The Verbs of Motion“Ba” （come） and “Hevi” （bring）in Dictionaries of Contemporary Hebrew

We focused in this study on two verbs of motion ba （come） and hevi （bring） used in contemporary Hebrew pointing to a number of semantic shifts occurring in each of them and to categorical shifts that occurred in the verb ha. We conducted a semantic and syntactic analysis of these shifts in which we observed： a change in the syntactic valuation of ba and hevi, the semantic characteristic of the nominal collocations which form their syntactic setting, and the semantic connection between their original and new meanings. The article starts out with a presentation of the original meanings of the two verbs as belonging to the family of concrete verbs of motion. It then presents the semantic shifts each undergoing from designating motion to designating giving, existing, and modality （capability, intent and aspect） and concludes with the categorical shift of the verb ba to impersonal （ロ＂λ∏） and to discourse marker. It is noteworthy that in each of the shifts observed we noticed relation between the meaning stemming from the shift and the original meaning of ba and hevi as verbs of motion. We were able to prove that the original meaning is still echoed both in the semantic and category categorical shifts.

L2 Syntactic Alignment in the Reading-Writing Integrated Continuation Task: Evidence From Chinese EFL Learners’ Description of Motion Events

This study investigated how the mode in which the reading-writing integrated continuation task was conducted modulates the effects of second language(L2) syntactic alignment, through the English motion event construction with manner verbs. Ninety Chinese students were assigned to either of the two experimental groups or a control group, and they all experienced a pretest, an alignment phase and a posttest. In the alignment phase, the two experimental groups completed a reading-writing integrated continuation task but in different modes. For the multi-turn mode,participants reconstructed a picture story by continuing the episodes extracted from the story with one episode presented and continued at a time;for the single-turn mode, the first half of the same picture story was presented as a chunk, and then participants read and continued it. Results show that L2 learners aligned with the target structure in completing the story, and the alignment effect was retained in the posttest conducted after a delay of two weeks. Moreover, syntactic alignment was modulated by task mode with the multi-turn group exhibiting stronger immediate and longterm alignment effects. We conclude that the continuation task is a fruitful context for L2 structural alignment, and the magnitude of alignment effect hinges on interactive intensity.