• Title/Summary/Keyword: English description

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A description of English nominal relatives by conceptual graphs (영어 명사적 관계절의 개념도식에 의한 의미 기술)

  • Cho, Kil-Ho
    • English Language & Literature Teaching
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    • v.9 no.1
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    • pp.173-187
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    • 2003
  • This paper proposes a semantic description of the English nominal relatives with a knowledge representation framework of Conceptual Graphs(CGs), which is a computer-oriented form of interlanguage from the Conceptual Structures Theory. This paper focuses on the difference between definite and universally quantified meaning of nominal relatives, on the compound relative clauses, and also on the difference between nominal relative clauses and interrogative clauses.

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The Aquisition and Description of Voiceless Stops of Spanish and English

  • Marie Fellbaum
    • Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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    • 1996.10a
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    • pp.274-274
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    • 1996
  • This presents the preliminary results from work in progress of a paired study of the acquisition of voiceless stops by Spanish speakers learning English, and American English speakers learning Spanish. For this study the hypothesis was that the American speakers would have no difficulty suppressing the aspiration in Spanish unaspirated stops; the Spanish speakers would have difficulty acquiring the aspiration necessary for English voiceless stops, according to Eckman's Markedness Differential Hypothesis. The null hypothesis was proved. All subjects were given the same set of disyllabic real words of English and Spanish in carrier phrases. The tokens analyzed in this report are limited to word-initial voiceless stops, followed by a low back vowel in stressed syllables. Tokens were randomized and then arranged in a list with the words appearing three separate times. Aspiration was measured from the burst to the onset of voicing(VOT). Both the first language (Ll) tokens and second language (L2) tokens were compared for each speaker and between the two groups of language speakers. Results indicate that the Spanish speakers, as a group, were able to reach the accepted target language VOT of English, but English speakers were not able to reach the accepted range for Spanish, in spite of statistically significant changes of p<.OOl by speakers in both groups of learners. A closer analysis of the speech samples revealed wide variability within the speech of native speakers of English. Not only is variability in English due to the wide range of VOT (120 msecs. for English labials, for example) but individual speakers showed different patterns. These results are revealing for the demands requied in experimental designs and the number of speakers and tokens requied for an adequate description of different languages. In addition, a simple report of means will not distinguish the speakers and the respective language learning situation; measurements must also include the RANGE of acceptability of VOT for phonetic segments. This has immediate consequences for the learning and teaching of foreign languages involving aspirated stops. In addition, the labelling of spoken language in speech technology is shown to be inadequate without a fuller mathematical description.

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A Development of Technical English Subject Based on the Job Description (직무분석에 기초한 공학영어 교수요목 개발)

  • Kim, Hyun-Hyo
    • Proceedings of the KAIS Fall Conference
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    • 2006.11a
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    • pp.102-105
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    • 2006
  • Under the current wave of globalization, engineering programs in Korea are determined to adopt an Accreditation System for Engineering Education, which is inevitable to acquire competitiveness in the world market. To meet the needs of engineering students to pursue their career as internationally qualified engineer, a development of tailored English course for them is needed. I tried to develop a Technical English syllubus as an ESP(English for specific purpose) course for engineering students based on the job description provided by O'NET(Occupational Information Network). O'NET describes and defines what kinds of abilities are needed for various workers, including engineers. Mechanical Engineer type is selected for research and 17 abilities are listed to be the most needed abilities which are over 50% in importance score and 6 language related abilities are listed among them, which shows the importance of language abilities in the engineering job sites.

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Use of Common Verb Phrases in Describing Everyday Activities by Advanced Korean-speaking Learners of English

  • Lee, Jin-Kyong
    • English Language & Literature Teaching
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    • v.13 no.2
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    • pp.109-127
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    • 2007
  • As an attempt to investigate the use of common verbs by a small group of Korean college students at the advanced level, the present study describes the students' speech production data collected from picture description tasks. The primary focus of the data description was how the students used high-frequency verbs in describing everyday activities. Out of total 442 units, 149 verbs were erroneously used. All erroneous utterances were classified into four categories according to their characteristics. The most prominent error type was overgeneralization due to incomplete knowledge of lexical items. Results showed that verbs used in everyday life were not easy even for the advanced level students. Although in some cases, L1 influence was discerned, the students' problems are more fundamental. In particular, the data revealed lack of knowledge of collocational possibilities and restrictions, and confusion about semantic boundaries between verbs which have similar semantic areas. The findings suggest that teaching at the advanced level should take contrastive approaches intralingually as well as interlingually to the high-frequency verbs.

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Problems with English Pronunciation Education and Their Solution (영어 발음교육의 문제점과 해결책)

  • Kang Nak-Joong
    • MALSORI
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    • no.41
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    • pp.1-18
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    • 2001
  • The purpose of this paper is to slove problems with English pronunciation education and to correct the misbelief that misbelief that English pronunciation can be thught effectiverly by native speakers or good speakers. Best sellers have many mistakes even in the description of sounds and most English education departments in national universities teach English phonetics theoretically only for 1 semester, More than 10 years' investigation into native speakers' and good speakers' teaching methods in various ways confirmed that they couldn't know English phonetics teachers should have a theoretical and practical knowledge of phonetics of English and students' dialects and the abilities to find the same or similar English sounds their students can make in normal or abnormal situations, to make both correct sounds and incorrect ones their students can make and to make them perceive the differences by using various ways.

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Using Corpora for Studying English Grammar

  • Kwon, Heok-Seung
    • Korean Journal of English Language and Linguistics
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    • v.4 no.1
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    • pp.61-81
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    • 2004
  • This paper will look at some grammatical phenomena which will illustrate some of the questions that can be addressed with a corpus-based approach. We will use this approach to investigate the following subjects in English grammar: number ambiguity, subject-verb concord, concord with measure expressions, and (reflexive) pronoun choice in coordinated noun phrases. We will emphasize the distinctive features of the corpus-based approach, particularly its strengths in investigating language use, as opposed to traditional descriptions or prescriptions of structure in English grammar. This paper will show that a corpus-based approach has made it possible to conduct new kinds of investigations into grammar in use and to expand the scope of earlier investigations. Native speakers rarely have accurate information about frequency of use. A large representative corpus (i.e., The British National Corpus) is one of the most reliable sources of frequency information. It is important to base an analysis of language on real data rather than intuition. Any description of grammar is more complete and accurate if it is based on a body of real data.

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Individual Networks of Practice of EFL Learners at a Chinese University: Their Impact on English Language Socialization

  • Qi, Lixia;Kim, Jungyin
    • International Journal of Contents
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    • v.17 no.4
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    • pp.62-78
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    • 2021
  • This ethnographic multiple case study, based on Zappa-Hollman and Duff's construct of individual networks of practice (INoPs), explored English as a second language (L2) competence development and socialization process of a group of English-major undergraduates through their social connections and interactions at a public university located in an underdeveloped city in Northwest China. The study lasted for one academic semester and three students were selected as primary participants. Semi-structured interviews, student observations in English-related micro-settings, and associated texts were used to collect data. These data were coded to identify the thematic categories, and then data triangulation and member checking were conducted to select the most representative evidence to provide an in-depth description of students' perspective about mediating their English L2 socialization by their INoPs. Findings showed that factors in the formation of students' INoPs, including intensity, density, and nature, played significant roles in their academic or affective returns from their English learning, both of which had a substantial influence on the students' English L2 socialization. Considering that the macro-setting was a non-English, underdeveloped monolingual society, both educational institutions and individual students need to seek and create more English-mediated interactional opportunities to develop their English proficiency and adapt to local English learning communities.

A Description of English Relative Clauses With conceptual Structure Theory (개념구조론에 의한 영어 관계절의 기술)

  • KihoCho
    • Korean Journal of Cognitive Science
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    • v.4 no.2
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    • pp.29-51
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    • 1994
  • This paper presents a new approach to describing the meanings of English relative clauses with the theoretical framework of Conceptual Structure Theory (henceforth CST)which builds on the pionerring work of Sowa.And this paper aims at proposing some extensions to his work. CST describes the conceptual structrures of sentences with conceptual graphs(henceforth CG). which have begun to be used as an intermediate language in natural language processing and machine translation of computer.CGs are composed of concept types and conceptual relation types. They are a system of logic for semantic representation of sentences. This paper focuses on showing the differences of the CGs according to the functions of English relative clauses. English relative clauses are divided into restrictive and nonrestrictive uses.And this paper describes a restrictive clause with a CG including a expression.which derives from the viewpoint of Montague-semantics and Nom-S Analysis.This paper deals mainly with the relative clauses of double restroction as an example of restrictive relative clauses.The description of a nonrestrictive relative clause does not need any-expression, for it doesn's involve the meaning of set.And this paper links the CG of an appositive relative clause,which is a kind of nonrestrictive clauses,to the concept of the antecedent in the main clause.The description of a nonrestrictive relative clause with adverbial meaning is strated with two CGs for the main clause and the relative clause.They are linked with an appropriate intersentential conceptual relation type according to the contextual realtions between them.This paper also presents a CG of a sentential relative clause,which gives a comment on the main clause.

Temporal Interpretation Rules (시제 해석 규칙)

  • Chung, So-Woo
    • Language and Information
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    • v.3 no.1
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    • pp.1-20
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    • 1999
  • The purpose of this paper is to expand Stowell (1993), Stowell (1995), Stowell (1996)'s syntactic analysis of tense in English. Stowell treats Tense as a dyadic predicate of temporal ordering which takes those two time-denoting phrases as its arguments. He further argues that those two morphemes 'resent' and 'past' are polarity-sensitive elements encoding an LF-scope relation with respect to true PAST tense. This paper proposes that English future 'will' should be treated as a true tense and that its future morpheme is an anti-PAST polarity item. It also provides a syntactic interpretation of a peculiar morphological aspect of English that it has no future form of the verb. To this end, Stowell's analysis is incorporated into the Minimalist program of Chomsky(1995). It is proposed that, unlike in other languages like French and Spanish, FUTURE in English is of an affix. This provides an intuitively correct description of why English verbs do not have a future form like other languages. The last but not least point which this paper will discuss is that Ogihara (1995a)'s claim that the referential theory of tensed sentences is inadequate is untenable.

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Linguistic Description and Theory

  • Nakajima, Heizo
    • Korean Journal of English Language and Linguistics
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    • v.1 no.3
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    • pp.349-368
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    • 2001
  • We have brought up several distinct types of English clausal constructions, and have been lead to the descriptive generalization in (14),repeated here as (33): (33) Reduced clauses cannot occur in non-complement positions. The generalization in (33) refers to two theory-internal notions, reduced clauses and non-complement positions. Both notions are concerned with the composition of syntactic structures to be defined by X-bar theory. Without these theoretical notions, it would be difficult to describe in a general form the fact that certain types of complement clauses-namely, null-that clauses, if-clauses, Acc-ing gerund, ECM complement clauses, and Raising complement clauses-cannot occur in particular syntactic positions. Instead, one would have to describe this fact for each clause type, in such a way that null-that clauses cannot occur in such and such positions, and if-clauses cannot occur in such and such positions, and Acc-ing gerund cannot occur in such and such positions, and so on, although the positions in which they cannot occur are totally the same. Given the terminology of X-bar theory, however, it has turned out that these types of complement clauses are all reduced clauses, and the positions where they cannot occur are all non-complement positions. Then, the generalization has obtained that reduced clauses cannot occur in non-complement positions. It is a theoretical issue, and differs depending upon theories, how to explain why such a descriptive generalization holds at all. Hopefully, the demonstration here provides a piece of evidence showing that a theory or a particular theoretical nation plays an important role in the description of linguistic facts. Moreover, I have made a crucial prediction on the basis of the well-accepted theoretical assumption the ECM complement clauses and Raising complement clauses are reduced clauses; namely, the prediction that these types of clauses cannot occur in non-complement position. The prediction based upon the theoretical assumption is actually borne out, as illustrated earlier. The illustration of the prediction, I hope, shows that a theory or a particular theoretical assumption, coupled with another theoretical assumption, allows us to make some interesting predictions. Predictions serve to widen a range of linguistic facts to be described. A theory plays a crucial part in finding out interesting facts as well as in describing them in some general forms. Finally, let me state a few words as to the recent generative theory in connection with linguistic description. The recent generative theory is getting more and more abstract. I think it is moving toward a good direction as cognitive science. It will contribute, among others, to the inquiry into what is knowledge that is very specific to language faculty, and into how it interacts with other cognitive faculties. However, I am suspicious about how much the abstract generative theory will contribute to the description of linguistic facts in a particular language. While generative theory is claimed to aim both for descriptive adequacy and for explanatory adequacy, the recent generative theory is likely to put much more weight on explanatory adequacy. In my view, a less abstract theory is enough, or even more useful, for the purpose of linguistic description. Of course, how abstract theory one should adopt as a framework differs depending upon what aspect of language one attempts to describe. What I would like to emphasize here is that linguistic theory does not conflicts with linguistic description, and a linguistic theory with an appropriate degree of abstractness serves as a tool for finding out new interesting facts, as well as for describing them in some general, elegant forms.

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