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Background: Weak theory of mind (ToM) ability is a core deficit in children with autism. A growing body of work has found that there is a close relation between complement syntax and ToM in autistic children. However, researchers have not yet investigated whether other linguistic components may explain the difficulties in ToM reasoning in autistic children. Aims: To determine whether verb factuality (i.e., mental and action verbs) is related to ToM ability, as measured by a false belief understanding (FBU) task after controlling the effect of complement syntax for Mandarin-speaking autistic children. Methods & Procedures: Participants were verbal autistic children, aged 4-7 years. Their IQ performance (verbal, performance and total IQ) and the comprehension of complement syntax were evaluated. A total of 38 children scoring over 9 points in complement syntax test and 90 points in the verbal IQ test were selected to complete verb factuality and FBU task. The X[superscript 2] tests and correlation analyses were carried out on two relations: (1) ToM ability and understanding of verb factuality; and (2) ToM ability and comprehension of complement syntax. Outcomes & Results: A total of 11 autistic children completed the action verb factuality task, while 14 completed the mental verb factuality task and 13 completed both tasks. Participants performed well on the verb factuality task, and their ToM performance appeared to be related to their linguistic ability, regardless of the type of verb (i.e., action or mental verb). However, complement syntax scores did not significantly predict the success of the FBU task for the autistic children. Conclusions & Implications: The results of this study link weaker ToM ability with the understanding of verb factuality among autistic children aged 4-7 and provide new evidence for the view that the development of language facilitates improvement of ToM skills. The findings shed new light on how language affects or determines social interactions.

Background: Patients with anomic aphasia experience difficulties in narrative processing. General discourse measures are time consuming and require necessary skills. Core lexicon analysis has been proposed as an effort-saving approach but has not been developed in Mandarin discourse. Aims: This exploratory study was aimed (1) to apply core lexicon analysis in Mandarin patients with anomic aphasia at the discourse level and (2) to verify the problems with core words among people with anomic aphasia. Methods & Procedure: The core nouns and verbs were extracted from narrative language samples from 88 healthy participants. The production of core words for 12 anomic aphasia and 12 age- and education-matched controls were then calculated and compared. The correlation between the percentages and the Aphasia Quotients of the revised Western Aphasia Battery was analyzed as well. Outcomes & Results: The core nouns and verbs were successfully extracted. Patients with anomic aphasia produced fewer core words than healthy people, and the percentages differed significantly in different tasks as well as word classes. There was no correlation between the core lexicon use and the severity of aphasia in patients with anomic aphasia. Conclusions & Implications: Core lexicon analysis may potentially serve as a clinician-friendly manner of quantifying core words produced at the discourse level in Mandarin patients with anomic aphasia.

The present study investigates the multiple constraints on the processing of English dative alternation by Chinese EFL (English as a Foreign Language) learners. The intermediate and advanced learners completed an acceptability judgment task which was composed of 30 dative alternations selected from a spoken corpus. The results showed that the intermediate learners were constrained by only one predictor (pronominality of Recipient), whereas the advanced learners were constrained by eight predictors, including animacy of Recipient, syntactic complexity, pronominality of Theme, pronominality of Recipient, person of Recipient, number of Theme, concreteness of Theme as well as preemption. The results demonstrated that the advanced learners were sensitive to multiple constraints when they processed the dative alternation, but the intermediate learners were not. Our findings imply that L2 learners' sensitivity toward multiple constraints increased as their L2 proficiency improved.

The authors define two mathematical cognitive verbs which are fundamental to the development of mathematical thinking and reasoning. They distinguish between 'describing' and 'explaining' in relation to doing mathematics, rather than using them interchangeably.

The present study was conducted to analyse the use of word order in job interviews. The data was collected from participants in an organisation in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Ten candidates of different races between the ages of 23 and 25 participated in the study. Radford's syntactic theory of word order was employed to qualitatively analyse the data. It was found that positive sentences were predominantly used by the selected (n = 10; 47.4%) compared to the not selected (n = 10; 44.0%) and keep in view (KIV) (n = 23; 39.0%) job candidates. The findings further revealed that the types of word order used in utterances by the selected candidates were different compared to those who were not chosen for interviews. Selected candidates used more negative sentences, subordinate clauses, and time expression in sentences, whereas those who were not selected utilised adverbs of manner in negative sentences, subordinate clauses, and time expression in sentences, while the not selected candidates only used the position of adverbs. On the other hand, the KIV candidates used positive sentences, subordinate clauses and word order in questions in their utterances. The study can provide important contributions to knowledge on the use of English when developing employment course modules emphasising word order as an essential element in portraying good English language proficiency in job interviews.

This study focused on preservice secondary teacher's use of the Understanding by Design (UbD), framework to create effective, engaging lessons for their future secondary level students. The subjects consisted of 69 secondary pre-service secondary education majors at a Texas University who were enrolled in a required course for admission into the teacher education program. Pre-posttest surveys of lesson knowledge design were administered to all subjects. Comparing pre- posttest results revealed that knowledge of lesson design showed improvement and knowledge gain in the following areas: concepts and vocabulary; unpacking standards; use of verbs from the standards; rigor; content objectives; formative assessment and summative assessment. The analyses made use of descriptive statistics and descriptions.

The study aims at unraveling the conceptual metaphor underlying the English verb of visual perception "see" in fiction writing. It has two research questions: 1) What are the conceptual metaphors underlying the linguistic expressions of the English verb of visual perception "see" in fiction writing and 2) What are the theoretical implications of MIND-AS-BODY theory on the motivation of conceptual metaphors underlying the English verb of visual perception "see." This study adopts a qualitative approach and is situated within the field of cognitive semantics. A corpus of English fiction writing between the period of 2010 and 2017 was compiled from different sources comprising one million words. Specifically, a sample consisting of 1,000 examples of the English verb of visual perception "see" was randomly extracted from the corpus using the AntConc 3.5.0 concordancer. The Metaphor Identification Procedures (MIP) were used to identify the metaphorical linguistic expressions in the corpus, and Lakoff and Johnson's (2003) as well as Sweetser's (1990) analytical frameworks were adopted for data analysis. The data analysis revealed various conceptual metaphors underlying the English verb "see." These conceptual metaphors are related to the domains of knowledge, intellections, and understanding which support Sweetser's claim regarding the primacy of vision in motivating metaphors of cognition in human speech and thought. Thus, this study contributes to the literature on verbs of perception, particularly verbs of visual perception, as it is the first to address the conceptual metaphors underlying the verb "see" in English using a real authentic corpus of fiction writing.

The current study is motivated by the dearth of studies regarding English translation students' grammatical and sociocultural competencies and their relationship with their Grade Point Averages (GPAs). To fill this gap, this study sought to find if there is a statistically significant relationship between the respondents' GPAs and their levels of grammatical and cultural knowledge. To do this, a multiple-choice test with four sections was developed and validated by experts in the field to examine the respondents' levels of grammatical and sociocultural knowledge. The first two sections examined respondents' knowledge levels of the functions of the key elements of English language tense and aspect (FELTA) and Acceptable Forms of English Language Tense and Aspect (AFELTA). The other two sections examined their knowledge levels of aspects of the culture of American English native speakers (AspCNS) and culturally appropriate American English language use (AppLU). The sample for this study were selected randomly from the department of English Language and Translation at King Saud University. Seventy-five male English translation students from different college levels responded to the questionnaire test. Using descriptive statistics, the responses were coded and analyzed, and thereafter, the respondents' scores on each single section of the test were compared with their GPA scores to determine the statistical significance of differences and correlation. It was found that there was a statistically significant relationship between the GPA scores, the respondents' knowledge of AFELTA, and the knowledge of AppLU. However, no significant relationships were found between the GPA scores and the respondents' knowledge of FELTA or knowledge of AspCNS.

The article deals with teaching Russian intonation of declarative sentences to foreign students. The emphasis is placed on the way teaching materials are presented. In particular, the variable rows for intonation patterns in declarative sentences have been developed, as well as the teaching of syntagmatic segmentation and intonation patterns in complex utterances. This method of working with foreigners is efficient for teaching foreign students the Russian declarative intonation which manifests in verbal communication and reading.

The present study aimed at investigating the impact of the concurrent group dynamic assessment on the learning of phrasal verbs at a productive level. The participants of the study were 30 EFL learners at an intermediate level of language proficiency. The participants' productive knowledge of the phrasal verbs was measured before and after the treatment through a researcher-made test including 80 items. For the purpose of the study, paired and independent samples t-test were utilized. Results of statistical analyses indicated that concurrent group dynamic assessment was significantly effective in the achievement of phrasal verbs at a productive level. Moreover, it was found that no significant difference existed in the concurrent group dynamic assessment in terms of the achievement of phrasal verbs at a productive level.

This study attempts to investigate difficulties in pronouncing English morphemes among Saudi EFL students at Albaha University, in Saudi Arabia. The researcher tries to answer different questions in this study. Do students pronounce English morphemes correctly? Do they pronounce correct morpheme adds to verb present? Do students pronounce the right morpheme adds to verb past? The significance of this study the researcher tries to let students correct their mistakes on the pronunciation of English morphemes. Also, to let students practise more pronunciation about English morphemes nouns and verbs. The main aim of this study is to fill the gap of pronunciation problems in pronouncing English morphemes. The participants were twenty-five students reach level five. The researcher used Descriptive Statistical Method and the data were collected by one mean of data collection oral recorded tests. The data were analysed by (SPSS) program. The study arrived at the following results: Saudi students faced problems in showing the correct pronunciation of English morphemes for both nouns and verbs. Students face difficulties to distinguish between which morpheme is correct.They ignored the rules of using English morphemes in general and there is a lack of practising them.The recommendations of this study are (1) Students need to revise the rules of English morphemes of nouns and verbs. (2) They need more concentration about using morphemes of both nouns and verbs. (3) Students need more practice about the pronunciation of English morphemes of plural nouns and verbs (present and past tense) in conversations and classrooms.

Agreement asymmetry is one of the significant linguistic phenomena that Arab and Western linguists (Ghaly, 1995; Parkinson, 1995; Benmamoun, 1998; Collins, 2001; Dayf, 1986) and Aoun, 1994) have tried to account for within the framework of the Government and Binding theory. They focused upon the number asymmetry in different varieties in Arabic. Most linguists assert that in different types of Arabic there is always gender agreement between the subject and the verb. This study aims at giving much evidence for the lack of gender agreement in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), and at accounting this gender asymmetry within the framework of the Minimality Program (Chomsky, 1995). The sample consists of 37 sentences collected from some Arabic textbooks. To analyze the data collected, a qualitative diagnostic research design was adopted. One of the essential findings of this study is that there is no gender agreement in Verb-Subject-Object (VSO) sentences between the postverbal subject and the verb if the subject is (a) an unreal feminine Noun Phrase (NP), (b) a broken plural NP, (c) an inanimate collective NP, (d) a collective NP, (e) a regular sound feminine plural NP, (f) an irregular sound feminine plural NP, (g) an irregular sound masculine plural NP, and (h) a real feminine NP separated from its verb by any category. This study concludes that the head C in VSO sentences in MSA carries a weak gender feature represented as [-Strong]. Therefore, in VSO sentences, if the verb disagrees with its subject in gender, it will move from V to I and then to C because C is [-Strong]. A final conclusion is that the head I in VSO sentences in MSA carries a strong gender feature, represented as [+Strong]. Therefore, in VSO sentences, if the verb and its subject agree in gender, the verb will move from V to I; it will not move further.

In the arena of English for academic purposes, many nonnative speakers of English in different contexts find it difficult to perform well, because academic genre is alien to them. Current study was based on improving writing skills with a special focus on writing of language hedges in argumentative essays through reading journal articles. The study focused on the two research questions; 1.) Is there a significant improvement in using language hedges in academic writing through reading journal articles? 2.) What are the perceptions of students in reading journal articles to improve academic writing? Methodology of the study was based on quasi experimental and longitudinal design. Mixed method was utilized in collection of data. Participants of the study were 32 first year undergraduates of an English Language Teaching degree programme of a vocational technological university in Sri Lanka. Quantitative data was collected through a questionnaire and intervention through reading journal articles. Qualitative data was collected by interviewing 12 selected participants of the study. Two subject expertise evaluators and AntConc (2019), SPSS (23), MS Excel (Office 365) and thematic analysis were used to analyse data. Findings of the study reveal that there is a significant improvement in using language hedges by reading journal articles in the five categories of language hedges concerned; epistemic hedges, lexical hedges, lexical verbs, modal verbs and possibility hedges according to the descending order of the usage and the rate of improvement. Further, it can be concluded that pleasure and conscious reading of journal articles provide both cognitive and affective insights for novice academic writers of English. Two major implications for further research were drawn; to study the effect of language hedges in the culture of first language affects the usage of language hedges among undergraduates, and to study on the other stance features and engagement features in academic writing among the undergraduates in the Sri Lankan context.

The aim of this study is to analyse the errors of higher education students in English writing tasks. In the study, the paragraphs in the exam papers of 57 preparatory class students, studying at a state university in Turkey in 2017-2018 academic year, were analysed. The study was conducted using qualitative research method. Case study was used in the research. Document analysis was used to collect data. The collected data were analysed in line with Surface Strategy Taxonomy and errors were identified and classified. As a result of the error analysis process, it was observed that the students made a total of 381 errors on 57 exam papers; 192 of them were misformation errors, 113 were omission errors, 65 were addition errors and only 11 were misordering errors. Misformation was the most frequent error among the students with a percentage of 50.39. In addition, the percentage of omission errors was 29.66%, that of addition errors was 17.06% and misordering errors was 2.89%. The professionals teaching English as a foreign language should focus more on prepositions, verb "to be", spelling, articles, singular/plural forms of nouns, word formation, tenses, word choice and subject-verb agreement, which were the most problematic areas of language listed under the four main categories by developing efficient instructional techniques and materials. They should also respect learners' errors and set up a positive atmosphere where learners can easily express themselves in the target language without the fear of committing errors.

Significant variation exists in how native speakers respond to word association tasks and challenges the usage of nativelikeness as a benchmark to gauge second language (L2) performance. However, the influence of word class and trials of elicitation is not sufficiently addressed in previous work. With controlled stimuli from multiple word classes, repeated elicitations, and analytic approaches aiming to tease apart their interactions, this study compared the extent to which native speaker controls and late L2 learners generated associates that converged to a large-scale association norm, and examined the influence of word class and trial on the likelihood to elicit idiosyncratic responses within the two language groups. During initial elicitation, only adjectives elicited greater convergence to the norm among native speakers than L2 learners. Furthermore, native speakers were more likely to generate synonyms whereas L2 learners were more likely to generate antonyms to adjectives in the initial elicitation. For nouns and verbs, 30% of associates produced by the native speaker controls failed to converge to the norm. In fact, the native speaker controls were not more "nativelike" than L2 learners for nouns and verbs until later elicitations. Finally, despite reports of significant variation among native speakers in previous work, the amount of response idiosyncrasy was consistently lower in native speakers than in L2 learners, regardless of word class or elicitation trial. By revealing the effects of word class and trials on association performance, findings from this study suggest potential means to ameliorate the issue with nativelikeness in L2 word association studies.

Reporting verbs is one of the most important issues in writing academic paper because they are used to express the process and reliability of claims to support authors' writing. Therefore, the current study aimed at investigating (1) the most frequently used category of reporting verbs in applied linguistic articles and (2) how the category used in the citation process is used. 52 articles from three applied linguistic journals were analyzed using Antconc software's concordance function. This study focused on reporting verbs used in the literature review section since it consists of more reporting verbs than other sections in articles. The reporting verbs in the articles were analyzed into a concordance line and then were classified into Hyland's Framework of reporting verbs (2002). The results of the study showed that the uses of reporting verbs were classified into research acts, which was the most frequent use of reporting verbs, discourse acts, and cognition acts respectively. The study also presented the frequently used of reporting verbs in different subcategories of the research, discourse, and cognition acts. Additionally, reporting verbs were examined to investigate the verb forms and voices used in applied linguistic articles. The use of reporting verbs according to Hyland's (2002) framework, verb forms, and voices are also discussed.

EFL curricula for primary and secondary education in Turkey were revised based on the 2012 educational reform, and issued to the institutions of primary and secondary education affiliated to the Ministry of National Education (MoNE) in 2017 to be put into practice the following academic year. This study was motivated to examine the revised primary EFL curriculum with a focus on the outcome statements with respect to verb choice. Accordingly, seven sets of data were compiled from these statements identified for 2nd to 8th grades in the document, and a total of 376 outcome statements were analysed. The results demonstrated that active verbs that are recommended for writing learning outcomes constituted 14% of 403 verbs in these statements while over 41% were comprised of vague verbs that should be avoided in writing learning outcomes such as "understand" and "know" as they make the statements hard to evaluate. The findings were discussed and outlined in detail, and a couple of practical implications were offered for curriculum designers based the findings reported in this research.

Many studies investigated metaphors in news; however, few of them focused specifically on headlines. By investigating metaphors in 133 collected NBA news headlines written in Chinese, this paper analyzes the creativity in them. Conceptual Metaphor Theory, including conceptual metonymy, is adopted to discuss creative linguistic metaphors and their corresponding conceptual mappings based on diverse translated names of NBA teams and on specific verbs associated with them. Blending Theory is exploited to further account for the process of metaphorical creativity with the names of the teams being involved. As a whole, the findings show that the concept of defeat is creatively utilized as it is physically and/or socially constructed with the co-use of translated NBA team names and the associated verbs in Chinese. As for the process of the metaphorical creativity, three ways of achieving novelty is revealed, involving the names of the winner, the loser, or both of them respectively. Furthermore, because the data transcends the boundaries of countries, creativity is afforded and extended by reporting in Chinese a sport event taking place in an English-speaking country.

This study examined the use of Audacity software to improve the pronunciation of regular verbs in the past tense. The participants were 30 advanced English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students of the English major of Universidad Tecnica Particular de Loja (UTPL), Ecuador. A mixed-method approach was used to gather qualitative and quantitative data from the participants by means of surveys, tests and audio recordings through Audacity. The intervention process took eight weeks. During this time, students were first instructed on the use of Audacity. Then they were taught the three pronunciation rules of regular verbs in the past tense and were asked to record a total of 10 audios per student in isolation and in context. Three-hundred audios were analyzed in total. After analyzing the data, the results indicate that Audacity is an effective tool that not only improves learners' pronunciation, but also favors the practice of English language in a free and relaxed environment.

This paper investigates semantic categories of reporting verbs across four disciplines: Accounting, Applied Linguistics, Engineering and Medicine in research article genre. A general corpus of one million words and sub-corpus (for each discipline) were compiled from a total of 120 articles representing 30 articles from each discipline. In this study, two levels of analysis were conducted. Firstly, I randomly selected five articles from each discipline and read and reread each article identifying what reporting verbs are used, in what context are used and why such reporting verbs are used. This process enabled me to identify semantic categories of reporting verbs. Secondly, on the basis of the identified list of semantic categories of reporting verbs, I used the list in generating concordance output for quantitative textual analysis of each sub-corpus of the four disciplines, as well as the general corpus. The results of the study show that writers from both Accounting and Applied Linguistics are having a high frequency of reporting verbs than writers from Engineering and Medicine disciplines. It also shows that there are certain commonalities and differences between the disciplines. For example, all the disciplines are having frequency of the three semantic categories of reporting verbs but with certain degree of variations. The study recommends raising awareness of students on semantic categories of reporting verbs. The results could also help EAP/ESP teachers in designing course materials for discipline specific reporting verbs. It could also be helpful for textbook course designers in developing textbooks for teaching reporting verbs.

One sub-type of collocations which is under-researched is binomials. The purposes of this study were to investigate Thai EFL students' knowledge of English binomials, determine the syntactic structure of the internal elements of binomials reported as most or least known by them, and test if the students' knowledge of binomials was significantly different when taking account of their years of study. The sample was 130 first - sixth year students enrolled in four different faculties at a university in northeastern Thailand, and classified as intermediate EFL learners for the purpose of this study through the online Oxford Placement Test. An acceptability judgment test of English binomials was used to collect the data. The results revealed that, on the whole, the participants had a low level of knowledge of English binomials; there was no significant difference in their knowledge regarding the syntactic structure of binomials (Noun+Noun and Verb+Verb); and the participants were not significantly different in their knowledge in terms of their years of study. The results pertaining to the participants' low level of knowledge of binomials were discussed in relation to lack of exposure to English and effective pedagogy of English idioms.

The present study investigates the usage of speech like expressions in written works of Turkish learners of English. It also aims to find out the differences between C1 and B1 level learners in terms of the frequency and types of speech like expressions. The participants in this study were 21 B1 and 33 C1 level students at a state university in Turkey. For this study, students' writing assignments were collected. For the frequency analysis, manual counting of the words was used. For the types of speech like expressions, the data were divided into different groups of speech like expressions based on the framework of previous studies. The analysis of the data showed that B1 level learners use speech like expressions much more commonly than C1 level learners. In addition, there were also some differences in terms of the types of the speech like expressions used by C1 and B1 level learners.

One of the reasons why EFL learners have difficulties with the English present perfect tense is that little attention has been paid to the relationship between patterns and meanings of the tense (Yoshimura et al., 2014). To fill this gap, the present study takes a corpus-driven approach to the pattern-meaning interface of the present perfect, using British and American English corpora. It is found that the present perfect can express seven groups of meanings: 'accomplishment with relevance to the present', 'continuing from the past to the present', 'change of condition', 'experience', 'recency', 'discovery', and 'possession'. These meanings are found to be associated with distinctive co-occurrence patterns. The corpus-informed insights were then applied to an analysis of present perfect instances presented in textbooks used in Thailand's universities. It is found that the corresponding patterns and meanings can also be found in the sampled textbooks, but the textbooks tend to under-present a core meaning and highlight only a few uses of the present perfect. The study thereby offers a new perspective on the English present perfect and also provides empirical evidence for development of EFL textbooks and teaching materials.

Google Translate is a free and practical online translation service that allows millions of people around the globe to translate words, phrases, sentences, and paragraphs into an intended target language. However, in 2015, some Google Translate users in Indonesia, filed complaints, asserting that the machine was often inaccurate, speculating that it could only translate languages at the micro-level of words and phrases, rather than complete sentences or paragraphs. This research works to examine the accuracy as well as the shortcomings of Google Translate, in the context of English to Indonesian translations, in order to critically engage the complaints made by Google users. For the purpose of this study, 80 English sentences were translated using Google Translate and assessed for accuracy using a table adapted from Memsource criteria. Both the original sentences and their translated versions were analyzed using a sentence pair matrix to determine the machine's failings and areas for improvement. The results challenged those initial speculations which suggested Google Translate is only effective with words and phrases. On the contrary, Memsource proved to be a useful tool in demonstrating a reasonable level of accuracy, accurately translating 60.37% of Indonesian-English sentences and vice versa.

The aim of this comparative study is to investigate the deployment of interactional metadiscourse features in two different academic genres. For this purpose, a small, specialized corpus of 48 research articles and book reviews from seven different disciplines were collected. The conclusion sections of the texts written by non-native speakers of English were investigated to find out how interactional metadiscourse features were used. Drawing on previous metadiscourse frameworks, "hedges," "boosters," "attitude markers," "self-mentions" and "engagement markers" were identified in both sub-corpora. The results indicated significant differences across the groups on how writers constructed their authorial stance with interactional metadiscourse markers. Findings revealed that by using a rich number and variety of attitude markers, book reviewers were more evaluative in their conclusions. On the contrary, higher use of hedges in research articles allowed the authors sound more cautious in their commitment to the propositions. This study offers a detailed account of interactional metadiscourse in these two genres and illustrates how interpersonal function of language is accomplished for particular purposes in different academic texts.

Readers' decisions about the relevance and significance of research presented in a journal article are often influenced by the introduction section. Several factors contribute to authors' writing of effective introductions. This descriptive study aimed to explore strategies used by English and Turkish authors in the introduction section of educational sciences research articles published between 2012 and 2018. Towards this end, the creation of a research space (CARS) model and authorial voice were investigated in a 358,068-word collection of 62 journal articles (31 Turkish & 31 English). Results showed that the English collection revealed more frequent use of the submoves in CARS. Additionally, it included other moves (i.e., announcing principal findings and description of the methodology used) which were absent in the Turkish collection of text. The authors of the English introductions and those of the Turkish introductions also differed from each other significantly in their use of authorial voice. The former used the active voice more often than the passive voice. There was also some use of personal pronouns in the English texts while they were never used in the Turkish texts. These results point to a general pattern in education research article introductions in English and Turkish. The results imply that authors' lack of attention to these trends when writing in a foreign language may result in limited visibility in their fields. It is, therefore, recommended that scholars and training students should be informed about the ways they could navigate these issues within their discourse communities.

With the booming of Chinese internet corporations, various wrongdoings have been frequently exposed to the public, which damages their corporate image. To face the challenge, these companies usually resort to apologies for image restoration. This study investigates how apology strategies are employed by Chinese internet corporations to restore image in the event of wrongdoings. Based on a self-built corpus and by means of textual analysis, we identified different apology strategies characterized by various linguistic features. The results show that "Illocutionary Force Indicating Devices (IFIDs)" and "damage repair" are two of the most frequently used move types which are normally marked by such key linguistic features as personal pronouns, modal verbs, performative verbs and intensifiers. It is also found that IFIDs, "giving account" and "admitting mistakes", "offering repair" and "inviting further interaction" are often incorporated together to show the company's sincere apologetic stance which contributes to the ultimate goal -- rebuilding corporate image and regaining the public's trust. However, direct expressions of "asking for forgiveness" are seldom found in apologies crafted by Chinese internet corporations. This study on apologies in the domain of internet corporations is believed to shed light on research on corporate apology in particular and corporate image restoration in general.

The present study investigates the effect of the first language (L1) on learners by using the negative and the positive evidence in the classrooms while teaching English directional prepositions such as 'to' and 'into'. It is assumed that Arabic has two versions of 'to'. It has the directional interpretation without boundary-crossing which is equivalent to the English 'to'; whereas, it also denotes a similar interpretation to English directional preposition 'into' which is unavailable in Arabic and involves boundary-crossing. The study considers two groups to examine the effect of the overlaps, who are at an intermediate stage of development; the experiment group (E.G.) and the control group (C.G.). The control group is the base to measure the effectiveness of the treatments on the experiment groups' judgments. Hence, an Acceptability Judgment Task is devised to elicit participants' judgments on the task items in the pretest and the posttest. Results show clear advantage of the negative evidence in the experiment group's performance in the posttest in learning 'to' with and without boundary-crossing. There is a difference in the experiment group's performance in the posttest in learning 'into' with the boundary-crossing event after receiving the positive evidence. Similarly, a difference was observed in the experiment group's judgment with those of the control group in the comparison between 'to' and 'into' with the boundary-crossing event in the posttest.

This study aims to advance the understanding of sociolinguistic competence among near-native speakers and to further knowledge about the acquisition of variable structures. We conduct a quantitative analysis of variable future-time expression in informal conversations between near-native and native speakers of French. In addition to examining linguistic constraints that have been investigated in previous research, we build on prior work by introducing a new factor that enables us to consider the role that formality of the variants plays in the use of variable future-time expression. We conclude by comparing these new findings to those for the same dataset and other variable structures (namely, negation and interrogatives, Donaldson, 2016, 2017) and by advocating for more research that consists of multiple, complementary analyses of the same dataset.

This paper investigated the "be"-insertion phenomenon in L2 English. L2 learners often insert "be"-forms before thematic verbs, creating nontargetlike forms (e.g. "She is love ice cream"). Based on L2 data from learners of topic-prominent L1s, a group of researchers have claimed that such "be"-forms are topic markers transferred from the L1s. As L1 transfer cannot be supported without comparing different L2 groups, however, this study examined the explanatory adequacy of the Topic Marker Hypothesis by comparing the Korean and Russian EFL learners at different proficiency levels. Their oral production and grammaticality judgment suggests that regardless of the L1, "be"-forms could mark topics in the early stages of interlanguage, supporting full access to UG. Due to L1 transfer, however, "be"-insertion by the Korean group was more relevant to topic marking while that of the Russian group was more relevant to encoding agreement. These findings show complicated interplay between L1 transfer and UG.

Usage-based approaches to language acquisition explain language development as a gradual process of generalizing constructions through language experience. This study investigated second language learners' development of constructional knowledge from the perspective of usage-based language development. A total of 169 Korean EFL students at five grade levels completed a sentence-sorting and a translation task. Results of the sorting task showed stronger constructional sorting as the learners' grade level increased. Additionally, the sorting of intermediate-level learners was influenced by verb semantics such that the sentences including light verbs were more strongly clustered according to constructions than the sentences with heavy verbs, suggesting learners' reliance on light verbs in the early stages of constructional development. Results of the translation task demonstrated a higher translation accuracy with increasing proficiency, but with a significant amount of variation across individual constructions contingent on the constructions' syntactic and semantic complexity. Overall, our findings confirm the usage-based development of L2 learning.

Errors with "be", whether omission (e.g., "John happy") or overuse (i.e., "be"-insertion; e.g., "John is love Mary"), have received particular attention in L2 acquisition studies exploring L1 transfer. This study investigates such errors in the context of L3 acquisition, focusing on L1 transfer. L1-Chinese (n = 34) and L1-Russian (n = 34) children with L2 Korean completed an elicitation production task designed to explore their use of English "be." The study resulted in two main findings. First, L1- Russian children showed more omission errors than proficiency-matching L1- Chinese children, possibly due to an L1 transfer given that copula in Russian are dropped in the present tense. Second, L1-Chinese learners used "be"-insertion more frequently than proficiency-matching L1-Russian children, possibly due to using "be" for more functions (as a topic marker and an inflectional morpheme), as other research has shown for L2-English learners with topic-prominent L1s. Based on the findings, the study discusses some pedagogical implications.

This study aims at contributing to the discussion on the role of the early printers in the regularisation and standardisation of the English spelling. It assesses the degree of early printers' (in)consistency concerning morphological spelling, in particular the spelling of third person singular present tense (indicative) inflectional endings of verbs in six editions of "The book of good maners" (1487-1526), printed by William Caxton, Richard Pynson and Wynkyn de Worde. The analysis suggests that early printers could have been interested in regularising spelling already before normative guidance from scholars became available in the form of grammars and spelling books, that is before the middle of the sixteenth century. However, the levels of the printers' spelling consistency varied, depending on the particular printing house and edition.

This study aimed to detect the extent to which comprehending elliptical structures predicted reading comprehension. The study utilized a correlational survey model, and participants involved a total of 173 middle school students. Data were collected through two different tools based on the same text in 2019. The ellipsis comprehension test consisted of 40 items that included various types of elliptical structures present in the text. These items were in the form of fill-in-the-blanks. The reading comprehension test that was developed based on the same text comprised 21 items in the form of multiple-choice items. The tests were administered to the participants every other day. During the data analysis, a simple linear regression analysis was performed to reveal the extent to which the ellipsis comprehension ability predicted reading comprehension, and a multiple linear regression analysis was employed to reveal the extent to which the sub-dimensions of ellipsis comprehension ability predicted reading comprehension. Enter method was used in the regression analysis. Findings showed that ellipsis comprehension was a significant predictor of reading comprehension. The elliptical sub-dimensions predicting reading comprehension the best appeared to be the ellipses in the form of verb, object and determinative units. However, it was also found that ellipses in the form of subject and indirect object did not significantly predict reading comprehension.

While United States historians' inclination to write in affect-inducing ways has waxed and waned throughout the past 150 years, racial biases concerning such writing have persisted through today. Adapting Mark Phillips' (2013) concept of historical distance coupled with a form of linguistic analysis known as stylistics, I examine 50 U.S. social studies textbooks from 1860 to 2016 chosen by variation sampling and analyze which individuals and groups are discussed as experiencing suffering and whether or not these hardship narratives are apt to elicit compassion from their readers. I find that textbooks published after the U.S. Civil War consistently contain discourses that at first encouraged readers to be primarily concerned with the welfare of white elites and, over time, extended their compassionate writing styles to eventually all white people. At the same time, these texts consistently neglected to acknowledge the hardship experiences of domestic marginalized groups and, when their hardships were discussed, their narrative styles were likely to limit readers' inclination to be concerned about their oppression. Specifically, I find that the most enduring writing characteristic for U.S. textbook authors from the mid-19th century through today was to discuss acts of violence by non-white groups towards white people using the active voice while describing violence by white North Americans (first British and then U.S. nationals) towards non-whites in the passive voice, which previous studies had found differentially impacts readers' capacity not only to recall but also to empathize with such hardship narratives. Identifying how textbook authors may selectively use these stylistic discourses in biased ways has significant implications for understanding and addressing not only history instruction, but for contemporary civil rights struggles as well.

This article reports on a pedagogical trial of teaching reporting verbs for source integration in a North American ESL (English as a second language) composition class. Source incorporation challenges many novice ESL writers in the academic context as they are unable to view writing as an interactional activity, which requires proper presentation of different sources. This problem is often manifested in their monotonous, ineffective choice of reporting verbs. Advancing Halliday's Systemic Functional Linguistics (1978, 1994), Martin and White's Appraisal Theory (2005) further studies Interpersonal metafunction by focusing on speaker/writer attitude/evaluation in language use. It serves as the theoretical framework in this pedagogical trial which then helps student writers understand how reporting verbs could indicate different stances and create interactions in writing. This two-week pedagogical trial followed the teaching cycle of modelling, joint construction and independent construction recommended in the genre approach to help students to better deploy reporting verbs. Their writing samples before and after this pedagogical trial were collected, together with a final survey of their perceptions of the teaching activities, as evidence for the (in)efficiency of this pedagogical trial. Analysis of students' original and revised writings revealed progress but some lingering problems in their reporting verbs. Survey data indicated their enhanced understanding of why and how to integrate sources via reporting verbs, and their positive reactions to the teaching activities. Finally, the implications of this pedagogical intervention are discussed in the academic context for writing.

Different genres of writing entail various levels of syntactic and lexical complexity, and how this complexity influences the results of Automatic Writing Evaluation (AWE) programs like Grammarly in second language (L2) writing is unknown. This study explored the use of Grammarly in the L2 writing context by comparing error frequency, error types and writing complexity for university admission test essays, textbook-based descriptive essays, social network site (SNS) posts, and SNS comments. Several findings were revealed. Punctuation, grammar, vocabulary, and spelling mistakes were the most common error types across all corpora. In particular, determiner errors such as article usage were most frequent while differences existed across corpora related to incomplete sentences, run-on sentences, and spelling. Test-based and textbook-based compositions consisted of longer sentences with less lexical variation than SNS-based writing. SNS posts and comments produced greater noun, verb, and modifier variation. After applying Grammarly corrections, SNS posts resulted in the greatest clarity and this was attributed to shorter sentence length and simpler word-choice than textbook-based and test-based writing. Grammarly was more appropriate for local surface-level errors (e.g. articles, preposition, and verb-noun agreement) while instructors are needed for issues related to awkward wording and cohesion. Pedagogical implications in the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) context are given.

As one of the text categories, opinion texts have distinctive characteristics compared to any other texts in newspapers, including the choice of verb usage. This study then aims at preliminarily examining the verbs used in opinion articles in "The Jakarta Post" to find out the relation between frequency and text characteristics. This study collected the opinion articles of "The Jakarta Post" comprising 47.143 words. This study was assisted by "Lancsbox" to store the corpus of opinion section texts, to identify the verb lemmas, and to count the frequency of verbs. The verbs found in this study were then classified based on Scheibman's main verb classification (which is based on Halliday's and Dixon's verb types). The results of the study show that there are three most frequent verb types used in opinion texts in "The Jakarta Post;" they are "material," "verbal," and "feeling" verb types. Meanwhile, the lesser frequent ones are "perception," "possessive/relational," "relational," and "cognition" verbs types. Meanwhile, the least frequent verb types are "existential," "corporeal" and "perception/relational" verbs types. As opinion text conveys the argument of the writer, it is plausible to find "feeling" verb type belongs to the third most frequent types, along with "material" type to show concrete actions and "verbal" type to report the information. These frequencies exhibit that there is a firm relationship between text characteristics and the tendency of verb choice.

English contains a considerable number of lexical combinations with various forms and labels, making it an interesting field of inquiry for researchers. The significance and popularity of support verb constructions (SVC) is that they are used largely by native speakers and include some of the most common words in English but seem to be problematic even for advanced learners. In this study, the British National Corpus (BNC) was used to investigate SVC patterns through sociolinguistic variables. The rationale in doing so is that using sociolinguistics variables through substantive corpus data may give us a better sense and understanding of the nature of the combinations. Whether there are any predictable tendencies between the SVCs and sociolinguistic dimensions was investigated to bring empirical evidence to the areas that merely defy simple generalizations. In total, 39 SVCs were examined, and they displayed similar frequencies for register categories in written and spoken parts. Male speakers and writers use a wider variety of SVCs and more frequently than the females, and SVCs were used more by people 60 years old and older and less frequently by people between the ages of 6 to 14. SVCs were used predominantly by male writers who were writing for mixed audiences, and there was a positive correlation between the age and SVC usage. A sharp increase was observed for SVCs as the age of the target audience increased. Finally, "years of experience," "exposure and previous education" and "familiarity" were found to be other contributing factors for the SVC usage.

This study examines the effect of the lexical aspect on the use of the English simple past temporal morphology by Saudi learners of English as a foreign language (EFL), with a particular reference to the Aspect Hypothesis (AH). Data were gathered from 54 Saudi undergraduate EFL learners from five levels (L3-L7), using a production task and a comprehension task. The results of the study suggest that the lexical aspect may not have a primary influence on the use of the English past morphology. Findings of the production task showed that learners are sensitive to the lexical aspect in that they first associated the past markers with achievements and accomplishments and then with activities and statives. Findings of the comprehension task, by contrast, did not support the AH whereby learners' comprehension of the simple past marker spread from accomplishment to achievement verbs. Similarly, among atelics, the learners' association of the simple past marker spread from stative to activity verbs, which is not in line with the AH, too. Remarkably, learners' first language (L1) and task variation may have an impact on the learners' use of the English past marking because their realizations of the English past marker in the production and comprehension tasks were inconsistent.