This study investigated Japanese EFL learners' explicit and implicit knowledge of sentence-level discourse constraints regarding assertive predicates in English. 18 Japanese graduate students completed untimed and speeded grammatical judgment tests of sentences containing assertive and non-assertive predicates. Results showed no differences between timed and untimed conditions, suggesting learners lacked both explicit and implicit knowledge of these constraints. The study concludes such features may be difficult to acquire naturally and require explicit instruction. Further research is needed on sentence-level discourse constraints.

1. 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

2. 2

3. 3

4. Overview
• Introduction
• Background
• The Present Study
• Results
• Discussion
• Conclusion

5. Overview
• Introduction
• Background
• The Present Study
• Results
• Discussion
• Conclusion

6. Introduction
• This study investigated…
–What?
• Explicit and Implicit Knowledge of
sentence-level constraints
–How?
•Untimed and Speeded
Grammatical Judgment Tests

7. Overview
• Introduction
• Background
• The Present Study
• Results
• Discussion
• Conclusion

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

9. Anything wrong?

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

11. Background
Why is learners’
performance
inconsistent?

12. Background
Two Types of
Knowledge

13. Background
Grammatical
Knowledge
Explicit
Knowledge
Implicit
Knowledge

14. Yu TAMURA
Graduate School, Nagoya Univ.
tamura.yu@e.mbox.nagoya-u.
ac.jp
Kunihiro KUSANAGI
Graduate School, Nagoya Univ.
JSPS Research Fellow
kusanagi@nagoya-u.jp

15. Background
Explicit Knowledge
Implicit Knowledge
• Intuitive
• Procedural
• Automatic
• Non-integrated
• Conscious
• Declarative
• Analyzed
• Integrated
(Ellis,2004,2005; Jiang,2007)

16. Background
Explicit Knowledge
• Intuitive
• Procedural
• Automatic
• Non-integrated
• Conscious
• Declarative
• Analyzed
• Integrated
Implicit Knowledge
These are theoretical constructs and should
be separated from processing or learning.

17. Background
• How explicit and implicit
knowledge are measured?

18. Background
Measurement
Explicit
Knowledge
• oral production task
• written production
task
• fill-in-the blank
• verbal reports
• error correction
Implicit
Knowledge

19. Background
Measurement
Explicit
Knowledge
• oral production task
• written production
task
• timed/speeded GJT
• fill-in-the blank
• verbal reports
• error correction
• untimed GJT
Implicit
Knowledge
(Bialystok, 1979; Kusanagi & Yamashita, 2013; Loewen, 2009)

20. 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?

21. 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.

22. Then,

23. What kind of structures would it be?

24. Assertive Predicates

25. Background
• What is assertive predicates?

26. Background
• Assertive Predicates
–Classification of verbs
–Verbs can be classified into two types:
Factive and nonfactive (Kiparsky &
Kiparsky,1971)
–Factivity
• complements =true presupposition

27. NAosnsfearctitvivee
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
Factive assertive
Assertive (semifactive) Nonassertive (true factive)
find out regret
know forget
realize resent
adapted from Hooper (1975, p.92)

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

29. 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)

30. 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)

31. 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)

32. Background
• Characteristics of assertive/non-assertive
predicates
assertive nonasseritve
complement preposing ○ ×
root transformation ○ ×

33. Then,

34. 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

35. Background
• Assumption
Japanese 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.

36. Nonfactive
Assertive
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
Factive assertive
Assertive (semifactive) Nonassertive (true factive)
find out regret
know forget
realize resent
adapted from Hooper (1975, p.92)

37. Overview
• Introduction
• Background
• The Present Study
• Results
• Discussion
• Conclusion

38. 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?

39. 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

40. The Present Study
• Stimuli (K =24)
– 6 non-assertive predicates
– 2 grammatical and ungrammatical
sentences for each item
– 24 fillers factivity assertiveness
regret + -
be impossible - -
be likely - -
forget + -
deny - -
not agree － －

41. The Present Study
• Examples
It 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.

42. The Present Study
• Experiment
– Untimed / Speeded GJTs on PCs (HSP ver. 3.2)
+
100ms
50ms
Junya always gets drunk.

43. 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.

44. 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.

45. Overview
• Introduction
• Background
• The Present Study
• Results
• Discussion
• Conclusion

46. Accuracy Score

47. 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]

48. Comparison of Accuracy Score between Untimed and Speeded Condition
0.90
0.68
0.45
0.23
0.00
Untimed
Speeded
Grammatical Ungrammatical ALL

49. 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

50. 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

51. 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]

52. 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]

53. Comparison of Accuracy Score between Untimed and Speeded Condition
0.90
0.68
0.45
0.23
0.00
Untimed
Speeded
Grammatical Ungrammatical ALL

54. Comparison of Accuracy Score between Untimed and Speeded Condition
0.90
0.68
0.45
0.23
0.00
Untimed
Speeded
Response bias?
Grammatical Ungrammatical ALL

55. Sensitivity Score

56. 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]

57. 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]

58. Reaction Time

59. Estimated Parameters of the Reaction Times
(ms) Using Ex-Gaussian Distributions
The
number of
reactions
Ex-Gaussian distribution
μ+τ = M
μ σ τ
σ2 + τ2 = SD2
Untimed 180 3,870 2,085 3,191
Speeded 180 2,510 828 1,250
Difference 0 1,360 1,257 1,941

60. 2000 4000 6000 8000
0e+00 1e-04 2e-04 3e-04 4e-04
Reading time(ms) Density
Speeded Grammatical
Speeded Ungrammatical
Untimed Grammatical
Untimed Ungrammatical

61. Overview
• Introduction
• Background
• The Present Study
• Results
• Discussion
• Conclusion

62. 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.

63. 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

64. Discussion
• Knowledge of sentence-level
constraints is difficult to acquire
naturally?
• Necessity of explicit instruction for
these types of linguistic features?

65. 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.

66. Overview
• Introduction
• Background
• The Present Study
• Results
• Discussion
• Conclusion

67. 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.

68. Bibliography
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