Exploring the role of verb frames in assessing semantic difficulty
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.36505/ExLing-2021/0039/000512Keywords:
verb frames, semantic difficulty, textbooks, readability, skill theoryAbstract
This paper explores the role of verb frames in semantic difficulty. We built a textbook corpus based on textbooks in primary schools, and the grades of the textbooks were treated as semantic difficulty levels. The difficulty levels were furthered mapped onto the performance of verb frames. The study found that the verb-frame diversity is highly correlated with semantic difficulty level with statistical significance and that the distribution of verb frames may correspond to the skill theory (Fischer & Corrigan, 1981) in cognitive language development. The skill theory could be used to group verb frames by tiers and roughly predict their distributional trends. Thus, verb frames could be helpful as a semantic reference for textbook planning and readability assessment.References
Lee, J.S., Liu, M., Cai, T. 2020. Using verb frames for text difficulty assessment. Proceedings of the International FrameNet Workshop 2020: Towards a Global, Multilingual FrameNet, 56–62.
Fillmore, C.J., Atkins, B. T. S. 1992. Toward a frame-based lexicon: The semantics of RISK and its neighbors. In Lehrer, A., & Kittay, E. (Eds.), Frames, fields, and contrasts: New essays in semantic and lexical organization (pp. 75–102). Hillsdale: Erlbaum.
Fillmore, C.J. 1982. Frame semantics. In the Linguistic Society of Korea (Ed.) Linguistics in the morning calm (pp. 111– 137). Seoul: Hanshin Publishing Co.
Bybee, J. 2010. Language, usage and cognition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Fischer, K. W. (1980). A theory of cognitive development: The control and construction of hierarchies of skills. Psychological Review, 87, 477–531.
Fischer, K.W., Corrigan, R. 1981. A skill approach to language development. In R. E. Stark (Ed.) Language behavior in infancy and early childhood (pp. 245–273). Elsevier: North Holland.
Jing-Schmidt Z. 2019. Corpus and Computational Methods for Usage-Based Chinese Language Learning: Toward a Professional Multilingualism. In: Lu X., Chen B. (eds) Computational and Corpus Approaches to Chinese Language Learning. Chinese Language Learning Sciences. Springer, Singapore. https://doi-org.ezproxy.cityu.edu.hk/10.1007/978-981-13-3570-9_2
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Articles are published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
