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News We Can Use: Implementing Research Results in Language Learning

News We Can Use: Implementing Research Results in Language Learning. Laura A. Janda CLEAR (Cognitive Linguistics: Empirical Approaches to Russian) UiT The Arctic University of Norway. The materials I will present today:. The Case Book for Russian; The Case Book for Czech

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News We Can Use: Implementing Research Results in Language Learning

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  1. News We Can Use: Implementing Research Results in Language Learning Laura A. Janda CLEAR (Cognitive Linguistics: Empirical Approaches to Russian) UiT The Arctic University of Norway

  2. The materials I will present today: • The Case Book for Russian; The Case Book for Czech • The Aspect in Russian MediaModule • Cluster Types for Russian Verbs • Exploring Emptiness and the Verb Classifier Hypothesis • Grammatical Profiles and teaching Russian TAM • Russian Language Technology and Oahpa!

  3. Some running themes... • Research-based teaching: • All of the pedagogical tools I will show you build upon research results • Cognitive linguistics: • A usage-based theory that transfers well to the language classroom • Minimal terminology: • Linguistic terms kept to a bare minimum (verb, noun, adjective, etc.) • Authentic language: • All examples are drawn from native sources and corpora • Gender-approriate models: • When audio is available, one can choose male vs. female • Public access: • All web-based materials are publicly available, no restrictions

  4. Cognitive linguistics Minimal Assumption: language can be accounted for in terms of general cognitive strategies • no autonomous language faculty • no strict division between grammar and lexicon • no a priori universals Usage-Based: generalizations emerge from language data • no strict division between langue and parole • no underlying forms Meaning is Central: holds for all language phenomena • no semantically empty forms • differences in behavior are motivated (but not specifically predicted) by differences in meaning • metaphor and metonymy play a major role in grammar

  5. The Case Book for RussianThe Case Book for Czech • Steven J. Clancy, co-author • Published in 2002, 2006 – Slavica Publishers • Books come with CD-ROM with interactive version of text – you can click on all examples to hear recordings by native speakers, plus interactive exercises • PDF-version (text only) of Genitive case chapter for Russian, plus entire book for Czech available here: • http://www.seelrc.org/projects/casebooks/ • Interactive exercises available here: • http://languages.uchicago.edu/casebooks/russian/mainmenu.html • http://languages.uchicago.edu/casebooks/czech/mainmenu.html • In 2005, The Case Book for Russian won the Book Prize for “Best Contribution to Pedagogy” from the American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages

  6. The Case Book for RussianThe Case Book for Czech Main ideas: • Based on research on case meaning (Janda 1988, 1993, 1999, 2000) • Each case presented as a coherent whole, a structured network of related meanings • Prototypical meanings tend to be concrete (Genitive: a source дочь пришла из школы), further meanings are extended via metaphor and metonymy (Genitive: a source дочь стыдилась бедности) • Comprehensive explanation of ALL uses, not limited to major ones

  7. The Aspect in Russian MediaModule Main ideas: • Based on research on the meaning of aspect (Janda 2003, 2004) • Each aspect presented as a coherent whole, a structured network of related meanings • The aspectual contrast is metaphorically motivated by embodied physical experience with • discrete solid objects (Perfective) vs. • fluid substances (Imperfective) • This contrast is relevant at the level of event structure, discourse, and pragmatics • Give learners opportunity to use real-world knowledge to make sense of Russian aspect

  8. Discrete solid object: Has shape/edges, is unique, two cannot occupy the same place Perfective event: Has clear beginning/end, is unique, expresses sequences Олег сел в машину и поехал в ресторан Fluid substance: Has no shape/edges, is not unique, two can be mixed in the same place Imperfective event: No clear beginning/end, not unique, expresses simultaneity Олег носил галстук иездил на спортивной машине Aspect Meaning

  9. The Aspect in Russian MediaModule • Аvailable here: • http://ansatte.uit.no/laura.janda/aspect/ainr/

  10. Cluster Types for Russian Verbs Main ideas: • Based on research on the aspectual relationships among verbs (Janda 2007, Janda & Korba 2008) • Four different types of Perfective verbs can be distinguished on the basis of both meaning (metaphorically motivated) and word-formation • Natural Perfective, Specialized Perfective, Complex Act Perfective, Single Act Perfective • An aspectual cluster contains an Imperfective Activity verb plus 0-4 types of Perfective verbs • An implicational hierarchy predicts the structures of existing clusters Available at: http://ansatte.uit.no/laura.janda/clusters/clusterfrontpage.html

  11. Exploring Emptiness and the Verb Classifier Hypothesis Main ideas: • Aspectual pairs such as писать/написать, варить/сваритьconsist of an imperfective base verb and a prefixed perfective partner with the same lexical meaning • The traditional assumption is that the prefixes are empty in these pairs (пустые приставки) • BUT: these pairs are essential vocabulary, there are about 1400 base verbs, 16 prefixes, and 2000 correct prefix verb combinations • We can design materials that reduce the burden of memorization for learners

  12. Exploring Emptiness and the Verb Classifier Hypothesis • Exploring Emptiness database of prefixal pairs (Natural Perfectives): • http://emptyprefixes.uit.no/index.php • Book: Janda, Laura A, Anna Endresen, Julia Kuznetsova, Olga Lyashevskaya, Anastasia Makarova, Tore Nesset, Svetlana Sokolova. 2013. Why Russian aspectual prefixes aren’t empty: prefixes as verb classifiers. 2013. Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers, plus link to all data and lists of verbs: • http://emptyprefixes.uit.no/book.htm • Other related research: Janda 2012, Endresen et al. 2012, Sokolova et al. 2012, Janda & Lyashevkaya 2011, 2013

  13. Grammatical Profiles and teaching Russian TAM Main ideas: • Based on research on the distribution of verb forms in the Russian National Corpus (Janda & Lyashevskaya 2011) • We can identify the verbs that are most likely to be used in certain TAM combinations, such as imperfective imperative or imperfective non-past • We can design teaching materials to specifically target those verbs and forms

  14. What is a grammatical profile? • Verbs have different forms: • eat 749 M • eats 121 M • eating 514 M • eaten 88.8 M • ate 258 M The grammatical profile of eat

  15. Grammatical Profiles of Russian Verbs chi-squared = 947756 df = 3 p-value < 2.2e-16 effect size (Cramer’s V) = 0.399 (medium-large)

  16. Distribution of Russian verb forms according to subparadigm • Prefixation (dark) vs. suffixation (light): • Statisticallysignificant, BUT effectsizestoosmall (0.076 & 0.037)

  17. Distribution of Russian verbs according to subparadigm: Imperfective verbs and their attraction to imperative • Over 200 outliers

  18. Imperfective imperative “be doing X!” • Polite: guest knows what to expect: раздевайтесь‘take off your coat’, садитесь‘sit down’ • Insistence: hearer is hesitant: ступайте ‘get going’, глядите ‘look’, забирайте ‘take’ • Insistence: hearer has not behaved properly (connection with negation): проваливай ‘get out of here’, кончай ‘stop’, не перебивай ‘don’t interrupt’ • Polite requests: выручайте ‘help’ • Kind wishes: выздоравливайте ‘get well’ • Idiomatic: давайте посмотрим ‘let’s take a look’ • Idiomatic/culturally anchored: прощай(тe)‘farewell’, соединяйтесь ‘unite’ (slogan), запевай ‘sing’ (army)

  19. Distribution of Russian verbs according to subparadigm: Imperfective verbs and their attraction to non-past • Only 10 outliers • Canyouguesswhich verbs theyare?

  20. These verbs expressgnomictruths, not ongoingevents! The 10 imperfective verbs most attracted to the non-past

  21. Russian Language Technology and Oahpa! Main ideas: • BasedoncollaborationwiththeSaami Language Technology Center at UiT • Creationof Natural Language Processing tools for Russian, parallel to those for Saami and Norwegian, canfacilitate: • (real) machinetranslation • corpusanalysis & linguisticresearch • pedagogicalresources • vocabularypractice • morphologicalpractice (includinguse in generatedsentences) • textenhancement and exercises http://testing.oahpa.no/rusoahpa/

  22. References -- Case Janda, Laura A. 1988. “Pragmatic vs. Semantic Uses of Case”, in Chicago Linguistic Society 24-I: Papers from the Twenty-Fourth Regional Meeting, ed. by Diane Brentari et al. Chicago: U of Chicago Press, 189-202. Janda, Laura A. 1993. A Geography of Case Semantics: The Czech Dative and the Russian Instrumental (=Cognitive Linguistics Research, v. 4). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Janda, Laura A. 1999. “Peircean semiotics and cognitive linguistics: a case study of the Russian genitive”, in The Peirce Seminar Papers, ed. by Michael Shapiro. New York/Oxford: Berghahn Books, 441-466. Janda, Laura A. 2000. “A cognitive model of the Russian accusative case”, in Trudy meždunarodnoj konferencii Kognitivnoe modelirovanie, No. 4, part I, ed. by R. K. Potapova, V. D. Solov’ev and V. N. Poljakov.Moscow: MISIS, 20-43.

  23. References – Aspect (Metaphorical Model and Clusters, TAM) Janda, Laura A. 2003. “A user-friendly conceptualization of Aspect”, Slavic and East European Journal, vol. 47, no. 2, 251-281. Janda, Laura A. 2004. “A metaphor in search of a source domain: the categories of Slavic aspect”, Cognitive Linguistics, vol. 15, no. 4, 471-527. Janda, Laura A. 2007. “Aspectual clusters of Russian verbs”, Studies in Language 31:3, 607-648. Janda, Laura A. and John J. Korba. 2008. “Beyond the pair: Aspectual clusters for learners of Russian”, Slavic and East European Journal 52:2 (2008), 254-270. Janda, Laura A. and Olga Lyashevskaya. 2011. “Grammatical profiles and the interaction of the lexicon with aspect, tense and mood in Russian”, co-authored with. Cognitive Linguistics 22:4, 719-763.

  24. References – Exploring Emptiness (partial list) • Janda, Laura A. 2012. “Russkie pristavki kak sistema glagol’nyx klassifikatorov”. Voprosy jazykoznanija 6, 3-47. • Janda, Laura A., Anna Endresen, Julia Kuznetsova, Olga Lyashevskaya, Anastasia Makarova, Tore Nesset, Svetlana Sokolova. 2013. Why Russian aspectual prefixes aren’t empty: prefixes as verb classifiers. 2013. Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers. • Janda, Laura A., Olga Lyashevskaya. 2011. “Prefix variation as a challenge to Russian aspectual pairs: Are завязнуть and увязнуть‘get stuck’ the same or different?”, Russian Linguistics 35 (2011): 147-167. • Janda, Laura A., Olga Lyashevskaya. 2013. “Semantic Profiles of Five Russian Prefixes: po-, s-, za-, na-, pro-”, Journal of Slavic Linguistics 21:2, 211-258. • Sokolova, Svetlana, Olga Lyahsevskaya, Laura A. Janda. 2012“The Locative Alternation and the Russian ‘empty’ prefixes: A case study of the verb gruzit’‘load’”. In: D. Divjak & St. Th Gries (eds.). Frequency effects in language representation (Trends in Linguistics. Studies and Monographs. 244.2), 2012, 51-86. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. • Janda, Laura A., Anna Endresen, Julia Kuznetsova, Olga Lyashevskaya, Anastasia Makarova, Tore Nesset, Svetlana Sokolova. 2012. “Russian ‘purely aspectual’ prefixes: Not so ‘empty’ after all?”, Scando-Slavica 58:2 (2012), 231-291.

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