarmen Aguirre and Victoria Marrero The early development of Case and Number in EstonianReili Argus Early phases in the development of Greek noun inflectionAnastasia Christofidou and Ursula Stephany Early development of number in the Italian nounAnna de Marco and Sabrina Noccetti Early development of noun inflection in RussianNatalia Gagarina and Maria D. Voeikova Early nominal morphology in Turkish: Emergence of case and numberNihan Ketrez and Ayhan Aksu-Koc The early development of noun inflection in PolishDorota Kiebzak-Mandera Relations between noun and verb plural development in two French-speaking childrenMarianne Kilani-Schoch The acquisition of number and case in Austrian German nounsKatharina Korecky-Kroll and Wolfgang U. Dressler The acquisition of case, number and gender in CroatianMelita Kovacevi& No. 7689 , Marijan Palmovi? and Gordana Hr& No. 382 ica The acquisition of case and plural in FinnishKlaus Laalo The early development of number in Yucatec MayaBarbara Pfeiler The early development of number in Palestinian ArabicDorit Ravid Personal pronouns and other forms of address in Lithuanian language acquisitionIneta Savickiene.

Does the conceptual distinction between singular and plural sets depend on language

Abstract: Previous studies indicate that English-learning children acquire the distinction between singular and plural nouns between 22 and 24 months of age. Also, their use of the distinction is correlated with the capacity to distinguish nonlinguistically between singular and plural sets in a manual search paradigm (D. Barner, D. Thalwitz, J. Wood, S. Yang, & S. Carey, 2007). The authors used 3 experiments to explore the causal relation between these 2 capacities. Relative to English, Japanese and Mandarin had impoverished singular-plural marking. Using the manual search task, in Experiment 1 the authors found that by around 22 months of age, Japanese children also distinguished between singular and plural sets. Experiments 2 and 3 extended this finding to Mandarin-learning toddlers. Mandarin learners who were 20-24 months of age did not yet comprehend Mandarin singular-plural marking (i.e., yige vs. yixie, or -men), yet they did distinguish between singular and plural sets in manual search. These experiments suggest that knowledge of singular-plural morphology is not necessary for deploying the nonlinguistic distinction between singular and plural sets.

Acquisition of singular-plural morphology.

Abstract: A manual search paradigm explored the development of English singular–plural comprehension. After being shown a box into which they could reach but not see, infants heard verbal descriptions about the contents of the box (e.g., “There are some cars in the box” vs. “There is a car in the box)” and were then allowed to reach into the box. At 24 months of age, but not at 20 months, infants’ search patterns were influenced by verbal number markings. However, verbal number marking did not influence search behavior when plurality was signaled by noun morphology alone. These data converge with parental reports and preferential looking studies concerning the developmental course of mastery of English plural marking and show that infants can create a mental model of the number of objects on the basis of singular–plural morphology alone.

Processing of grammatical gender in French as a first and second language: Evidence from ERPs

Abstract: The present study examined the processing of grammatical gender in second language (L2) French as a function of language background (Experiment 1) and as a function of overt phonetic properties of agreement (Experiment 2) by examining Event Related Potential (ERP) responses to gender discord in L2 French. In Experiment 1 we explored the role of the presence/absence of abstract grammatical gender in the L1 (gendered German, ungendered English): we compared German and English learners of French when processing post-nominal plural (no gender cues on determiner) attributive adjectives that either agreed in gender with the noun or presented a gender violation. We found grammaticalized responses (P600) by native and L1 English learners, but no response by German L1, a result we attribute to the possible influence of plurality, which is gender neutralized in German DP concord. In Experiment 2, we examined the role of overt phonetic cues to noun-adjective gender agreement in French, for both native speakers and Spanish L2 learners of French, finding that both natives and L2 learners showed a more robust P600 in the presence of phonetic cues. These data, in conjunction with those of other ERP studies can best be accounted for by a model that allows for native language influence, that is not, however constrained by age of acquisition, and that must also allow for clear cues in the input to influence acquisition and/or processing.

Numeral classifiers and the structure of dp

Abstract: This dissertation investigates the structure of the Determiner Phrase from a crosslinguistic perspective, with a particular focus on English and Persian. Three main issues are addressed: the syntactic expression of number, the syntactic expression of specificity and the relationship between them. A numeral classifier is used in numeral+noun constructions, as in Mandarin yi/liang ge xuesheng 'one/two CL student', where the classifier is insensitive to the singular/plural distinction of the quantifying element. Other languages use number morphology, as in English table/tables, where number marking does make a singular/plural distinction. To account for the similarities and differences between classifiers and number morphology, this dissertation proposes that the heads of Number Phrase (NumP) and Classifier Phrase (CLP) house bundles of UG functional features. These features, arranged in a geometry based on Harley and Ritter's (2002) proposal for pronouns, assure syntactic composition of nP with classifiers and number morphology and of NumPs and CLPs with determiners. A classifier's feature, [individuation], only "individuates" the nP complement as a count noun; in contrast, plural morphology also has a [group] feature, which entails the presence if [individuation] but which also calls for a more-specific singular/plural distinction. This feature-based approach leads to the finding that despite descriptive claims that Persian has many "numeral classifiers", there is only one, ta ; the others are in fact modifiers. On top of CLP and NumP, two Quantifier Phrases replace the traditional DP: Weak Quantifier Phrase (WQP) and Strong Quantifier Phrase (SQP). Following from earlier work, I argue that weak quantifying determiners denote a function from CLP/NumP predicates to a WQP generalized quantifier and that strong quantifying determiners denote a function from WQP generalized quantifiers to SQP generalized quantifiers. Crosslinguistic variation in the expression of number and specificity stems from slight differences in the feature bundles that appear in the functional heads and whether these bundles have overt form. This feature-based analysis permits the cooccurrence of a classifier and number marker, a cooccurrence ruled out in earlier theories but which occurs in a number of languages, including Persian. For determiners, particularly articles, the proposal is that the syntactic features in WQ and SQ are interpreted pragmatically with regard to the speaker's presuppositions about whether discourse participants know a referent. Necessarily, specificity and definiteness are analyzed into more primitive features. My working assumption is inspired by Cinque's (2002) hypothesis that functional syntax is the same across languages. But I diverge from the claim that exactly the same phrases are available in all languages. More precisely, I argue that what is universal are the functional features. These do tend to be associated with certain functional heads, but…

One vs. more than one: antecedents to plural marking in early language acquisition*

Abstract: When children first mark distinctions in language, they may use semantically possible but nonconventional expressions. This can be seen in their initial attempts to express ‘more-than-one’ in English (conventionally conveyed by use of the plural inflection). We explore children’s earliest expressions for ‘more-than-one’ by (a) examining longitudinal records for references to one vs. several objects, (b) eliciting references to pictures depicting one vs. two, three, or four objects, and (c) eliciting answers to whatvs. how many-questions about two or more objects. Longitudinal observations show that (1) the plural ending (-s) emerges piecemeal; and (2) children use numeral þ bare-stem nouns (two blanket) before conventional -s. We then elicited singular and plural expressions using pictures from 25 two- and three-year-olds. Most children used plural -s for only a few items; a number relied on numeral þ bare-stem forms (two duck); a few used quantifiers like more, and a few iteration with pointing gestures (e.g., for three cats, cat þ POINT for each in turn). Knowledge of plural marking was distinct from knowledge of counting: Two-year-olds answered what questions with conventional or non-conventional plurals for up to nine objects, but managed how many-questions only for two or three, did poorly with four or five, and typically failed to respond for six or more, consistent with findings on the conceptual development of number.

Signalling picture encoding schemes and associated picture properties

Abstract: Systems and methods that provide a video stream, the video stream comprising a sequence of plural compressed pictures corresponding to a video program, the plural compressed pictures having plural sets of compressed pictures, each of the plural sets adhering to one or more picture interdependencies, properties, or a combination of the picture interdependencies and properties, and provide auxiliary information in the video stream, the auxiliary information comprising plural data fields, the plural data fields comprising a first data field corresponding to one of multiple possible coding scheme, the coding scheme comprising a set of tiers that uniquely define the one coding scheme, the plural data fields further comprising a second data field different from the first data field, the second data field comprising an indication of whether the one or more picture interdependencies, properties, or a combination of both corresponding to the set of tiers is valid for use in decoding.

Little Words: Their History, Phonology, Syntax, Semantics, Pragmatics, and Acquisition

Abstract: Preface 1. IntroductionRonald P. Leow, Hector Campos, and Donna Lardiere Part I: History 2. From "Two" to "Both": Historical Changes in the Syntax and Meaning of Oba in SlavicAgnieszka _azorczyk and Roumyana Pancheva 3. When Small Worlds Collide: Morphological Reduction and Phonological Compensation in Old Leonese ContractionsMinta Elsman and D. Eric Holt Part II: Phonology 4. Distinguishing Function Words from Content Words in Children's Oral ReadingCarol Lord, Robert Berdan, and Michael Fender 5. Motivating Floating QuantifiersLisa Rochman Part III: Syntax 6. Applicative Phrases Hosting Accusative CliticsLuis Saez 7.The Little DE of Degree ConstructionsRemus Gergel 8. The Complementizer TheHeather Lee Taylor 9. What is There When Little Words Are Not There?: Possible Implications for Evolutionary StudiesLjiljana Progovac 10. Spanish Personal a and the AntidativeOmar Velazquez-Mendoza and Raul Aranovich Part IV: Semantics 11.Predicting Argument Realization from Oblique Marker SemanticsJohn Beavers 12. Aspect Selectors, Scales, and Contextual Operators: An Analysis of by Temporal AdjunctsMichael F. Thomas and Laura A. Michaelis 13. Distributive Effects of the Plural Marker -tul in KoreanJong Un Park Part V: Pragmatics 14. The Pragmatics of the French Discourse Markers donc and alorsStephanie Pellet 15. "Little Words" in Small Talk: Some Considerations on the Use of the Pragmatic Markers man in English and macho/tio in Peninsular SpanishLaura Alba-Juez 16. Little Words that Could Impact One's Impression on Others: Greetings and Closings in Institutional EmailsSigrun Biesenbach-Lucas Part VI: Acquisition 17. Instructed L2 Acquisition of Differential Object Marking in SpanishMelissa Bowles and Silvina Montrul 18. The Role of Pedagogical Tasks and Focus on Form in Acquisition of Discourse Markers by Advanced Language LearnersMaria Jose de la Fuente 19. Article Acquisition in English, German, Norwegian, and SwedishTanja Kupisch, Merete Anderssen, Ute Bohnacker, and Neal Snape 20. A Continuum in French Children's Surface Realization of AuxiliariesChristina D. Dye

An intercultural study of first-person plural references in biomedical writing

Abstract: This paper carries out a contrastive analysis of biomedical research articles published in international English-medium journals and written by scholars from two cultural contexts (Anglo-American and Spanish). It first describes both similarities and differences in terms of the rhetorical effects that first-person plural references (“we”, “our” and “us”) create across the different sections of the IMRaD pattern (Swales, 1990). Then, the functions of these pronouns are explored following Tang and John’s (1999) taxonomy of the discourse roles of personal pronouns. Quantitative results show that, overall, Spanish writers tend to use “we” pronouns more than their native counterparts, thus making themselves more visible in their texts particularly in Introduction and Discussion sections. On the other hand, results also indicate striking similarities regarding the discourse role of “we” as “guide”, “architect”, “opinion-holder” and “originator” ‐roles which seem to indicate writers’ awareness of the specific communicative purposes of “we” references in each RA section. This crosscultural variation is finally discussed in relation to the dominance of English as the international lingua franca of academic communication and research (Benfield & Howard, 2000; Tardy, 2004; Giannoni, 2008a).

Learning lexical indexation

Abstract: Morphological concatenation often triggers phonological processes For instance, addition of the plural suffix /-ən/ to Dutch nouns causes vowel lengthening in some nouns due to the stress-to-weight principle ([xɑt] vs [ˈxaːtən] ‘hole’) These kinds of processes often apply only to a subset of words – not all Dutch nouns undergo this process ([kɑt] vs [ˈkɑtən] ‘cat’) Nouns need to be lexically indexed as either undergoing this process or not I investigate how phonological grammar and lexical indexation are learned when learners are confronted with data like these Based on learnability considerations, I hypothesise that learners acquire a grammar with default non-alternation, so that novel items are treated as non-alternating I report the results of artificial language learning experiments compatible with this hypothesis, and model these results in a version of the Biased Constraint Demotion algorithm (Prince & Tesar 2004)

An argument for phrasal spell-out: Indefinites and interrogatives in Spanish

Abstract: In this article we will provide evidence in favour of Phrasal Spell Out (PSO), a procedure of lexical insertion where non-terminal nodes in a tree configuration can be targeted by spell-out. We will propose that the formal differences between two Spanish indefinite pronouns, alguien and alguno , can be captured if the morpheme -ien is analyzed as a lexical item which corresponds to a syntactic phrase; this phrase, crucially, is broken in the presence of a plural number projection. Independent properties of the internal syntactic structure of the interrogative make the lexical item -ien compatible with plural in that configuration.

Says Who? Teaching and Questioning the Rules of Grammar

Abstract: One winter morning, the student scanning cards at the front desk of the university gym noticed the “faculty” label on mine and asked which department I was in. I replied that I teach in English. A middle-aged man who checked in behind me chased me down the hall. When he caught me, he exclaimed with frustration, “English, eh? Well, could you please get students to stop using plural pronouns when they need singular ones? Everyone—they, someone—they. It's just terrible English.”

Wives' Tales: Reflecting on Research in Bountiful

Abstract: This article develops research strategies designed to access and record the narratives of women within a plural marriage society, with a view to enhancing legal and popular knowledge about polygamy in Canada. It achieves this end through reliance on scholarship that explores methods for conducting reflexive research from a feminist viewpoint. Two particular research strategies explored in the feminist scholarship are considered here with particular reference to Bountiful, British Columbia, a community where plural marriage is openly practised. These strategies require the researcher to (1) hear and give credence to the narratives of women regarding their experiences as polygamous wives; and (2) engage in critical self-reflection about her own cultural and normative reference points and assumptions. These strategies are relied on here to formulate a distinctly juridical inquiry that rejects any presumed preference of state over cultural "law" while at the same rigorously testing claims about gender and tradition grounded in cultural norms. Applying this inquiry to the study of polygamy in Bountiful should serve to enrich our understanding of how women are affected by plural marriage, and by law's response to this practice, in this distinct place.

Delayed acquisition of irregular inflectional morphology in Hebrew in early sequential bilingualism

Abstract: Acquisition of the irregular forms of inflectional morphology may be a challenge for bilingual students because of the possible effect of infrequent input. Focusing on irregular plural forms of languages such as Hebrew can contribute to better understanding how bilingual children cope with anomalous morphological forms. The present study compares Russian– Hebrew-speaking sequential bilingual children with Hebrew-speaking monolingual children in their command on four measures of irregular forms of Hebrew plural nouns at two data collection points: the beginning of the second grade and the beginning of the third grade, at a time when the acquisition of these forms is still going on. Although results show that the bilingual children continued to be less accurate than their monolingual peers in producing the irregular forms at the second point of data collection, the medium-size effect (Cohen, 1992) was obtained only on one of four measures. Furthermore, the finding attests to the significant improvement of both groups in the course of one school year on all categories of irregular plural forms. It was also found that both groups acquire the irregular forms of the Hebrew plural noun system in a similar way and exhibit related patterns of developmental errors.

Merging features : computation, interpretation, and acquisition

Abstract: 1. Merge and features: a minimalist introduction PART I FORMAL FEATURES 2. Probing Phrases, Pronouns, and Binding 3. Wh-agreement and Bounded Unbounded Movement 4. Universal 20 Without the LCA 5. What it Means (not) to Know (number) Agreement 6. Number Agreement in English and Xhosa 7. Variable vs. Consistent Input: Comparehension of Plural Morphology and Verbal Agreement in Children 8. Processing Grammatical Features by Italian Children PART II INTERPRETABLE FEATURES 9. When Movement Fails to Reconstruct 10. If Non-simultaneous Spell-out Exists, This is What it can Explain 11. What Adjuncts Tell us About Case, Agreement, and Syntax in General 12. The Diversity of Dative Experiencers 13. Homogeneity and Flexibility in Temporal Modification 14. The Syntactically Well-behaved Comparative Correlative 15. Some Silent First Person Plurals 16. From Greek to Germanic: Poly-(*in)-definiteness and Weak/Strong Adjectival Inflection 17. Acquisition of Plurality in a Language Without Plurality