Measuring Explicit and Implicit Knowledge of Sentence-Level Discourse Constraints: A Case

of Assertive Predicates in English as a Foreign Language

June 22, 2014 44th CELES

Yamanashi University

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3

Overview

• Introduction• Background• The Present Study• Results• Discussion• Conclusion

Overview

• Introduction• Background• The Present Study• Results• Discussion• Conclusion

Introduction

• This study investigated…–What?

• Explicit and Implicit Knowledge of sentence-level constraints

–How?

• Untimed and Speeded Grammatical Judgment Tests

Overview

• Introduction• Background• The Present Study• Results• Discussion• Conclusion

Background

Learners of English do good sometimes, but doesn’t do so at other times.

Anything wrong?

Background

Learners of English do good sometimes, but doesn’t do so at other times.

well

don’t

Background

Why is learners’ performance inconsistent?

Background

Two Types of Knowledge

Background

Grammatical Knowledge

Explicit Knowledge

Implicit Knowledge

Yu TAMURAGraduate School, Nagoya Univ.

tamura.yu@e.mbox.nagoya-u.ac.jp

Kunihiro KUSANAGIGraduate School, Nagoya Univ.

JSPS Research Fellow kusanagi@nagoya-u.jp

BackgroundExplicit Knowledge

• Intuitive• Procedural• Automatic• Non-integrated

• Conscious• Declarative• Analyzed• Integrated

(Ellis,2004,2005; Jiang,2007)

Implicit Knowledge

BackgroundExplicit Knowledge

• Intuitive• Procedural• Automatic• Non-integrated

• Conscious• Declarative• Analyzed• Integrated

Implicit Knowledge

These are theoretical constructs and should be separated from processing or learning.

Background

• How explicit and implicit knowledge are measured?

Background

Explicit Knowledge

• oral production task• written production

task

• fill-in-the blank• verbal reports• error correction

MeasurementImplicit

Knowledge

Background

Explicit Knowledge

• oral production task• written production

task• timed/speeded GJT

• fill-in-the blank• verbal reports• error correction• untimed GJT

MeasurementImplicit

Knowledge

(Bialystok, 1979; Kusanagi & Yamashita, 2013; Loewen, 2009)

Background• What aspect of grammatical knowledge has been

investigated so far?– syntactic (e.g., reflexive pronouns, verb

complements, relative clauses etc.) – morphosyntactic (e.g., verb tenses and subject

verb agreement, etc.) – morphological constraints (e.g., plural nouns,

inflections, etc.) • What about semantic, pragmatic, and peripheral

phenomena?

Background• Explicit and Implicit knowledge studies

– only focus on narrow area of linguistic phenomena such as morphosyntactic features.

– Need to investigate more various features especially in sentence-level.

Then,

What kind of structures would it be?

Assertive Predicates

Background• What is assertive predicates?

Background• Assertive Predicates

– Classification of verbs

– Verbs can be classified into two types: Factive and nonfactive (Kiparsky & Kiparsky,1971)

– Factivity

• complements =true presupposition

NonfactiveAssertive

Weak Assertive Strong assertive Nonassertive

think acknowledge insist agree be likely

believe admit intimate be afraid be possible

suppose affirm maintain be certain be probable

expect allege mention be sure be unlikely

imagine answer point out be clear be impossible

guess argue predict be obvious be improbable

seem assert report be evident neg + strong assertiveFactive

Assertive (semifactive) Nonassertive (true factive)

find out regret

know forget

realize resent

adapted from Hooper (1975, p.92)

Background• Classification of verbs

– factive/nonfactive verbs can be characterized from the point of assertion.(Hooper, 1975).

Background• Classification of verbs

– Complement preposing(1a) Many of the applicants are women, it seems.(1b) *Many of the applicants are women, it’s likely.Assertive predicates allow complement preposing.

(e.g.,Hooper ,1975)

Background• Classification of verbs

– Root Transformations (RT) (2a)Sally plans for Gary to marry her, and he will marry her.→(2b) Sally plans for Gary to marry her, and marry her he will. (VP preposing)

(e.g.,Hooper ,1975)

Background• Classification of verbs

– Root Transformations (RT) (2c) Sally plans for Gary to marry her, and it seems that marry her he will. (2d) *Sally plans for Gary to marry her, and it’s likely that marry her he will. Assertive Predicates allow root transformations.

(e.g.,Hooper & Thompson, 1973)

Background• Characteristics of assertive/non-assertive

predicates

assertive nonasseritve

complement preposing ○ ×

root transformation ○ ×

Then,

Background• Non-assertive predicates do not take assertion

as their complements. The old woman regrets that his son smokes. *The old woman regrets that his son may smoke. • In Japanese, その老婆は息子がタバコを吸っていることを後悔した*その老婆は息子がタバコを吸っているかもしれないことを後悔した

Background• AssumptionJapanese EFL learners would not know the rule of non-assertive predicates explicitly, but they may implicitly be able to judge the grammaticality by the help of their L1 knowledge.

NonfactiveAssertive

Weak Assertive Strong assertive Nonassertive

think acknowledge insist agree be likely

believe admit intimate be afraid be possible

suppose affirm maintain be certain be probable

expect allege mention be sure be unlikely

imagine answer point out be clear be impossible

guess argue predict be obvious be improbable

seem neg + strong assertiveFactive

Assertive (semifactive) Nonassertive (true factive)find out regret

know forget

realize resentadapted from Hooper (1975, p.92)

Overview

• Introduction• Background• The Present Study• Results• Discussion• Conclusion

The Present Study

• RQs– Do Japanese EFL learners have explicit

knowledge of the discourse constraints?

– Do Japanese EFL learners have implicit knowledge of the discourse constraints?

The Present Study• Participants

– 18 Japanese graduate students

Age TOEIC Score

n M SD M SD

Participants 18 24.72 3.75 813.21 102.50

The Present Study• Stimuli (K =24)

– 6 non-assertive predicates

– 2 grammatical and ungrammatical sentences for each item

– 24 fillers factivity assertivenessregret + -be impossible - -be likely - -forget + -deny - -not agree － －

The Present Study• ExamplesIt is impossible [that the woman is the criminal].*It is impossible [that the woman may be the criminal].

Non-assertive predicates restrict the use of epistemic auxiliary or modal in embedded clause.

The Present Study• Experiment

– Untimed / Speeded GJTs on PCs (HSP ver. 3.2)

+

Junya always gets drunk.

100ms

50ms

The Present Study• Experiment

– The participants took untimed and speeded GJTs in turn.

– One of four conditions was attributed to each participant

• untimed/speeded ×grammatical / ungrammatical – Test items were presented randomly.

The Present Study

• Analysis –Accuracy Score

• t-test –Sensitivity Score (d’)

• t-test –Reaction Time

• Ex-Gaussian Distribution

–Outlier(M+2.5SD) was replaced to the mean scores.

Overview

• Introduction• Background• The Present Study• Results• Discussion• Conclusion

Accuracy Score

Descriptive Statistics of the Accuracy Score

K M SD 95%CI

Untimed Overall 20 .60 .12 [.55,.67]

Grammatical items 10 .71 .23 [.62,.84]

Ungrammatical items 10 .43 .33 [.26,.60]

Speeded Overall 20 .55 .15 [.47,.63]

Grammatical items 10 .74 .24 [.61,.85]

Ungrammatical items 10 .31 .30 [.18,.48]

Comparison of Accuracy Score between Untimed and Speeded Condition

0.00

0.23

0.45

0.68

0.90

Grammatical Ungrammatical ALL

UntimedSpeeded

Results of the t-tests between Untimed and Speeded GJT Scores

t (17) p Cohen’s d

Overall 0.64 0.52 0.21

Grammatical items 0.55 0.58 -0.18

Ungrammatical items 1.06 0.30 0.36

Results of the t-tests between Untimed and Speeded GJT Scores

t (17) p Cohen’s d

Overall 0.64 0.52 0.21

Grammatical items 0.55 0.58 -0.18

Ungrammatical items 1.06 0.30 0.36

Descriptive Statistics of the Accuracy Score

K M SD 95%CI

Untimed Overall 20 .60 .12 [.55,.67]

Grammatical items 10 .71 .23 [.62,.84]

Ungrammatical items 10 .43 .33 [.26,.60]

Speeded Overall 20 .55 .15 [.47,.63]

Grammatical items 10 .74 .24 [.61,.85]

Ungrammatical items 10 .31 .30 [.18,.48]

K M SD 95%CI

Untimed Overall 20 .60 .12 [.55,.67]

Grammatical items 10 .71 .23 [.62,.84]

Ungrammatical items 10 .43 .33 [.26,.60]

Speeded Overall 20 .55 .15 [.47,.63]

Grammatical items 10 .74 .24 [.61,.85]

Ungrammatical items 10 .31 .30 [.18,.48]

Descriptive Statistics of the Accuracy Score

Comparison of Accuracy Score between Untimed and Speeded Condition

0.00

0.23

0.45

0.68

0.90

Grammatical Ungrammatical ALL

UntimedSpeeded

Comparison of Accuracy Score between Untimed and Speeded Condition

0.00

0.23

0.45

0.68

0.90

Grammatical Ungrammatical ALL

UntimedSpeeded

Response bias?

Sensitivity Score

Descriptive Statistics of d’M SD 95%CI t (16) p Cohen’s d

Untimed 0.47 0.86 [0.02,0.92]

0.58 0.56 0.19

Speeded 0.29 0.92 [-0.18,0.77]

Descriptive Statistics of d’M SD 95%CI t (16) p Cohen’s d

Untimed 0.47 0.86 [0.02,0.92]

0.58 0.56 0.19

Speeded 0.29 0.92 [-0.18,0.77]

Reaction Time

Estimated Parameters of the Reaction Times (ms) Using Ex-Gaussian Distributions

The number of reactions

Ex-Gaussian distribution

μ σ τ

Untimed 180 3,870 2,085 3,191

Speeded 180 2,510 828 1,250

Difference 0 1,360 1,257 1,941

μ+τ = M

σ2 + τ2 = SD2

2000 4000 6000 8000

0e+0

01e

-04

2e-0

43e

-04

4e-0

4

Reading time(ms)

Den

sity

Speeded GrammaticalSpeeded Ungrammatical Untimed Grammatical Untimed Ungrammatical

Overview

• Introduction• Background• The Present Study• Results• Discussion• Conclusion

Discussion• Accuracy Scores & Sensitivity Scores

– No task effects

• Both explicit and implicit knowledge are not represented.

• Reaction Times– Participants took much longer time in

untimed condition. • They tried to access their explicit

knowledge.

Discussion• RQ1

– Do Japanese EFL learners have explicit knowledge of the discourse constraints?

→　No• RQ2

– Do Japanese EFL learners have implicit knowledge of the discourse constraints?

→　No

Discussion• Knowledge of sentence-level

constraints is difficult to acquire naturally?

• Necessity of explicit instruction for these types of linguistic features?

Limitations• Small sample size

–Accuracy for ungrammatical sentences in untimed conditions may become higher.

• Learner’s Proficiency?• Choice of non-assertive predicates• More data of linguistic features on

sentence-level discourse constraints.

Overview

• Introduction• Background• The Present Study• Results• Discussion• Conclusion

Conclusion

• Learners did not have both explicit and implicit knowledge of sentence-level constraints.

• These features may be difficult to acquire.

• But why? • Feature research needs to

investigate more about sentence-level discourse constraints.

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