Syntactic Satiation and the Inversion Effect in English and SpanishWh‐Questions

Abstract

. Both English and Spanish exhibit an inversion effect in wh‐questions: a verbal element must appear to the left of the subject. Analyses differ, however, as to whether this effect is due to similar syntactic mechanisms in the two languages or not. The phenomenon of judgment satiation, in which certain unacceptable sentence types improve upon repeated exposure, is used here to provide new evidence addressing this issue. It is shown that unacceptable wh‐questions in Spanish are susceptible to satiation, but their counterparts in English are not, which suggests that different mechanisms are responsible for the inversion effect in the two languages. In addition to providing new evidence regarding the nature of inversion in wh‐questions, this study also constitutes a test case for using satiation in the service of comparative syntax.

Raters’ Fatigue and Their Comments During Scoring Writing Essays: A Case of Iranian Efl Learners

“…In keeping with previous research studies (e.g., Massey, 1977;Wohlhueter, 1966;Weigle, 1994;McNamara, 1996;Hiramatsu, 2000;Liu et al, 2004;Goodall 2011;Sprouse, 2007;Drave, 2011;Ling et al, 2014), the present study highlighted the necessity of raters' training, and the importance of assessment protocols in order to avoid test bias. This study also suggested that fatigue can endanger even highly qualified raters' judgment in that the frequency and type of their comments on rated essays would change in an unfair manner from the first to the last few scored essays.…”

“…One could mention its detailed analysis of the effect of fatigue on every type of comments as a strength of this study as opposed to rather general analysis of the effect of fatigue on scores given by raters (e.g., Guangming, Mollaun, & Xi, 2014). As another strength of this study, one could bring up its contribution to raters' writing assessment protocols in line with most recent studies (i.e., those conducted by Snyder, 2000;Sprouse, 2007;Hiramatsu, 2000;Goodall, 2011). The major findings of the present study can be summarized as follows;…”

“…This issue was addressed in the present study in the sense that participants were given a demanding task of scoring 28 EFL essays. On the other hand, some other studies concluded that raters' fatigue can negatively influence raters' judgment, the reliability, and the consistency of language tests (e.g., Wohlhueter, 1966;Hiramatsu, 2000;Goodall 2011;Sprouse, 2007;Ling et al, 2014). In this respect, Hall and Sheyholislami (2013), argue that raters' comments and the way they change, their comprehension of the language, and their various biases are influential in language test scores and inferences.…”

“…Although many studies have highlighted the effect of fatigue on test takers/givers' performance on language tests, (e.g., Bendig, 1955;Constable & Andrich 1984;Cumming et al, 2002;Cumming, 1990;Drave, 2011;Ling et al, 2014;Lumley & McNamara, 1995;Massey, 1977;Schumm & Vaughn, 1991), very little is known about its effects on a raters' scoring quality in speaking and writing tasks (Drave, 2011;Ling et al, 2014). Also, results of studies regarding the effect of fatigue in the literature were quite conflicting in the sense that some suggested that fatigue can affect human judgments' significantly in language tests (e.g., Tucker, 1948;Cumming, 1954;Bendig, 1955;Massey, 1977;Wohlhueter, 1966;Liu et al, 2004;Drave, 2011), whereas others argued that the effect of fatigue on test-takers', or raters' judgments is not significant (e.g., Wohlhueter, 1966;Hiramatsu, 2000;Goodall 2011;Sprouse, 2007).…”

Inversion and finiteness in Spanish and English: Developmental evidence from the optional infinitive and optional inversion stages

“…The preverbal subject and the wh-phrase thus compete for the same position; a fronted wh-phrase makes it impossible for a subject to be preverbal, thus accounting for 16 (Groos & Bok-Bennema 1986, Goodall 1993, Zubizarreta 1998, Gutiérrez Bravo 2002. A third possibility is that sentences like 16 are allowed by the grammar, but that the intervening subject makes the filler-gap dependency created by wh-movement more difficult to process, leading to unacceptability (Goodall 2010(Goodall , 2011. This position is in line with the results from satiation mentioned above, if we assume that the satiation phenomenon observed with some sentence types reflects 'limitations of sentence processing, rather than genuine constraints of the speaker's grammatical competence' (Snyder 2000:580).…”