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Adult and Child Sentence Processing When Reading or Writing
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Adult and Child Sentence Processing When Reading or Writing

A special issue of Languages (ISSN 2226-471X).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 September 2024 | Viewed by 8495

Special Issue Editors

Prof. Dr. Georgeta Cislaru

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
MoDyCo-CNRS & Department of Linguistic Sciences, University of Paris Nanterre, Nanterre, France
Interests: writing; text; keystroke logging
Prof. Dr. Philippe Martin

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
LLF, UFRL, Université Paris Cité, 75013 Paris, France
Interests: intonation phonology; acoustic phonetics; speech analysis

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

We are pleased to invite you to submit a manuscript for a Special Issue of Languages titled “Adult and Child Sentence Processing When Reading or Writing”.

When reading or writing, language speakers deal with linguistic units belonging to different levels of length and complexity. Sentence is the intermediate level between minimal units like phonemes or graphemes and maximal units like text/discourse; traditional grammar defines sentence as a semantically complete syntactic unit that expresses an assertion, a question, an exclamation or performs a speech act (order, wish). Lexical quality and idiomaticity, semantic or syntactic ambiguity, figures, context and situational information, salience and reference strategies, verb-specific constraints, word-order, length, planification, etc. step in sentence processing, as well as error correction (Frazier & Rayner 1982). The degree of automatization of various linguistic skills, operations like parsing and chunking, the functioning of working memory, running speech working memory, encyclopaedical knowledge, disfluency, interference with automatic correction, all play a role in sentence processing and can make a difference in sentence quality and speed processing in adults and children. The internal structure of a language – word order, tones… – and its nature – sign languages – are also involved.

Literacy instruction is specifically in search for tools helping to improve sentence processing: produce meaningful and situation/genre adapted sentences, better understand and interpret sentences, etc. Sentence is also a kind of “basic level” in accompanying typical and atypical children and adults’ literacy skills development, for instance in reading aloud practices.

Nevertheless, the notion of semantic completeness is difficult to grasp, and the concept of syntactic borders may be challenged: in reading, for instance, intonation and pauses may interfere with grammar in sentence processing; punctuation may impose a typographical frontier in hyperbaton, etc. During the writing process, pauses, revisions and punctuation constantly challenge sentence structure and borders.

In this Special Issue, original research articles, reviews, and squib-like articles (no longer than 5000 words) are welcome. Contributions may range from descriptive to formal and experimental approaches, including eye-movements, brain imaging, etc. Comparative studies are strongly encouraged (between populations, languages, reading and writing…) as well as questioning the nature of linguistic mechanisms in production and reception.

We request that, prior to submitting a full manuscript, interested authors initially submit a proposed title and abstract of approximately 400–600 words, summarizing their intended contribution. Please send it to both the Guest Editors, Georgeta Cislaru ([email protected]) and Philippe Martin ([email protected]), as well as to the Languages Editorial Office ([email protected]). Abstracts will be reviewed by the Guest Editors for the purposes of ensuring proper fit within the scope of the Special Issue. Full manuscripts will undergo double-blind peer review.

The tentative completion schedule is as follows:

  • Abstract submission deadline: March 15, 2024
  • Notification of abstract acceptance: April 15, 2024
  • Proposed deadline: September 30, 2024

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

References

Appelt, Douglas E. (1992) Planning English Sentences, Cambridge University Press.

Chafe, Wallace (1992) Information flow in speaking and writing. In Pamela Downing, Susan D. Lima, Michael Noonan (eds) The Linguistics of Literacy, John Benjamins, 17-29.

Christiansen, Morten H., Chater, Nick (2016) Creating Language: Integrating Evolution, Acquisition, and Processing, The MIT Press.

Cislaru, Georgeta, Olive, Thierry (2018) Le processus de textualisation, De Boeck.

Cislaru, Georgeta, Olive, Thierry (2021) Que peut nous apprendre l’écriture enregistrée en temps réel au sujet des figures de construction ? L’Information grammaticale n° 169 : 21-29, Peeters.

Cunnings, Yann (2016) Parsing and Working Memory in Bilingual Sentence Processing, Cambridge University Press.

Frazier, Lyn, Gibson, Edward (eds) (2015) Explicit and Implicit Prosody in Sentence Processing: Studies in Honor of Janet Dean Fodor, Springer International.

Frazier, Lyn, Rayner, Keith (1982) Making and correcting errors during sentence comprehension: Eye movements in the analysis of structurally ambiguous sentences. Cognitive Psychology n°14: 178-210.

Gilbert Annie (2011) Le chunking perceptif de la parole : Sur la nature du groupement temporel et son effet sur la mémoire immédiate, Thèse de Doctorat, Université de Montréal, Mars 2011.

Goldman-Eisler, Frida (1972) Pauses, clauses, sentences. Language and Speech n°15 : 103-113.

Hawkins, John A. (1994) A Performance Theory of Order and Constituency, Cambridge University Press.

Heredia, Roberto R., Altarriba, Jeanette (eds) (2002) Bilingual Sentence Processing, North Holland.

Lambrecht, Knud (1994) Information Structure and Sentence Form. Topic, focus, and the mental representations of discourse referents, Cambridge University Press.

Martin Randi, Hao Yan & Tatiano Schnur (2014) Working memory and planning during sentence production, Acta Psychologica n° 152C: 120-132.

Martin Philippe (2015) The Structure of Spoken Language. Intonation in Romance, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 206 p.

Martin Philippe (2018) Intonation, structure prosodique et ondes cérébrales, London: ISTE, 322 p.

McComkie George W., Roderick N. Underwood, David Zola & G. S. Wolverton (1985) Some Temporal Characteristics of Processing During Reading. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance n° 11(2): 168-186.

Merlo, Paola, Stevenson, Suzanne (2002) The Lexical Basis of Sentence Processing: Formal, Computational and Experimental Issues, John Benjamins.

Quercia Patrick (2010) Ocular movements and reading: a review, J. Fr. Ophtalmologie n° 3 (6): 416-423.               

Reichle Erik D., Pollatsek, Alexander, Fisher, Donald L. and Keith Rayner (1998) Toward a Model of Eye Movement Control in Reading, Psychological Review Vol. 105, No. 1: 125-157.

Sinclair, John, Mauranen, Anna (2006) Linear Unit Grammar: integrating speech and writing, John Benjamins.

Van Gompel, Roger P. G. (2013) Sentence Processing, Psychology Press.

Van Nostrand, A.D. (1972) Semantic completeness and syntactic continuity. Writing Theories and Philosophies n° 41(1): 22-27.

Wang Suiping, Deyuan Mo, Ming Xiang, Ruiping Xu & Hsuan-Chih Chen (2012) The time course of semantic and syntactic processing in reading Chinese: Evidence from ERP’s, Language and Cognitive Processes, iFirst, 1020.

Wildgen, Wolfgang (1994) Process, Image and Meaning: A Realistic Model of the Meaning of Sentences and Narrative Texts, John Benjamins.

Prof. Dr. Georgeta Cislaru
Prof. Dr. Philippe Martin
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Languages is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • reading
  • writing
  • sentence (processing)
  • child
  • adult
  • typical
  • atypical

Published Papers (6 papers)

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Research

28 pages, 2062 KiB  
Article
Language Processing Units Are Not Equivalent to Sentences: Evidence from Writing Tasks in Typical and Dyslexic Children
by Georgeta Cislaru, Quentin Feltgen, Elie Khoury, Richard Delorme and Maria Pia Bucci
Languages 2024, 9(5), 155; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages9050155 - 24 Apr 2024
Viewed by 224
Abstract
Despite recent research on the building blocks of language processing, the nature of the units involved in the production of written texts remains elusive: intonation units, which are evidenced by empirical results across a growing body of work, are not suitable for writing, [...] Read more.
Despite recent research on the building blocks of language processing, the nature of the units involved in the production of written texts remains elusive: intonation units, which are evidenced by empirical results across a growing body of work, are not suitable for writing, where the sentence remains the common reference. Drawing on the analysis of the writing product and process, our study explores how children with and without dyslexia handle sentences. The children were asked to write a short story and the writing process was recorded using keystroke logging software (Inputlog 7 & 8). We measured the number of pauses, the nature of the language sequences segmented by pauses, and the revision operations performed throughout the process. We analyzed sentences both in product and process. Our results showed that both the written product and the writing process reflect the establishment of a syntactic schema during language processing in typical children, in line with the first functional step in processing. This was not clearly evidenced in the case of dyslexic children, due to their limited production: beyond spelling, syntactic elaboration was also affected. In contrast, it appeared that the units of language processing cannot be equated with sentences in writing: the information flow is produced through usually smaller bursts that each carry part of the meaning or correspond to a specific operation of text crafting and revision. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Adult and Child Sentence Processing When Reading or Writing)
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33 pages, 753 KiB  
Article
Automated Extraction and Analysis of Sentences under Production: A Theoretical Framework and Its Evaluation
by Malgorzata Anna Ulasik and Aleksandra Miletić
Languages 2024, 9(3), 71; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages9030071 - 22 Feb 2024
Viewed by 2621
Abstract
Sentences are generally understood to be essential communicative units in writing that are built to express thoughts and meanings. Studying sentence production provides a valuable opportunity to shed new light on the writing process itself and on the underlying cognitive processes. Nevertheless, research [...] Read more.
Sentences are generally understood to be essential communicative units in writing that are built to express thoughts and meanings. Studying sentence production provides a valuable opportunity to shed new light on the writing process itself and on the underlying cognitive processes. Nevertheless, research on the production of sentences in writing remains scarce. We propose a theoretical framework and an open-source implementation that aim to facilitate the study of sentence production based on keystroke logs. We centre our approach around the notion of sentence history: all the versions of a given sentence during the production of a text. The implementation takes keystroke logs as input and extracts sentence versions, aggregates them into sentence histories and evaluates the sentencehood of each sentence version. We provide detailed evaluation of the implementation based on a manually annotated corpus of texts in French, German and English. The implementation yields strong results on the three processing aspects. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Adult and Child Sentence Processing When Reading or Writing)
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12 pages, 3001 KiB  
Article
Deaf Signers’ Processing of the Sentence: An Indicator of Their Specific Pathway to the Written Word?
by Marie Périni, Adrien Dadone and Brigitte Garcia
Languages 2024, 9(3), 69; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages9030069 - 21 Feb 2024
Viewed by 842
Abstract
This article addresses the issue of access to the written word for deaf people whose main language is sign language. We question the status of sentence processing in the acquisition of a written language by deaf people, visual beings par excellence. This written [...] Read more.
This article addresses the issue of access to the written word for deaf people whose main language is sign language. We question the status of sentence processing in the acquisition of a written language by deaf people, visual beings par excellence. This written language is both the written form of another language (namely a vocal language) and another modality, that of writing (as opposed to the oral form of language i.e., the face-to-face form of language), which they have not experienced in their own, non-written language. We highlight two points in the literature that we feel are crucial to addressing this issue: first, the significant linguistic distance between their L1 (SL) and their L2 (written vocal language), which severely limits the possibility of positive transfer from one to the other; and secondly, the evidence of a cognitive functioning specific to deaf people, marked in particular by higher processing capacities in the visual domain. Based on the results of two studies on the written output of deaf people, we suggest that particularities in the acquisition of the sentence are closely linked both to the structure of SL and to the visual functioning of this population. Finally, we emphasize the importance of using sign language as a metalanguage in teaching writing to deaf signers. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Adult and Child Sentence Processing When Reading or Writing)
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22 pages, 478 KiB  
Article
The Processing of Multiword Units by Learners of English: Evidence from Pause Placement in Writing Process Data
by Gaëtanelle Gilquin
Languages 2024, 9(2), 51; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages9020051 - 30 Jan 2024
Viewed by 1234
Abstract
Different methods and sources of information have been proposed in the literature to study the processing of language and, in particular, instances of formulaic language such as multiword units. This article explores the possibility of using pause placement in writing process data to [...] Read more.
Different methods and sources of information have been proposed in the literature to study the processing of language and, in particular, instances of formulaic language such as multiword units. This article explores the possibility of using pause placement in writing process data to determine the likelihood that a multiword unit is processed as a whole in the mind. The data are texts produced by learners of English and corresponding keylog files from the Process Corpus of English in Education (PROCEED). N-grams are selected on the basis of the finished texts and retrieved from the keylogging data. The pause placement patterns of these n-grams are coded and serve as a basis to compute the Pause Placement and Processing (PPP) score. This score relies on the assumption that n-grams which are delineated but not interrupted by pauses (hence taking the form of ‘bursts of writing’) are more likely to be processed holistically. The PPP score points to structurally complete n-grams such as in fact and first of all as being more likely to be processed holistically than structurally incomplete n-grams such as that we and to the. While the results are plausible and can be further substantiated by characteristics of specific n-grams, it is acknowledged that additional effects might also be at work to explain the results obtained. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Adult and Child Sentence Processing When Reading or Writing)
19 pages, 4542 KiB  
Article
How Relevant Is the Sentence Unit to Accessing Implicit Meaning?
by Céline Pozniak, Claire Beyssade, Laurent Roussarie and Béatrice Godart-Wendling
Languages 2024, 9(2), 42; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages9020042 - 25 Jan 2024
Viewed by 1281
Abstract
This paper examines the relevance of the sentence concept to the understanding of three types of implicitness (presupposition, conversational implicatures, irony). Our experimental protocol involved 105 children (aged 6 to 11) and 82 adults who were asked to read short texts composed of [...] Read more.
This paper examines the relevance of the sentence concept to the understanding of three types of implicitness (presupposition, conversational implicatures, irony). Our experimental protocol involved 105 children (aged 6 to 11) and 82 adults who were asked to read short texts composed of a context about some characters and a target sentence conveying one of the three implicit contents. After reading, children and adults had to answer a comprehension yes-no question and indicate the segments from the text that helped them answer the question. Results showed a difference between the three types of implicitness, with presupposition being detected and understood at a subsentential level, whereas implicatures and irony come under extrasentential level requiring the context to be taken into account. Referring to sentence as a unit of meaning does not seem relevant as soon as understanding is not limited to the literal meaning of what is written, but also concerns what is meant by the text. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Adult and Child Sentence Processing When Reading or Writing)
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24 pages, 2306 KiB  
Article
Features of Grammatical Writing Competence among Early Writers in a Norwegian School Context
by Mari Nygård and Anne Kathrine Hundal
Languages 2024, 9(1), 29; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages9010029 - 16 Jan 2024
Viewed by 1346
Abstract
In this article, we investigate how grammatical competence is manifested in young students’ written texts and how this contributes to the students’ overall writing competence. We pose the following two research questions: (i) Which grammatical features appear in a selection of young students’ [...] Read more.
In this article, we investigate how grammatical competence is manifested in young students’ written texts and how this contributes to the students’ overall writing competence. We pose the following two research questions: (i) Which grammatical features appear in a selection of young students’ texts? and (ii) What do these features reveal about different aspects of the students’ grammatical writing competence? The empirical fundament for this study is a representative sample of texts gathered through the project FUS—Functional Writing in the First School Years. Our primary material amounts to a total of 534 texts written by first- and second-grade students (ages 6–7). The students have completed two writing tasks, in which they were asked to write one descriptive and one narrative text. In our analyses, we see grammatical writing competence as consisting of several sub-competencies—namely, grammatical repertoire, grammatical complexity, grammatical variation, and grammatical choice. Our analyses show that the grammatical repertoire of beginner students is well-developed. The frequency of specific grammatical features differs between the two writing tasks, underpinning the argument that certain text types trigger certain grammatical choices. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Adult and Child Sentence Processing When Reading or Writing)
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