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Recent research in motion event typology has moved beyond the binary Talmian division of "verb-framed" and "satellite-framed" languages and has established the existence of at least four distinct typological clusters, instantiated by, for example, Swedish (Germanic), French (Romance), Thai (Tai-Kadai) and Telugu (Dravidian). In this paper, we focus on characteristic features of Telugu, as a representative of the fourth cluster. In the study, 30 native Telugu speakers described video-recorded translocative events, in which the factors boundedness, viewpoint and causation were manipulated. Using the model Holistic Spatial Semantics, we show that Telugu speakers (a) preferentially used Direction verbs rather than Path verbs, (b) predominantly used case markers rather than verbs for encoding Path, (c) extensively used Landmark and Region expressions, and (d) frequently used Manner verbs in situations of "boundary-crossing" unlike speakers of typical "verb-framed" languages. We propose these features to be criterial of the fourth typological cluster mentioned above, a claim to be investigated in future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Students with hearing loss (HL) often fall behind hearing peers in complex language tasks such as narrative writing. This study explored the effects of school grade, gender, cognitive and linguistic predisposition and audiological factors on narrative text quality in this target group. Eleven students with HL in Grades 5–6 and 7–8 (age 12–15) who took part in a writing intervention wrote four narrative texts over six months. A trained panel rated text quality. The effects of the students' working memory capacity, language comprehension, reading comprehension, school grade and gender and the intervention were analyzed as a mixed-effects regression model. Audiological factors were considered separately. The analysis showed that throughout the period, texts written by female students in Grade 7–8 received the highest text quality ratings, while those written by male students in Grade 7–8 received the lowest ratings. There was no effect of the intervention, or of the linguistic and cognitive measures. The students with the lowest text quality ratings received amplification later than those with high ratings, but HL severity was not associated with text quality. Hearing loss severity was not a decisive factor in narrative text quality. The intervention which the students took part in is potentially effective, with some adaptation to the special needs of students with HL. The strong gender effects are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Would metaphors used in the context of psychotherapy by people who experience various forms of anxiety disorders differ from those used by people who experience stress? We investigated this question with the help of the Motivation & Sedimentation Model (MSM), a theory of meaning-making developed within the synthetic new discipline of cognitive semiotics. The analysis of a sample of ten transcripts of psychotherapy sessions concerning the topic of anxiety, and a comparable sample concerning stress, showed a significantly stronger proportion of conventionalized metaphors in the stress sample, and a marginally significant difference in the number of innovative metaphors in the anxiety sample. These results suggest that lived experience of an anxiety disorder or another form of maladaptive anxiety affects metaphorical meaning-making, and manifests itself in spontaneous metaphor use. Furthermore, as a result of the conceptual and the empirical investigations of the topic, we propose novel theoretical and operational definitions of the notion of metaphoricity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes and discusses an ongoing change of case marking, NOM(inative) > OBL(ique), in certain predicates in Swedish (type Då kan du vara jag > Då kan du vara mig). This change has gone largely unnoticed hitherto. The discussion is based on a large-scale online survey, conducted in May 2016. It was tested whether the change relates to finiteness or to semantics. The results strongly indicate that the latter is the case. The change is found in predicates that express role semantics but nondetectable in predicates with plain identity readings (type Det är jag). In addition, there are strong indications that the change is closely related to another change that is also taking place in Swedish, NOM > OBL in comparative phrases (type Hon är större än jag > Hon är större än mig). The results speak against the hypothesis that OBL is becoming default in Swedish. Instead, it seems that many speakers are reanalyzing role predicates as well as comparative phrases such that they contain a head that is a case assigner, an overt one in comparatives but a silent one in role predicates. The article concludes that Swedish is largely retaining its basic NOM-OBL case system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Motion-event typology has moved into a "post-Talmian" terrain of approaches focusing on an open-ended number of patterns across languages and constructions. Following a proposal to distinguish between four typological clusters, we systematically compared the motion event descriptions in four languages suggested to exemplify these clusters: Swedish, French, Thai and Telugu, with the help of an elicitation-based study. 20 adult native speakers of each language were asked to describe 52 motion events, 38 of which were translocative. The stimuli varied with respect to the parameters caused/uncaused, bounded/unbounded motion as well as the viewpoint from which they were filmed. The descriptions were analyzed following Holistic Spatial Semantics and compared with respect to the categories Path, Direction, Region, Landmark, Manner and Cause, as well as the means of expressing these. The four languages patterned differently in significant ways. In terms of Path expression, French lagged behind the other languages, but with respect to Direction, it patterned together with Swedish. We demonstrate a number of such criss-crossing patterns, showing that there is no way to group the languages, thus implying at least four distinct typological prototypes. Further, we show that different kinds of motion situations, corresponding to different constructions, need to be compared separately. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Self-efficacy for writing is an important motivational factor and considered to predict writing performance. Self-efficacy for narrative writing has been sparsely studied, and few studies focus on the effects of writing intervention on self-efficacy. Additionally, there is a lack of validated measures of self-efficacy for elementary school students. In a previous study, we found that a trained panel rated personal narrative text quality higher for girls than for boys, which led to our aim: to investigate boys' and girls' self-efficacy for narrative writing before and after an intervention, and to explore associations between self-efficacy and text quality. An 18-item self-efficacy scale was developed. Fifty-five fifth-grade students (M 11:2 years, SD 3.7 months) filled out the scale before and after a five-lesson observational learning intervention. Self-efficacy was then related to writing performance as measured by holistic text quality ratings. The students demonstrated strong self-efficacy, which increased significantly post-intervention. Girls and boys demonstrated similar self-efficacy, despite girls' higher text quality. There were moderate correlations between self-efficacy and writing performance pre- and post-intervention. The results support previous findings of strong self-efficacy at this age. The interaction between writing self-efficacy and performance is complex. Young students may not be able to differentiate between self-efficacy, general writing skills, task performance, and self-regulation. Self-efficacy scales should thus be carefully constructed with respect to age, genre, instruction, and to students' general educational context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study is concerned with the integration of negation in relation to two models of the processing of negation: (i) the two-step model (Lüdtke et al., 2008), according to which negation involves two representations where negation is ignored in the first representation, and (ii) the pragmatic view (Nieuwland & Kuperberg, 2008), which posits that negation can be integrated without delay if it is used in a natural context. The processing of two negated forms (not authorised and unauthorised) and an affirmative form (authorised) was studied in complex congruent and incongruent contexts. Incongruities in affirmative sentences elicited a biphasic N400–P600. In both types of negated sentences, ERP patterns associated with higher processing difficulties (anterior and central negativities) were observed. The results did not support one or the other model, suggesting that the processing of negation cannot be fully captured by either of them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Observational learning is a successful method for improving writing skills in various genres. We explore effects of a five lesson intervention series based on peer observation. Fifty-five Swedish 5th-grade students aged 10–12 years followed this intervention programme. The students watched short film clips with peers working with texts. Each lesson was organised according to a theme: reader's perception of the text, ordering of events, how to begin a story, how to end a story and how to edit a text. The students wrote four texts during the intervention. The quality of these texts was assessed by a panel of trained raters. Additionally, the language and reading comprehension and working memory capacity were tested. The results show that average text quality had significantly improved at the end of the intervention, and that this improvement was modulated by reading and language comprehension. Three months later, however, text quality was significantly decreased. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Observational learning has shown to be a successful intervention for writing. Until now, however, studies have only been performed with normal-hearing participants, usually high school or university students. Additionally, there have been conflicting results in whether subjective text quality correlates with one or more objectively measured text characteristics. In this study, we measured the effect of observational learning in a group of four university students with hearing impairment, and compared the results with those of a group of 10 students with normal hearing who did the same intervention, and those of a control group consisting of 10 students with normal hearing who did not do the intervention. Subjective text quality ratings and nine objectively measured text characteristics were collected for three argumentative texts written by each of the participants. In between writing these three texts, the participants in the experimental groups watched a video of a model writer who read out loud and corrected a similar kind of text. The statistical analysis showed significant correlations between the subjective ratings and four out of the nine objective measures, but no significant intervention effect. These findings suggest that observation-learning intervention is most effective when the model writer is a peer learner, and when the intervention is stretched out over time. Additionally, the method may be better suited for learners younger than the ones who were included in the present study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]