research topics in syntax

Click through the PLOS taxonomy to find articles in your field.

For more information about PLOS Subject Areas, click here .

Loading metrics

Open Access

Peer-reviewed

Research Article

Syntax at Hand: Common Syntactic Structures for Actions and Language

* E-mail: [email protected]

Affiliations L2C2- Institut des Sciences Cognitives, CNRS UMR 5304, Bron, France, Université Claude Bernard Lyon I, Lyon, France

Affiliations L2C2- Institut des Sciences Cognitives, CNRS UMR 5304, Bron, France, Centre de Référence «Déficiences Intellectuelles de Causes Rares» Hôpital Femme Mère Enfant, Hospices Civils de Lyon, Bron, France, Université de Lyon, Faculté de Médecine Lyon Sud - Charles Mérieux, Lyon, France

Affiliations L2C2- Institut des Sciences Cognitives, CNRS UMR 5304, Bron, France, Université Claude Bernard Lyon I, Lyon, France, Centre de Référence «Déficiences Intellectuelles de Causes Rares» Hôpital Femme Mère Enfant, Hospices Civils de Lyon, Bron, France, Université de Lyon, Faculté de Médecine Lyon Sud - Charles Mérieux, Lyon, France

Affiliations L2C2- Institut des Sciences Cognitives, CNRS UMR 5304, Bron, France, Université Claude Bernard Lyon I, Lyon, France, Service de Psychopathologie du Développement- Hôpital Femme Mère Enfant, Hospices Civils de Lyon, Bron, France, Université de Lyon, Faculté de Médecine Lyon Sud - Charles Mérieux, Lyon, France

• Alice C. Roy, 
• Aurore Curie, 
• Tatjana Nazir, 
• Yves Paulignan, 
• Vincent des Portes, 
• Pierre Fourneret, 
• Viviane Deprez

• Published: August 22, 2013
• https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0072677
• Reader Comments

Evidence that the motor and the linguistic systems share common syntactic representations would open new perspectives on language evolution. Here, crossing disciplinary boundaries, we explore potential parallels between the structure of simple actions and that of sentences. First, examining Typically Developing (TD) children displacing a bottle with or without knowledge of its weight prior to movement onset, we provide kinematic evidence that the sub-phases of this displacing action (reaching + moving the bottle) manifest a structure akin to linguistic embedded dependencies. Then, using the same motor task, we reveal that children suffering from specific language impairment (SLI), whose core deficit affects syntactic embedding and dependencies, manifest specific structural motor anomalies parallel to their linguistic deficits. In contrast to TD children, SLI children performed the displacing-action as if its sub-phases were juxtaposed rather than embedded. The specificity of SLI’s structural motor deficit was confirmed by testing an additional control group: Fragile-X Syndrome patients, whose language capacity, though delayed, comparatively spares embedded dependencies, displayed slower but structurally normal motor performances. By identifying the presence of structural representations and dependency computations in the motor system and by showing their selective deficit in SLI patients, these findings point to a potential motor origin for language syntax.

Citation: Roy AC, Curie A, Nazir T, Paulignan Y, des Portes V, Fourneret P, et al. (2013) Syntax at Hand: Common Syntactic Structures for Actions and Language. PLoS ONE 8(8): e72677. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0072677

Editor: Corrado Sinigaglia, University of Milan, Italy

Received: November 29, 2012; Accepted: July 18, 2013; Published: August 22, 2013

Copyright: © 2013 Roy et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Funding: This work has been supported by the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique and ACR and PF were additionally supported by Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique and Agence Nationale pour la Recherche Samenta (ANR-12-SAMA-015-02). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Introduction

The nature of the relationships between language and motor control is currently the object of growing attention [ 1 ]. Up to now, however, empirical research has largely centered on the meaning of action words and their representation in our sensory and motor systems [2 for a review]. With their focus on the lexico-semantic domain, these studies have rarely addressed other core aspects of language such as its structural aspects and its syntax. Yet, the common involvement of Broca’s area in syntax and in the sensori-motor system points to possible convergence between these domains [ 3 , 4 ]. Positive evidence that syntax-based representations could be partially common to the motor and the linguistic systems would suggest that linguistic syntax could have exploited and built upon parts of a pre-existing “syntax” used by the motor system [ 5 – 7 ]. The present study provides support for this assumption.

Like verbs in spoken language, actions arguably manifest a comparable argument structure relating agents and objects [ 8 ]. Accordingly, they are commonly branded as ‘transitive’ when performed with or towards objects [ 9 ]. Knott [ 10 ] for instance, proposes that "the Logical Form" of a sentence reporting a cup-grabbing episode can be understood as a description of the sensorimotor processes involved in experiencing the episode. He argues that the LF of the sentence can be given a detailed sensorimotor characterization, and that many of the syntactic principles are actually sensorimotor in origin.

Similarly, drawing on modeling studies of motor planning, Jackendoff [ 11 , 12 ] suggested that actions are recursively structured in ways quite analogous to the hierarchical embedding that characterizes language syntax and further conjectured that the structure of certain sub-events within goal-oriented actions (e.g. preparing coffee) could even have "the flavor of variable binding and long distance dependencies" [12 p597] like those at play in the syntactic structures of questions or relative clauses. Jackendoff [12 p597] describes one such dependencies in the complex routine action of making coffee as follows: "For instance, suppose you go to take the coffee out of the freezer and discover you’re out of coffee. Then you may append to the [making coffee] structure a giant preparation of buying coffee, which involves finding your car keys, driving to the store, going into the store (…) and driving home. The crucial thing is that in this deeply embedded head (i.e. the buying action), what you take off the shelf (...is...) the same thing you need in the larger structure this action is embedded in".

Consider now in some detail the syntactic structure of a relative clause dependency in language. In a simple sentence like [ John grasped the bottle ], the complement of a transitive verb like “ grasped ”, i.e the nominal phrase [ the bottle ], generally occurs after the verb. In contrast, in a relative clause like ‘ [ This is the bottle (which) John grasped ] the nominal phrase [ the bottle ] is syntactically displaced to the front of the clause, so that it no longer appears after the verb. Yet, despite this displacement, the nominal phrase remains interpreted as the complement of the verb “ grasped ”. In syntactic theory, the link between the displaced position of a fronted nominal phrase and the position in which it is interpreted (i.e. here as a complement of the verb grasp) is modeled as a ‘distant dependency’ between the two syntactic positions of the nominal phrase. Syntacticians propose that a relative clause is a transform of a basic sentence in which the nominal complement of a verb has been displaced to the front of a clause leaving a silent copy in the position in which it originated and is interpreted e.g. [ This is the bottle (which) John grasped the bottle ]. Schematically, the abstract structure of a relative clause is as in Figure 1 : Here, S’ represents the relative clause, S, the original sentence, the arrow indicates the displacement i.e. the distant dependency between the nominal phrase (NP) and its silent copy represented here as the crossed NP : the bottle .

• PPT PowerPoint slide
• PNG larger image
• TIFF original image

The noun phrase "the bottle" appears twice, once when it is pronounced at the beginning of the main clause and as a trace in the position it is interpreted in i.e. as the object complement of the verb grasp of the relative clause. Note that this structure is characteristically asymmetric.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0072677.g001

‘Distant dependencies’ are also known in linguistics as filler-gap dependencies or operator-variable dependencies. All these dependencies involve relations akin to that between a noun and a pronoun that is two representations of the same element as in: (John thinks he will win, where ‘he’ = john) but where the pronoun is silent. ‘Distant dependencies’ have played a central role in linguistic theory in probing the hierarchical nature of sentence embedding [ 13 ]. As Ross [ 14 ] showed indeed, these dependencies are tightly constrained. In particular, although the distance between the displaced nominal phrase and its silent copy can span over several clauses if these are embedded, the dependency fails to be properly interpreted if the intervening clauses are coordinated or juxtaposed instead. Compare the following examples:

• (a). This is the heavy bottle (which) [John realized] (that) [Mary knows] (that) [he grasped [the bottle]]

(b). * This is the heavy bottle (which) [John smiled] (and) [Mary stretched] and [he grasped [the bottle]]

Please note that the asterisk in front of the sentence indicates that the sentence in (b) is ungrammatical and that the elements in parenthesis are optional in English. They can remain unpronounced so that respectively the two sentences can be realized as:

This is the heavy bottle John realized Mary knows he grasped vs. This is the heavy bottle John smiled Mary stretched and he grasped. In (a), the dependency between the fronted nominal phrase, the bottle and the position in which it is interpreted (e.g. as a complement of the verb grasp) spans over three embedded clauses, but the sentence is still natural. In (b) -though formed from the perfectly accep It should be noted that we are not claiming that motor syntax is as complex as linguistic syntax, nor that it shares all of its crucial aspects, but we are arguing that some rudimentary, but fundamental aspect of linguistic syntax could be traced back to relatively complex motor actions. sentence "John smiled and Mary stretched and he grasped the heavy bottle"- it is rather difficult to understand the fronted nominal phrase [ the bottle ] as the complement of the verb grasp and still obtain a fully natural sentence. Note that the actual linear distance between the fronted noun phrase and the silent copy [ the bottle ] after the verb grasp is the same in (a) and (b). What differs is the nature of the syntactic relationship that the intervening clauses entertain: embedded vs. coordinated. That is, what matters is the nature of the abstract structural relation that connects the components that intervene between the two pieces of the distant dependency, the nominal phrase and its silent copy. Hence, the break down of the distance dependency in (b) vs. (a) serves to reveal a fundamental distinction in the syntax of these two sentences that would otherwise not be immediately obvious from the simple sequential ordering of their components. The distinction in the structural relations between the component constituents is schematized in Figure 2 .

A: An embedded structure is essentially asymmetric and accepts distance dependency as in the example given in (a). By contrast a symmetric coordinated structure does not accept distance dependency.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0072677.g002

As the arrows indicate, a linguistic distant dependency can succeed when the intervening components are embedded, but it breaks down when they are coordinated or juxtaposed. This structural constraint, dubbed the "Coordinated Structure Constraint" in the linguistic literature, provides evidence of the fundamentally hierarchical and embedded nature of certain linguistic structures.

Following Jackendoff’s conjecture that comparable distant dependencies are found in the motor domain, we sought to use these to experimentally probe the nature of the abstract structural relations that connect the motor components of a transitive action.

Endeavoring to construct an analogous motor distant dependency, we used a basic goal-directed displacing-action task that consisted in reaching a bottle and moving it to another target location while manipulating the participant’s knowledge of its weight. Our task was designed, first, to build on existing evidence that a displacing motor action can be divided in two component sub-phases [ 15 ], a first sub-phase of [reach+grip] that unfolds before object contact, dubbed here the Reach sub-phase, and a second sub-phase of [lift+move] that unfolds after object contact, dubbed here the Move sub-phase ( Figure S1 ). Second, we chose to manipulate the weight of an opaque bottle because, in contrast to features such as shape, size or location, which are visually perceived and hence can come to affect the kinematics of a reach and grasp action before any object contact [ 16 ], weight is a somatosensory perception that affects movement kinematics only after object contact [ 17 – 19 ] as long as there are no visual (or other) cues to it. That is, weight information, is normally "encapsulated" in the second phase of a displace action, i.e. dubbed here the Move sub-phase. Yet, weight information could become accessible prior to object contact [e.g. 20-22], if the weight of a given object is experienced or known before critical movement onset. When known, weight information could be so to speak ‘raised out’ of the Move sub-phase where it is normally encapsulated, and become accessible to potentially affect kinematic parameters already in the Reach sub-phase. Such a displaced weight effect in the Reach sub-phase would form the motor equivalent of a ‘distant dependency’ between the point in the Reach sub-phase where the mental representation of object weight is integrated in movement kinematics and the point of object contact in the Move sub-phase where the object weight is physically accessed. Note that at this second point in the action structure i.e. at the point of contact, the pertinent object weight better matches the representation integrated earlier in the Reach component, or else a mismatch would occur. This implies that a representation of object weight must be part of the motor computation to allow a backward feedback similar to the relation posited in linguistics between a displaced nominal phrase and its silent copy.

Although there is a rather broad consensus in the motor literature that a simple object displacing action of the type we used can be subdivided into two distinctive sub-components [ 15 ], the nature of the structural relation between these two components has at this point not been investigated empirically. A priori, the two sub-phases of a displacing action could be structurally related in either of two ways: they could be merely sequentially juxtaposed in analogy with the coordinated linguistic structures in Figures 2 and 3A-B or entertain a complex hierarchical relation, a form of syntactic embedding, analogous to the embedded structure in Figures 2 and 3C-D . This subtle but key distinction is essential for comparing motor with linguistic structure because in language, as illustrated in Figure 2 , the two types of structural relations have characteristically distinct effects on distant dependencies. While juxtaposed constituents are largely independent from one another, i.e. there have no domination or inclusion relation, embedded constituents are hierarchically related and thus asymmetrically dependent with domination or inclusion relations. Manipulating access to object weight information, during or prior to action execution, by creating a distant dependency, allows us to probe the structural relation entertained by the two component sub-phases of a displacing action. When the weight of an object is unknown to the subject, the kinematic parameters should always adjust to weight after object contact, that is, in the Move sub-phase only: such cases, then do not afford the possibility to uncover a distinction between the two potential structural models for our displacing action depicted in Figure 3 . However, when the object-weight is known in advance, so that a potential distant dependency now arises between a motor weight representation before object contact and the point of object contact where weight is physically felt, the two models make different predictions. If the displacing-action has a juxtaposed structure (with two relatively independent and parallel sub-components), weight effects could be distributed over and affect the kinematic parameters of both sub-components symmetrically (red line in Figure 3 ) in analogy with what happens in a linguistic coordinated structure as the following (e.g. the heavy/light bottle, I reach it AND I move it) where the fronted nominal complement ‘[the heavy/light bottle] is resumed by an overt pronoun (it) in both constituents of the coordinated structure. That is, if the structure of the displacing action is as in Figure 3B , we expect weight to affect both the Reach sub-phase as the weight representation is accessible to affect the kinematic computation, and the Move sub-phase as this is where the object weight is actually felt. By contrast, if the two components of the displacing action are embedded and object properties computation is akin to a linguistic distant dependency, as we conjecture, prior weight knowledge could result in an asymmetric transfer of the weight effects to the topmost level of the hierarchical structure, i.e., to the ‘Reach sub-phase’ with a consequent reduction or absence of weight effects in the ‘Move sub-phase’ in analogy with the silent copy that a linguistic dependency leaves in the original complement position when a nominal phrase is displaced (e.g. the heavy/light bottle which I reach to move [the bottle]). In similarity with linguistic displacement, object weight effects could be so to speak ‘raised out’ of the Move sub-phase and be displaced to affect the Reach sub-phase, leaving in turn the kinematics parameters of the lower Move sub-component unaffected by weight, in analogy with the linguistic silent copy left after fronting in relative clauses [ 23 ].

AB: Sequential juxtaposition, analogous to [I reach-grip a bottle AND lift-move it]. When object weight is unknown prior to object contact (A), kinematic parameters adapt to object weight in the ‘Move sub-phase’ (schematically indicated by the red line). No effect of object weight is expected in the ‘Reach sub-phase’. By contrast, when object weight is known in advance (B), movement kinematics could differ for heavy and light objects conjointly in the ‘Reach sub-phase’ and the Move sub-phase i.e. [This heavy bottle, I reached-griped it AND lift-moved it]. CD: Syntactic embedding, analogous to [I reach-grip a bottle TO lift-move it]. When object weight is unknown kinematic parameters adapt to object weight in the ‘Move sub-phase’ only (C). When known prior to movement onset object weight effects could be front-moved from the Move sub-phase to the reach sub-phase(D), following this displacement the Move sub-phase kinematics would remain immune to object weight effects (i.e., [The heavy bottle that I reached-griped TO lift-move]).

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0072677.g003

To test this hypothesis and probe the structural relation of the motor components of a simple structured action, we compared the behavior of Typically Developing (TD) children with that of children diagnosed with Specific Language Impairment (SLI). SLI refers to a deficit in language acquisition that occurs in children who are otherwise developing normal cognitive abilities (absence of mental retardation, no diagnosed motor deficit, no hearing loss, or identifiable neurological disease). We reasoned that if the two sub-components of our displacing action presented a hierarchical structure rather than a mere juxtaposition, SLI patients whose core deficit has been shown to affect among other complex hierarchical sentences and, even more specifically, relative clause structures [ 24 – 27 ] may present a parallel deficit in performing a structured motor action. Such evidence would support the hypothesis that motor control and syntax could share analog mechanisms, possibly grounded in common neural structures. Both groups of children were asked to displace one of two identically looking opaque bottles with a significant weight difference (50g vs. 500g). The bottle was placed at a fixed distance from the participants’ hand, under two weight-knowledge conditions: one in which the weight was unknown prior to movement execution (Unknown condition) and one in which weight was known in advance (Known condition). Participants were first familiarized with the two object weights to ensure they had acquired sensorimotor knowledge of each before kinematic acquisition. In the unknown condition, the bottles were presented with a random alternation in weight unbeknownst to the participants, so that they did not get information about the object weight until object contact in the Move sub-phase. In the known condition, in contrast, participants were provided with the relevant information about the object weight before movement execution, and trials with a specified weight were presented consecutively. TD’s behavior enabled us to uncover the structural representation of the displacing-action, while the behavior of the language impaired population allowed us to trace potential parallels between motor and linguistic impairment.

The distinction between the two structures depicted in Figure 3 rests on modulations of the effect of physical object weight as a function of prior weight-knowledge. Our analysis therefore focused on interactions between the factors Weight and Knowledge in each of the two sub-phases of the displacing-action. Whenever this interaction was significant, planned comparisons between heavy and light objects were performed. Additional statistics are given in Table S1 in File S1 .

TD children (n=7, 4 males, mean age 10 years and 6 months). Figure 4 in the left panel plots peak latencies for the analyzed kinematic parameters ( Figure S1 ). The critical interaction between Weight x Knowledge was observed for 4 parameters in the Reach- and 3 parameters in the Move sub-phases. Additionally the interaction between Weight x Knowledge was found on the whole action time (the time elapsed from the beginning of the Reach sub-phase to the very end of the Move sub-phase when the hand left the bottle). Planned comparison between heavy and light objects in the Known and Unknown conditions revealed that:

Horizontal line with (*) indicates significant planned comparison between heavy and light objects. Vertical line with (*) indicates significant main effects of Knowledge (all p<= .05).

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0072677.g004

in the Unknown condition , when the weight was unknown prior to object contact, its effects were absent from the Reach sub-phase, and present only in the Move sub-phase. In this Move sub-phase, we found that heavy objects gave rise to delayed wrist acceleration peaks (F 1,6 =27.09; p=.002), velocity peaks (F 1,6 =27.64; p=.001), and deceleration peaks (F 1,6 =11.40; p=.01) as compared to light objects ( Figure 4 ). The amplitude of the acceleration peak and of the velocity peak were also smaller when displacing the heavy compared to the light objects, however, the interaction between Weight x Knowledge remained marginally significant (Table S1 in File S1 ). In sum, displacing the heavy object as opposed to the light one had a cost (delayed and decreased peaks) that translated in an overall longer whole action time (F 1,6 =6.68; p=.041).

In contrast, in the Known condition , when the object-weight was known in advance, the kinematic parameters adapted to the weight already in the Reach sub-phase. Reaching for the heavy objects yielded anticipated wrist acceleration peaks and maximum grip aperture (latency of first acceleration peak F 1,6 =12.24; p=.01; latency of second acceleration peak F 1,6 =7.89; p=.03; latency of maximum grip aperture F 1,6 =23.72; p=.003). Even more noticeably, weight effects failed to be evident in the Move sub-phase ( Figure 4 ); the light and heavy objects gave rise to equivalent profiles for the relevant kinematic parameters, even though direct contact with the object occurred only in this second sub-phase. Characteristically, in the Known condition, TD children exhibited a comparable whole action time for the two object weights, as if the cost of displacing a heavier object had been counterbalanced during the Reach sub-phase by an anticipation of its kinematics consequences. Note that the object weight effects in the Move sub-phase of the Unknown condition were the inverse of the object weight effects observed in the Reach sub-phase of the Known condition. That is, heavy objects gave rise to later and smaller peaks in the Move sub-phase of the Unknown condition, while expected heavy objects gave rise to earlier peaks in the Reach sub-phase of the Known condition. These anticipated peaks are readily understandable as a motor strategy to compensate the added cost of moving the heavy object on the whole action time, which was observed in the Unknown condition.

SLI children (n=7, 4 males, mean age 11 years, p = ns with respect to TD children age). None of the measured motor parameters (latencies or amplitudes) showed an interaction between Weight x Knowledge ( Figure 4 right panel; Table S1 in File S1 ).

In the Unknown and Known conditions , object weight effects were strictly confined to the Move sub-phase (that is after direct contact with the bottle had occurred). Moving the heavy object as compared to the lighter one resulted in later and smaller peaks (main effect of Weight on latencies of acceleration F 1,6 =29.93; p=.002, velocity F 1,6 =31.60; p=.001, and deceleration peaks F 1,6 =14.73; p=.009; main effect of Weight on amplitudes of acceleration F 1,6 =14.48; p=.009 and velocity F 1,6 =16.84; p=.006). The cost of object weight in the Move sub-phases was such that it impacted the whole action time in both the Unknown and known conditions (main effect of Weight on whole action time F 1,6 =42.92; p=.001).

Additionally in the Known condition , a symmetric main effect of Knowledge was observed in both the Reach and the Move sub-phases, consisting in shorter latencies (for both light and heavy objects alike) when object weight was known in advance by SLI children (In the Reach sub-phase: Time to second acceleration F 1,6 =10.39; p=.018, velocity F 1,6 =10.88; p=.016 and deceleration peaks F 1,6 =9.81; p=.02; In the Move sub-phase: Time to acceleration F 1,6 =5.88; p=.051, velocity F 1,6 =10.38; p=.016, and deceleration peaks F 1,6 =13.17; p=.011). Finally, the whole action time was overall shorter in the Known condition than in the Unknown condition (Main effect of Knowledge on whole action time F 1,6 =8.37; p=.028). These kinematic effects (i.e shorter latencies and whole action time in the Known condition) crucially testify that SLI children did not simply ignore weight information. In the Known condition, they clearly integrated the weight information of the object, but for them this information affected both subcomponents symmetrically. That is, knowing that the object was heavy/light did not translate into knowing how to shift the weight effects to the Reach component to adapt kinematic parameters appropriately.

Importantly, our results for the Unknown condition also provide evidence that SLI children did not otherwise show any gross motor impairment nor specific problem in dealing with object weight; when the object weight was unknown, SLI performance did not differ from those of TD children. Accordingly, an omnibus non parametric MANOVA performed with Group (TD, SLI) as a between-subject factor and Weight (heavy, light) and Knowledge (known, unknown) as within-subject factors revealed no main effect of Group (F=11.87; p = ns), but a significant three way interaction (F=38.49; p=.018). A non parametric MANOVA performed for each group separately, further confirmed that the within-subject factors Weight and Knowledge interacted in TD children movements (F=45.73; p=.01) but not in SLI children movements (F=11.32; p = ns).

Specificity of the syntactic motor deficit

To ascertain the specificity of SLI motor deficit we examined the performance of a group of Fragile X Syndrome (FXS) patients on the same motor task. FXS is the most common cause of inherited intellectual disabilities and the most common single gene cause of autism (90% of FXS patients present autistic-like behavior [ 28 ]). FXS offer an appropriate control for potential confounding factors coming from reduced cognitive resources or autistic traits as the border between SLI and autistic disorder is blurred [ 29 ]. Most importantly language acquisition in FXS is delayedm with first words appearing at 26,4 months instead of 11 for TD and 23 for SLI [ 30 , 31 ], however, the profile of FXS’ linguistic impairment differs from that of SLI subjects, as it centrally concerns speech rate, articulation, and pragmatic aspects of language. Crucially, the syntactic level of FXS subjects is thought to be delayed rather than deviant [ 30 , 32 , 33 ], and complex structures and distant dependencies have been observed to be spared [ 34 ]. We therefore asked FXS patients and age-matched healthy adults to perform the very same structured motor tasks.

FXS adults (n=7, mean age 25 years). For FXS adults, like for TD children, the critical interaction between Weight x Knowledge was observed for peak latencies of several parameters in the Reach- and Move sub-phases and for the whole action time ( Figure 5 left panel; Table S2 in File S1 ). Planned comparison between heavy and light objects in the Known and Unknown conditions revealed that:

Same conventions as in Figure 4.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0072677.g005

in the Unknown condition when the object weight was unknown prior to contact, effects of weight were absent from the Reach sub-phase and present in the Move sub-phase only (latencies of acceleration F 1,6 =74.75; p<.001, velocity F 1,6 =37.95; p<.001, and deceleration peaks F 1,6 =28.73; p=.001) affecting nevertheless the whole action time (F 1,6 =14.21; p=.009). By contrast, in the Known condition the kinematic parameters adapted to weight in the Reach sub-phase (latency of deceleration peak F 1,6 =7.42; p=.03; latency of maximum grip aperture F 1,6 =17.5; p=.006) enabling the whole action time to be immune to the effects of object weight.

Healthy Adults (n=7, mean age 25,4 years, p = ns with respect to FXS age). . For healthy adults effects of object weight were generally small as further witnessed by the absence of weight effects on whole action time. Yet, like for FXS adults and TD children, the critical interaction between Weight x Knowledge was observed on peak latencies and amplitudes ( Figure 5 right panel; Table S2 in File S1 ). Planned comparison between heavy and light objects in the Known and Unknown conditions revealed that:

in the Unknown condition , the effects of weight were absent from the Reach sub-phase and present in the Move sub-phase (planned comparison between heavy and light objects: acceleration peak latency F 1,6 =8.24; p=.02 and amplitude F 1,6 =18.54; p=.005). In contrast, in the Known condition when the object weight was known in advance, these effects were observed in the Reach sub-phase (planned comparison between heavy and light objects: deceleration peak latency F 1,6 =6.88; p=.039) but no longer in the Move sub-phase.

An Omnibus non parametric MANOVA with [Group (FXS, HA) as a between-subject factor and Weight (heavy, light) and Knowledge (known, unknown) as within-subject factors] revealed 1) a main effect of the factor Group (F=72.06; p=.004), FXS patients showing reduced amplitudes and delayed latencies with respect to healthy individuals ( Figure 5 , Table S2 in File S1 ); 2) an interaction between Group x Weight x Knowledge (F=33.40; p=.03). The non parametric MANOVA performed for each group separately confirmed that the within factors Weight and Knowledge interacted in FXS (F=44.44; p=.015), a similar result was found in healthy individuals though it did not reach significance (F=27.84; p=.078).

In sum, while movement kinematic parameters of SLI and TD children occurred in the same latency range and exhibited comparable amplitudes, SLI children differed from their control group in the ability to modulate kinematic parameters as a function of action structure. FXS patients, in contrast, differed from their control group with respect to their general movement amplitudes and latencies, but did not display deficits in their ability to modulate kinematic parameters as a function of action structure.

Crossing disciplinary boundaries, we explored whether the structure of simple actions could manifest a hierarchical embedding revealed by distant dependencies. We provided experimental evidence that the two sub-phases of a displacing action are asymmetrically structured in ways that owes more to embedding than to mere temporal juxtaposition. By manipulating when participants access object weight information, we devised a way to build a motor distant dependency in order to probe the nature of the structural relation that the two sub-phases of a displacing action entertain. When the weight of a displaced object is unknown, accessibility to weight information is governed by object contact. Consequently, weight can have an impact on kinematics only in the second component of the displace action, i.e. our Move sub-phase, and this, independently of how the two sub-phases are structured (Fig. 3AB). However, when weight information is available prior to object contact, so that participants are able to form a motor representation of the object weight prior to the onset of movement, only an embedded structure predicts that the impact of object weight on kinematics could asymmetrically transfer to the topmost action sub-phase, i.e. our Reach sub-phase, and leave the subordinate sub-phase almost unaffected. This transfer of the weight impact to the kinematic parameters of the Reach sub-phase, attests of a link between the two subcomponents that goes beyond mere juxtaposition.

As predicted, in the unknown weight condition, our results show that for all groups of participants alike, the object weight affected the kinematic parameters of the Move sub-phase, that is only after object contact: thus, the object weight information and the object weight kinematic impact were entirely encapsulated within the Move sub-phase. In contrast, when object weight was known in advance, our kinematic results crucially revealed that for TD children, HA and FXS patients, the kinematic impact of object weight shifted to the Reach sub-phase and was no longer encapsulated in the Move sub-phase. More strikingly and more significantly, this weight effect transfer was further accompanied by an almost complete disappearance of the weight effects from the Move sub-phase, despite the fact this sub-component is where direct contact with the objet and the weight somatosensory feedback takes place. It is thus as if the kinematic impact of the object weight had been entirely relocated from the Move sub-phase to the Reach sub-phase, leaving only a silent motor copy for feedback checking. We argue that only an embedding structure, as illustrated in Figure 3D , accurately models this observed pattern because, although an anticipated weight effect on the first sub-component could also be expected in a juxtaposed structure, this symmetric structure neither predicts nor explains the here observed weight effect disappearance from the second sub-component. Juxtaposed components are understood to be such, because they do not entertain relations beyond that of sequential, temporal or spatial, ordering. Given that the disappearance of kinematic weight effects from the Move sub-phase is a consequence of their anticipated impact on the Reach sub-phase, this weight effect transfer clearly suggests that the two components entertain relations that go beyond mere sequential ordering.

The relation between the point of object weight integration in the movement kinematic of the Reach sub-component and the point of object contact in the Move sub-component (where the weight is felt) presents a strong analogy to a syntactic operation of relative clause displacement in linguistic syntax. When known, the weight of an object is integrated into motor programming and execution prior to direct sensory contact with the object. Likewise, in a relative clause, a nominal phrase is pronounced, i.e. integrated in the speech computation before the position in which it is semantically interpreted. Furthermore, in motor embedding, the early integration of weight effects in the dominating Reach sub-component licenses a ‘silent’ motor copy of object weight in the Move sub-phase, quite analogous to the ‘silent’ copy of a displaced nominal phrase that linguistic theory posits after noun-phrase displacement [ 13 ]. That is, although the object weight is accessed via somatosensation after object contact, it no longer impacts the kinematic parameter at that point because weight effects were integrated earlier at a higher level of the action structure. Finally, recall that characteristically in language, ‘distant dependencies’ have been observed to lead acceptable sentences only across clauses that are embedded (This is the heavy bottle [John realized (which) Mary knows [he grasped]]), but not across clauses that are coordinated or juxtaposed (* ‘This is the heavy bottle (which) John smiled and Mary stretched and he grasped’). This linguistic hierarchical constraint dubbed “The Coordinate Structure Constraint” [ 14 ] seems here to be echoed in the motor system.

To further investigate whether the uncovered motor syntactic mechanisms at play in our displacing action displayed some fundamental aspects typical of linguistic syntax, we tested the movement structure of children with SLI. SLI children suffer from a disorder known to disrupt the development of a full-blown linguistic syntax. In particular, as it has been repeatedly observed, children with SLI commonly fail to produce and understand complex embedding and distant dependencies, particularly in relative clauses [24,25,35,36 but see 37 for an alternative statistical learning deficit hypothesis]. Furthermore, when prompted to do so, they have been observed to produce juxtaposition of matrix clauses instead. The sentence “I did it with my teacher, he’s called Doris” (the English rendering of a sentence produced by a French SLI patient, taken from 25) is a characteristic example of such failed attempts for the embedded relative clause: I did it with my teacher who is called Doris. In SLI, this deficient relative clause rendering has been taken to evidence a failure in the ability to construct appropriately embedded syntactic structures [ 24 , 25 , 35 , 36 ]. Though future studies are needed to establish intra-subjects correlation between motor and linguistic deficits, our findings on the distinctions between TD and SLI in the motor domain highlight an intriguingly striking parallel with the typical linguistic syntactic deficits SLI children have been observed to exhibit. With weight knowledge available prior to movement onset, SLI children were the only group that failed to transfer the motor computation of kinematic object weight adjustment from the Move to the Reach sub-phase. That is, despite prior weight knowledge, kinematic adjustments to weight for SLI children continued to take place only after object contact, i.e. still in the Move sub-phase. Thus, no displacement of weight effects was observed for this group. Yet, weight information was not ignored: As witnessed by the overall shortening of the latencies in the known condition both in the Reach and in the Move sub-phase alike, SLI patients benefited from weight knowledge. However, while for TD children, prior weight knowledge caused the appearance of an asymmetric shift in how weight effects impacted the two sub-components of our structured displacing action, for SLI children in contrast, advanced weight knowledge affected the two subcomponents symmetrically. This is as if the structure of the SLI children displacing sub-phases were juxtaposed, rather than embedded, provoking a distributed effect of advanced weight knowledge as if the expected normal execution of a motor distant dependency was disrupted. This, we suggest, echoes the Coordinate Structure Constraint at play in language syntax.

The rather striking analogy here observed for SLI patients between specific known language difficulties with relative clauses and hitherto unnoticed fine-grained structural motor abnormalities, highlights the possibility of common syntactic mechanisms in language and motor domain with renewed vigor.

Within the framework of the mirror system, an analogous motor impairment has been reported for autistic children by Cattaneo and colleagues ([ 38 ], see also 39 ). The study investigated the ability of autistic children to understand the motor intentions of others. In their study the authors compared the electro-myographic activity of the mouth opening muscle of TD with that of high functioning autistic children. These subjects were observing and executing two action chains; 1) reaching and bringing to the mouth a piece of food, 2) reaching and putting in a container a piece of paper. Characteristically, in the bringing to the mouth action, for both observation and execution, TD children exhibited an anticipatory activity of the mouth-opening muscle that started during the reaching sub-phase until the end of the movement. In contrast, autistic children failed to exhibit a comparable anticipatory muscle activity. Mouth muscle activation was confined to the bringing phase. Although our results also report an analogous failure in SLI children to kinematically anticipate weight effects, the putative resemblance between the two types of motor execution failure may only be superficial. In Cattaneo et al.’s study the task involved the anticipation of the goal of an action and the impact of knowing this goal on motor parameters. In contrast, our task investigated how knowing the weight of an object allows participants to transfer and invert the effects of object weight from the Move to the Reach sub-phase. This transfer is independent of the goal (i.e. the displacement of the object), which in our case remains the same. Hence, Cattaneo and colleagues observed a delay of the onset of the mouth opening muscles activity in autistic population, compared to their controls. In our case, however, the qualitative shift of the way motor parameters adapt to weight knowledge from the “Move-“ to the “Reach-“ phase, which characterizes the performance of our control groups, is never seen in the population of SLI children. Most importantly, FXS patients, who suffer from language deficits observed to spare syntactic embedding and distant dependencies [ 34 ], displayed a preserved ability to adjust their motor parameters as a function of action structure requirements. Despite a profound alteration of their motor performance, as witnessed by the overall delay in their movement parameters and the relative sluggishness of their motor performance, FXS patients produced what we could call a structurally correct motor distant dependency.

To date, only few studies have empirically probed the nature of motor syntax [see, for a review, 7]. Hoen and colleagues showed that agrammatic patients trained with non-linguistic sequences could improve their performance with relative clause comprehension [ 40 ]. In the motor domain, Fazio and coworkers [ 41 ] documented the inability of agrammatic brain-damaged patients to correctly reorder frames taken from a video-clip showing a human action, while their ability to reorder physical events was preserved. Using repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (rTMS) in a paradigm similar to the one used by Fazio et colleagues, Clerget and colleagues [ 42 ] suggested that Broca’s area played a role in understanding complex transitive actions. In an Electro-Encephalogram study [ 43 ], healthy participants presented with videos containing expectancy violations of common real-world actions (i.e. an electric iron used in an ongoing bread cutting action) displayed two event related potentials (ERP), one negative peaking around 400ms and one positive peaking around 600ms and centered over the parietal lobes. These ERPs recall respectively the N400 elicited by semantic violation and the syntactic positive shift (the P600) argued to index syntactic integration difficulties [ 44 , 45 ] Kaan and Swaab 2003; Osterhout et al. 1994). While all these studies support the existence of syntactic mechanisms at work in complex action understanding, the present study critically adds to our knowledge by indicating that the motor production system could share rather specific structural representations and processes with language as well as, possibly, some of its constraints, namely, perhaps constraints akin to the linguistic Coordinate Structure constraint.

In conclusion, supporting Jackendoff’s theoretical conjecture, we provide experimental evidence for a motor structure that is in many ways analogous to the linguistically characterized distant dependency at hand in relative clauses. Our study is also the first to make use of a task simple enough to be performed by young patients, but whose structure is sufficiently complex to probe fine motor skills. Our task uses a fixed set of material (objects properties and movement goals) and manipulates only one feature of the target action, namely prior knowledge of object weight. Moreover, this task enables a direct access to the structural properties of simple actions without the potential confounds of semantic or cultural factors. Our findings, that a developmental linguistic deficit affecting (among other) the ability to construct complex embeddings and dependencies, is mirrored by a structural deficit in building the motor analogue of a distant dependency strongly restate the principled motivation for investigating common motor and linguistic structural mechanisms, and the existence of a possible motor precursor for language syntax.

Ethics Statement

All participants were naïve as to the purpose of the study and all participants as well as their parents or guardians (for children), gave a written informed consent to participate to the study, which was approved by the local ethics committee (CPP Sud Est II), and were tested in observance of the Declaration of Helsinki.

Participants

SLI children were diagnosed by a trained multidisciplinary team of specialists working at the national reference center for learning and communications disorders of the Lyon hospitals. IQ evaluation revealed a difference of at least 20 points between IQv and IQp (mean score 91.6 and 116.5, respectively), which represents more than 1.5 standard deviations. Patients were between 9 years and 13 years and 4 months, mean age was 11 years. All patients, except one, were right handed. Four patients were diagnosed with a dysphasia affecting the phonological and syntactic aspects of their language, and three patients were diagnosed with a dysphasia affecting the lexical and syntactic aspects. All patients have been undergoing intensive speech reeducation for several years (six years and a half on average). At the time of testing, children had at least partially recovered from phonological and lexical deficits, but remained dramatically impaired at the syntactic level, expressing themselves using simple sentences only. Language production rather than comprehension was affected: For 6 out of the 7 patients syntactic comprehension as assessed with the ECOSSE test (Evaluation de la Compréhension Syntaxico-Sémantique, P. Lecocq, 1996) met the expected age-dependent level of performance. On the production side, 4 out of 7 patients exhibited a delay of, on average, 36.3 months with respect to their chronological age (for syntax and morpho-syntax; TGC-R: Test of Grammatical Closure, Deltour, 1992, 2002). In the remaining 3 patients, the developmental age of syntactic abilities was not quantifiable: Despite a chronological age of 9 years and 1 month, 9 and 13 years, no complex sentences were produced, and the present tense was the only one used.

FXS patients were recruited through the Rare Causes of Intellectual Disability National Center of the Lyon hospitals. They were between 20 and 31 years-old. All but one were right-handed. FXS was confirmed by more than 200 CGG repeats or a positive cytogenetic test and a family history of FXS. Mental age varied from 4,5 to 7,5 years as evaluated with nonverbal reasoning test (Raven’s Colored Progressive Matrices). Language comprehension, assessed with the ECOSSE test, revealed a developmental age of 5 years and 5 months. On the production side the mean length of utterance was 5,39 words and the mean age of grammatical development was 4,92 as evaluated with the TGC-R.

Typically developing children and healthy adults (all right-handed) were recruited out of patient’s relatives.

Stimuli and procedure

Two visually identical white opaque bottles (250ml containers) were used as stimuli, one weighting 50g (termed hereafter ‘light’) and one weighting 500g (termed hereafter ‘heavy’). Prior to starting the experiment, participants were asked to manually familiarize themselves with the bottle and the experimenter reinforced their perception by saying “You feel how this bottle is heavy/light, now feel this one; isn’t it much lighter/heavier?”.

Participants were required to keep their hand, held in a pinch grip position, on a fixed starting point on a table along their sagittal axis. Upon hearing a go-signal they were instructed to reach and grasp for the bottle (placed 20cm in front of the starting point) and to displace it to a pre-defined position 15cm to the right of the initial position. Once the bottle was displaced to its final position, participants replaced his/her hand back on the starting point and waited for the next go-signal. Participants were instructed to grasp the bottle on its cap to ensure a uniformly sized grasp surface. Participants performed a total of 40 trials. In the first 20 trials, relevant information about object weight (i.e., light vs. heavy) was provided prior to movement onset and participants perform a block of 10 successive trials with the heavy object, and a block of 10 successive trials with the light object, or vice versa. In the remaining 20 trials, object weight was unknown and heavy and light trials were proposed in a pseudo random order. To ensure that participants were oblivious of object weight, experimenter’s manipulation of the bottles was concealed.

Movement recordings and data processing (analysis)

Movement kinematics were recorded via an Optotrak 3020 system (Northern Digital Inc). One active infrared marker (sampling rate set at 300Hz) was placed on the wrist, two respectively on the index and thumb fingers, and two on the bottles. A second-order Butterworth dual pass filter (cutoff frequency, 10Hz) was used for raw data processing. Individual movements were then visualized and analyzed using Optodisp software (Optodisp copyright UCBL-CNRS, Marc Thevenet et Yves Paulignan, 2001). For each Reach sub-phase latency and amplitude of the first and second acceleration peaks, velocity peaks, deceleration peaks and grip aperture were measured. For the Move sub-phase latency and amplitude of the highest acceleration peaks, velocity peaks, and deceleration peaks were measured ( Figure S1 ). The whole action time, as defined as the time elapsed between the beginning of the movement when participants left the starting point and movement end when participants had displaced the bottle in its final position.

To reduce noise, the first two movements of each of the four experimental conditions were discarded from subsequent analysis. For each participant, mean values for the different kinematic parameter were computed separately for each condition. Data normality and homoscedasticity were controlled with Shapiro-Wilk and Levene tests, respectively. Mean values for each participant were entered into a repeated measures ANOVA with Weight (light, heavy) and Knowledge (known, unknown) as within-subject factors. To further test the combined effect of all measured parameters of the movement a multivariate approach was applied. Since the requirement of a parametric MANOVA, i.e., to have more observations than parameters, is not fulfilled in our case, a resampling-based non parametric MANOVA with Fisher combination of the p-values was used [ 46 , 47 ].

Supporting Information

Wrist velocity and acceleration profile for the Displace action task.

Here are represented the wrist velocity (left panel) and acceleration profile (right panel) pertaining to an individual representative movement and the collected parameters. The Reach sub-phase (green ground) is characteristically composed of two acceleration peaks followed by a velocity peak (red marks) and a deceleration peak (green mark); the ensuing Move Object phase (orange ground) is in turn characterized by an acceleration peak, a velocity peak (red marks) and a deceleration peak (green mark). Please note that more than one deceleration peak may occur for each movement sub-phase (or acceleration for the second sub-phase); in those cases, the lowest deceleration or on the contrary the highest acceleration peak was collected for subsequent analyses.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0072677.s001

Tables S1 & S2.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0072677.s002

Acknowledgments

We wish to thank all the participants and their families, L. Finos for his support with statistical analyses and A. Brun for her help during data acquisitions.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: ACR AC TAN YP VdP PF VD. Performed the experiments: ACR AC PF. Analyzed the data: ACR VD. Wrote the manuscript: ACR AC TAN YP VdP PF VD.

• View Article
• Google Scholar
• 3. Fadiga L, Craighero L, Roy AC (2006) In: Y. GrodzinskyK. Amunts, Broca’s region. Oxford University press, New York. pp. 137-152.
• 4. Grodzinsky Y, Amunts K, editors (2006) Broca’s region. Oxford University press, New York.
• 10. Knott A (2012) Sensorimotor cognition and natural language syntax. Cambridge: MIT Press. pp. 416.
• 11. Jackendoff R (2007) Language, Consciousness, Culture: Essays on Mental Structure. Cambridge: MIT Press. pp. 416.
• 13. Chomsky N (1977) In: P. CulicoverT. WasowA. Akmajian. Formal Syntax. New York: Academic Press. pp. 71–132.
• 14. Ross JR (1967) Constraints on variables in syntax. Doctoral dissertation MIT.
• 23. Chomsky N (1982) Lectures on Government and Binding: The Pisa Lectures. Dordrecht, Holland: Foris Publications.
• 25. Hamann C, Tuller L, Monjauze HD (2007) (Un)successful Subordination in French-speaking Children andAdolescents with SLI. Proc 31st Ann BUCLD 286-298.
• 26. Rice ML, Hoffman L, Wexler K (2009) Judgments of omitted BE and DO in questions as extended finiteness clinical markers of SLI to fifteen years: A study of growth and asymptote. J Speech Lang Hear Res, 52: 1417-1433 doi:10.1044/1092-4388(2009/08-0171). PubMed: 19786705.
• 31. Leonard LB (1998) Children with specific language impairment. Cambridge MIT Press.
• 33. Finestack LH, Abbeduto L (2010) Expressive Language Profiles of Verbally Expressive Adolescents and Young Adults With Down Syndrome or Fragile X Syndrome. J Speech Lang Hear Res 53: 1334-1348 doi:10.1044/1092-4388(2010/09-0125). PubMed: 20643789.
• 47. Pesarin F (2001) Multivariate Permutation Tests with Applications in Biostatistics. Wiley, New York.

Syntax, the brain, and linguistic theory: a critical reassessment

Perspective 01 November 2023 Three conceptual clarifications about syntax and the brain Cas W. Coopmans  and  Emiliano Zaccarella 225 views 0 citations

Hypothesis and Theory 15 September 2023 A reconceptualization of sentence production in post-stroke agrammatic aphasia: the Synergistic Processing Bottleneck model Yasmeen Faroqi-Shah 1,135 views 0 citations

Original Research 14 August 2023 Defying syntactic preservation in Alzheimer's disease: what type of impairment predicts syntactic change in dementia (if it does) and why? Olga Ivanova ,  2 more  and  Juan José G. Meilán 861 views 1 citations

Opinion 09 August 2023 Lexico-semantics obscures lexical syntax William Matchin 1,359 views 2 citations

Original Research 09 June 2023 Dissociating the processing of empty categories in raising and control sentences: a self-paced reading study in Japanese Koki Yamaguchi  and  Shinri Ohta 1,306 views 0 citations

Review 25 May 2023 The neurofunctional network of syntactic processing: cognitive systematicity and representational specializations of objects, actions, and events Brennan Gonering  and  David P. Corina 929 views 1 citations

Loading... Perspective 20 April 2023 False perspectives on human language: Why statistics needs linguistics Matteo Greco ,  3 more  and  Andrea Moro 2,583 views 3 citations

Review 10 March 2023 How (not) to look for meaning composition in the brain: A reassessment of current experimental paradigms Lia Călinescu ,  1 more  and  Giosuè Baggio 1,867 views 2 citations

Hypothesis and Theory 21 February 2023 Correlated attributes: Toward a labeling algorithm of complementary categorial features Juan Uriagereka 1,070 views 0 citations

Loading... Hypothesis and Theory 13 February 2023 Moving away from lexicalism in psycho- and neuro-linguistics Alexandra Krauska  and  Ellen Lau 4,468 views 7 citations

• Centre for Linguistic Research
• All About Linguistics- Home
• About this website
• Branches of Linguistics

Research in Syntax

Find out more about how linguists research Syntax through looking at some example research.

Dixon (1999)

Syntax – the pillar of human language.

What separates us from the animals? Why have humans been able to conquer the planet whereas no other animal hasn’t? The answer is of course language! “ But hold on! ” I hear you say, “ We’re not the only animals with language, whales sing to each other, dogs bark, hyenas laugh, and they all appear to understand one another. ” That is true, but these methods of communication are heavily simplified. An animal call may mean ‘ There is food  here‘ or  ‘ Danger !’ but what they lack is the ability to put these sounds together to form complicated meanings.

Even if animals were able to do this, we would encounter another problem as to how to interpret these new complicated meanings. What would the sounds for ‘ food here ‘ and ‘ danger ‘ together mean? Dangerous food? Food is here but there is also a leopard in the bushes? This is where syntax comes in.

Syntax essentially categorises words, fills in the gaps and makes a group of words make sense. Every human in the world uses the same syntactic structure to communicate with other humans, the only difference is the sounds that are produced. This isn’t to be confused with the order of where words appear such as Subject-Verb-Object compared to Subject-Object-Verb in Japanese for example, as all languages contain nouns, verbs, prepositions, inflections etc. no matter where they come in the sentence, they are still present. So, there is clearly an underlying system that all humans can understand and acquire.

So where is this steppingstone between one sound calls and a complex sentence? How did humans get here? Bickerton refers to the case of Genie, a girl who had had no communication with anyone due to her father imprisoning her from the age of 18 months until she was found years later at the age of 13. She had missed the critical age of of between 18 months and 3 years where she children usually acquire an adult language (see language acquisition). When she was found she didn’t know how to speak English at all. Even after a long time of treatment from speech therapists and linguistic experts, she only managed to gain a very simple version of English. Her sentence’s consisted of noun and verb or adjective and noun, occasional strung together and even more rarely with adverbs and certain prepositions.

Here’s an example:

G: Genie have yellow material at school. M: What are you using it for? G: Paint. Paint picture. Take home. Ask teacher yellow material. Blue paint. Yellow green paint. Genie have blue material. Teacher said no. Genie use material paint. I want use material at school.

He had expected her to either fully learn human language as someone might learn a 2nd language, or not be able to learn one at all. Bickerton found it strange that the girl had developed a kind of proto, or base language. This form of speaking is actually more common than you might think. If you’ve ever been on holiday to a country whose language you can’t speak, you may have found yourself trying to talk like this to get your point across.  Protolanguage  is the most basic form of language, where the mere sounds of words begin to form meanings when combined together.

There is still the issue of how language moved from the  protolanguage  structure to the syntactical structure. The answer lies in explicitly, or being as clear as possible. If a child were to say to you ‘no socks!’ how would you interpret it? That the child isn’t wearing socks? They do not own any socks? They don’t want to wear socks? They don’t want you to wear socks? There are too many ways for the sentence to be interpreted. By adding new phrases to the sentence, the meaning becomes narrowed down. The actual meaning in this instance is ‘I don’t want to wear socks’. If we are to break it down, you can see it is rather difficult to not understand. The noun phrase I refers to the speaker, don’t is a combination of the verb to do and a negative, want to tie to don’t to form the negative of want, wear shows what not/to do with the object, and finally socks the object of the sentence. Everything from don’t to wear tells us something about the socks in relation to the child. A lot better and surprisingly, easier to understand than simply ‘no socks!’!

• Adapted from: Bickerton D., (1990) Language and Species. The University of Chicago Press.

One of the most interesting aspects of the English language is the ability to change the order of words and still end up with the same meaning such as ‘John bought a book’ and ‘A book was bought by John’. You may recognise these as the active and the passive forms of a sentence, the passive sentence being the one where the object is given more emphasis than the subject as opposed to the standard subject-verb-object. But if we can easily shift the object and subject around, how do we recognise which one is which in any given sentence?

The key actually lies with the verb. If we want to say that a hearty chuckle was let out by John at someone called Mary (in far less words of course!) we might say ‘John laughed at Mary’. Here,  laughed  acts as a bridge between Mary and John indicating that what comes before the verb acts on what comes after the verb. This is called a  transitive verb . If we were to swap the subject and verb however, we come up with ‘at Mary laughed John’ we have a sentence which kind of makes sense but doesn’t seem to sit right on the tongue.

Another form of verb is the  intransitive verb  which does not need an object to function so we can say things like ‘John laughed’. Intransitive verbs are used extensively in the passive tense so we can use an intransitive from of the verb laughed to move around the subject and object, so we end up with ‘Mary was laughed at by John’.

So, there you have it, a very brief look at how subject and object can be defined and the links they have to the different types of verbs.

• Adapted from: R.M.W. Dixon (1989) Subject and Object in Universal Grammar Clarendon Paperbacks

Where to next?

Why not check out  how syntax is studied  to take a closer look at what other researchers are doing.

Bruening (2013)

We will now talk you through a journal article written by Benjamin Bruening. We understand that this article is rather overwhelming so we will try and summarise it for you! If there are any words that you don’t understand please refer to the glossary at the bottom of the page.

Syntax By Phrases in Passives and Nominals March 2013 Volume 16, Issue 1 Pages 1-41 Benjamin Bruening

“ By  Phrases in Passives and Nominals” is a recent article related to syntax. It’s about  by-phrases  (exactly what they sound like; phrases beginning with by), and how they assign  theta roles  in sentences.

Theta roles  simply describe what a word does in a sentence. There are many different theta roles; for example  agent ,  goal  and  theme . If a word has been assigned the role of  agent , then it is likely to be the  subject  of the sentence and is performing the action described.

For example, in the sentence:

My mother-in-law received the present

Mother-in-law  has the  agent  role, which has been assigned to it by the verb.

Passive sentences , such as this one, do not always have agent roles:

The present was received

Here, the agent is not specified, but if we want to say who received the present while keeping the sentence in the passive, we can add a by-phrase like this:

The present was received by my mother-in-law

Here the by-phrase is assigning the agent role to mother-in-law.

Theta roles can be a bit overwhelming, and we understand that! So don’t worry! If you want to know more about theta roles, look  here .

There is a long-standing claim that by-phrases can assign certain theta roles in  passive sentences  that they cannot in other types of sentences, such as  nominalisations . In a nominalisation, a word that is not usually a  noun  is used as a  noun , for example:

The receipt of the present (*by my mother-in-law)

Here, the  verb   receive  has been nominalised. 

Bruening disagrees with the idea that by-phrases in passives behave differently to by-phrases in nominals. So, to start, he uses some examples to show how they do appear to behave differently.

“ The present was received by my mother-in-law ” and “ The receipt of the present (*by my mother-in-law) ” are two of these examples. In the first sentence, which is a passive, the agent role is assigned by the word “by”. But when we try to use the by-phrase in the same way in the second sentence, a nominal, the result is ungrammatical.

Another pair of examples:

Harry is feared by John *The fear of Harry by John

These show the same pattern – the by-phrase is fine in the passive but becomes ungrammatical in the nominal. (A * before a phrase or sentence means that is is ungrammatical.)

However, in Bruening’s judgement “The receipt of the present by my mother-in-law” is perfectly acceptable, so he argues that in some nominals, by-phrases are allowed. Here are some examples he uses to back up his argument:

…  after the date of receipt of the letter by the GDS The start date must be at least ten days after the receipt of the form by Gift Processing.

These examples were found using Google searches and show by-phrases in nominals which are grammatical. However, there are still some nominals which don’t allow by-phrases, such as “ *The fear of Harry by John ” from the previous example. So, we need to look at the differences between the nominals which do allow by-phrases and those that don’t, to find out why this is!

Bruening also argues that a rule explaining why only certain nominals allow by-phrases should not be a rule just about by-phrases, because two other types of  adjuncts  follow the same pattern as by-phrases (so they are not allowed in the same types of nominals that by-phrases are barred from). This means that a single, general rule can cover all three of these  adjuncts .

(An  adjunct  is an optional addition to a sentence and can be omitted without making the sentence ungrammatical. For example, “by John” is an adjunct to the sentence “Harry was feared by John”. Removing it leaves “Harry was feared”, which is a grammatical sentence by itself.)

The other adjuncts which behave in the same way as by-phrases are  comitatives  and  instrumentals .

Comitatives  show accompaniment, for example:

The ushers seated 50,000 ticket holders with the security guards

Here, the meaning is that the ushers and the security guards were both seating ticket holders – so “ with the security guards ” is comitative.

Instrumentals  show what was used to do something, for example:

The enemy sank the ship with a torpedo

Here, “ with a torpedo ” is instrumental, as the torpedo was used to sink the ship.

So, what is it that makes all three types of adjunct ungrammatical in certain nominals? According to Bruening, these adjuncts need there to be an  agent role . Some examples might help you to understand:

The ship was sunk The ship sank

Can you see the difference between these two sentences? Let’s try adding a by-phrase to each of them:

The ship was sunk by a torpedo *The ship sank by a torpedo

The first sentence makes perfect sense, but the second is ungrammatical. This is because the verb in the second sentence doesn’t have an agent role, while the first does. If a by-phrase assigned agent roles by itself, we would expect to be able to add them even to verbs which wouldn’t otherwise have an agent, like “ sank ” from the second example.

Instead, Bruening suggests they fill the agent roles, rather than adding them. “ The ship sank ” doesn’t imply that something caused the ship to sink – it just sank. So, it doesn’t make sense to add a by-phrase to this sentence. In the sentence “ The ship was sunk “, however, we expect that something caused the ship to sink. A by-phrase can therefore be used to show what it was.

This article shows that by-phrases are interesting in their functions- they can be added to passives but adding them to certain nominals makes them ungrammatical. By-phrases are just one specific type of phrase, but Bruening saw something that interested him about their rules and structure and decided to investigate them further. This is part of the ever-growing and evolving research into syntax, phrases, adjuncts and sentence structure that is going on even today- there are always new things to research and discover about syntax!

If you’re interested in the ideas brought up by this article, why not look at some related areas of linguistics – such as  semantics !

Getting a bit lost in terminology? Don’t worry! We’ll guide you through it.

• Agent  – This theta role is usually given to the subject of a sentence. The agent does the action described by the verb (For example, in the sentence “Mary gave the cake to John”, Mary has the agent role as she is performing the action of giving.)
• Adjunct -A thing added to something else as a supplementary rather than an essential part Comitative – shows accompaniment
• Goal – This theta role is assigned to a word or phrase that shows where or who the action is directed towards (For example, in the sentence “Mary gave the cake to John”, John has the goal role as he is the person Mary’s action of giving is directed towards.)
• Hypothesis – A supposition or proposed explanation made on the basis of limited evidence as a starting point for further investigation.
• Instrumental  – Shows what was used to do something
• Intransitive verbs – A verb (or verb construction) that does not take an object
• Morpheme -A meaningful morphological unit of a language that cannot be further divided
• Nominalisations – The use of a verb, an adjective, or an adverb as the head of a noun phrase
• Noun -A word used to identify any of a class of people, places, or things
• Passive sentences – When the grammatical subject of the verb is the recipient (not the source) of the action denoted by the verb
• Preposition -A word governing, and usually preceding, a noun or pronoun and expressing a relation to another word or element in the clause
• Semantic Roles – The underlying relation that a constituent has with the main verb in a clause.
• Subject -A person or thing that is being discussed, described, or dealt with.
• Theme – This theta role is given to the object that undergoes the action that the agent is performing, but does not change its state (For example, in the sentence “Mary gave the cake to John”, ‘cake’ has the theme role as it is the thing that is being given.)
• Unaccusatives – An unaccusative verb is an intransitive verb (one that does not need to take a complement) that does not assign any external theta roles, and in which the subject does not appear to deliberately initiate the action of the verb. Examples include ‘fall’, ‘die’ and ‘melt’.
• Verb -A word used to describe an action, state, or occurrence, and forming the main part of the predicate of a sentence
• Voice – A sentence can either be in the active voice- “Mary baked a cake”, or the passive voice- “A cake was baked” (Notice that in the passive, you can avoid stating who performed the action- the adjunct “by Mary” is an optional add-on to the sentence.)

Sheffield is a research university with a global reputation for excellence. We're a member of the Russell Group: one of the 24 leading UK universities for research and teaching.

Study at Cambridge

About the university, research at cambridge.

• Events and open days
• Fees and finance
• Student blogs and videos
• Why Cambridge
• Qualifications directory
• How to apply
• Fees and funding
• Frequently asked questions
• International students
• Continuing education
• Executive and professional education
• Courses in education
• How the University and Colleges work
• Visiting the University
• Term dates and calendars
• Video and audio
• Find an expert
• Publications
• International Cambridge
• Public engagement
• Giving to Cambridge
• For current students
• For business
• Colleges & departments
• Libraries & facilities
• Museums & collections
• Email & phone search
• Postgraduates
• Postgraduate Study in Linguistics
• MPhils in Theoretical and Applied Linguistics
• MPhil in Theoretical and Applied Linguistics by Advanced Study

Lent Term Seminars

Topics in Syntax

• Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages and Linguistics
• Faculty Home
• About Theoretical & Applied Linguistics
• Staff in Theoretical & Applied Linguistics overview
• Staff and Research Interests
• Research overview
• Research Projects overview
• Current projects overview
• Expressing the Self: Cultural Diversity and Cognitive Universals overview
• Project Files
• Semantics and Philosophy in Europe 8
• Rethinking Being Gricean: New Challenges for Metapragmatics overview
• Research Clusters overview
• Comparative Syntax Research Area overview
• Research Projects
• Research Students
• Senior Researchers
• Computational Linguistics Research Area overview
• Members of the area
• Experimental Phonetics & Phonology Research Area overview
• EP&P Past Events
• Language Acquisition & Language Processing Research Area overview
• Research Themes
• Mechanisms of Language Change Research Area overview
• Mechanisms of Language Change research themes
• Semantics, Pragmatics & Philosophy Research Area overview
• Group Meetings 2023-2024 overview
• Previous years
• Take part in linguistic research
• Information for Undergraduates
• Prospective Students overview
• Preliminary reading
• Part I overview
• Li1: Sounds and Words
• Li2: Structures and Meanings
• Li3: Language, brains and machines
• Li4: Linguistic variation and change
• Part II overview
• Part IIB overview
• Li5: Linguistic Theory
• Part IIB Dissertation
• Section C overview
• Li6: Phonetics
• Li7: Phonological Theory
• Li8: Morphology
• Li9: Syntax
• Li10: Semantics and Pragmatics
• Li11: Historical Linguistics
• LI12: History of Ideas on Language
• Li13: History of English
• Li14: History of the French Language
• Li15: First and Second Language Acquisition
• Li16: Psychology of Language Processing and Learning
• Li17: Language Typology and Cognition
• Li18: Computational Linguistics
• Undergraduate Timetables
• Marking Criteria
• Postgraduate Study in Linguistics overview
• MPhils in Theoretical and Applied Linguistics overview
• MPhil in Theoretical and Applied Linguistics by Advanced Study overview
• Michaelmas Term Courses
• Lent Term Seminars overview
• Computational and Corpus Linguistics
• Experimental Phonetics and Phonology
• Experimenting with Meaning
• French Linguistics
• Historical Linguistics and History of English
• Language Acquisition
• Psychological Language Processing & Learning
• Semantics, Pragmatics and Philosophy
• Syntactic change
• MPhil in Theoretical and Applied Linguistics by Thesis
• PhD Programmes in Linguistics overview
• PhD in Theoretical and Applied Linguistics
• PhD in Computation, Cognition and Language
• Life as a Linguistics PhD student
• Current PhD Students in TAL
• Recent PhD Graduates in TAL
• News and Events overview
• News and Events
• COPiL overview
• All Volumes overview
• Volume 14 Issue 2
• Volume 14 Issue 1
• All Articles
• TAL Talks Archive
• Editorial Team
• Linguistics Forum overview
• Schedule of Talks
• Societies overview
• Linguistics Society
• Research Facilities

Convenor: Dr James Baker

This seminar focuses on generative syntactic approaches to agreement and (particularly) case. We consider a range of empirical phenomena (such as structural vs. non-structural case, alignment and ergativity,) in relation to a range of theoretical approaches, surveying a broad range of primary literature on these topics from the last several decades of generative research up to the present day. The seminars will be structured around interactive discussion of the topics with a focus on critical analysis and argumentation.   

Search form

Related links

• Student Support
• Wellbeing at Cambridge
• Year Abroad FAQ
• Polyglossia Magazine
• The Cambridge Language Collective
• Information for current undergraduates
• Visiting and Erasmus Students

Keep in touch

• University of Cambridge Privacy Policy
• Student complaints and Examination Reviews

© 2024 University of Cambridge

• University A-Z
• Contact the University
• Accessibility
• Freedom of information
• Terms and conditions
• Undergraduate
• Spotlight on...
• About research at Cambridge

Choose Your Test

Sat / act prep online guides and tips, 113 great research paper topics.

General Education

One of the hardest parts of writing a research paper can be just finding a good topic to write about. Fortunately we've done the hard work for you and have compiled a list of 113 interesting research paper topics. They've been organized into ten categories and cover a wide range of subjects so you can easily find the best topic for you.

In addition to the list of good research topics, we've included advice on what makes a good research paper topic and how you can use your topic to start writing a great paper.

What Makes a Good Research Paper Topic?

Not all research paper topics are created equal, and you want to make sure you choose a great topic before you start writing. Below are the three most important factors to consider to make sure you choose the best research paper topics.

#1: It's Something You're Interested In

A paper is always easier to write if you're interested in the topic, and you'll be more motivated to do in-depth research and write a paper that really covers the entire subject. Even if a certain research paper topic is getting a lot of buzz right now or other people seem interested in writing about it, don't feel tempted to make it your topic unless you genuinely have some sort of interest in it as well.

#2: There's Enough Information to Write a Paper

Even if you come up with the absolute best research paper topic and you're so excited to write about it, you won't be able to produce a good paper if there isn't enough research about the topic. This can happen for very specific or specialized topics, as well as topics that are too new to have enough research done on them at the moment. Easy research paper topics will always be topics with enough information to write a full-length paper.

Trying to write a research paper on a topic that doesn't have much research on it is incredibly hard, so before you decide on a topic, do a bit of preliminary searching and make sure you'll have all the information you need to write your paper.

#3: It Fits Your Teacher's Guidelines

Don't get so carried away looking at lists of research paper topics that you forget any requirements or restrictions your teacher may have put on research topic ideas. If you're writing a research paper on a health-related topic, deciding to write about the impact of rap on the music scene probably won't be allowed, but there may be some sort of leeway. For example, if you're really interested in current events but your teacher wants you to write a research paper on a history topic, you may be able to choose a topic that fits both categories, like exploring the relationship between the US and North Korea. No matter what, always get your research paper topic approved by your teacher first before you begin writing.

113 Good Research Paper Topics

Below are 113 good research topics to help you get you started on your paper. We've organized them into ten categories to make it easier to find the type of research paper topics you're looking for.

Arts/Culture

• Discuss the main differences in art from the Italian Renaissance and the Northern Renaissance .
• Analyze the impact a famous artist had on the world.
• How is sexism portrayed in different types of media (music, film, video games, etc.)? Has the amount/type of sexism changed over the years?
• How has the music of slaves brought over from Africa shaped modern American music?
• How has rap music evolved in the past decade?
• How has the portrayal of minorities in the media changed?

Current Events

• What have been the impacts of China's one child policy?
• How have the goals of feminists changed over the decades?
• How has the Trump presidency changed international relations?
• Analyze the history of the relationship between the United States and North Korea.
• What factors contributed to the current decline in the rate of unemployment?
• What have been the impacts of states which have increased their minimum wage?
• How do US immigration laws compare to immigration laws of other countries?
• How have the US's immigration laws changed in the past few years/decades?
• How has the Black Lives Matter movement affected discussions and view about racism in the US?
• What impact has the Affordable Care Act had on healthcare in the US?
• What factors contributed to the UK deciding to leave the EU (Brexit)?
• What factors contributed to China becoming an economic power?
• Discuss the history of Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies  (some of which tokenize the S&P 500 Index on the blockchain) .
• Do students in schools that eliminate grades do better in college and their careers?
• Do students from wealthier backgrounds score higher on standardized tests?
• Do students who receive free meals at school get higher grades compared to when they weren't receiving a free meal?
• Do students who attend charter schools score higher on standardized tests than students in public schools?
• Do students learn better in same-sex classrooms?
• How does giving each student access to an iPad or laptop affect their studies?
• What are the benefits and drawbacks of the Montessori Method ?
• Do children who attend preschool do better in school later on?
• What was the impact of the No Child Left Behind act?
• How does the US education system compare to education systems in other countries?
• What impact does mandatory physical education classes have on students' health?
• Which methods are most effective at reducing bullying in schools?
• Do homeschoolers who attend college do as well as students who attended traditional schools?
• Does offering tenure increase or decrease quality of teaching?
• How does college debt affect future life choices of students?
• Should graduate students be able to form unions?

• What are different ways to lower gun-related deaths in the US?
• How and why have divorce rates changed over time?
• Is affirmative action still necessary in education and/or the workplace?
• Should physician-assisted suicide be legal?
• How has stem cell research impacted the medical field?
• How can human trafficking be reduced in the United States/world?
• Should people be able to donate organs in exchange for money?
• Which types of juvenile punishment have proven most effective at preventing future crimes?
• Has the increase in US airport security made passengers safer?
• Analyze the immigration policies of certain countries and how they are similar and different from one another.
• Several states have legalized recreational marijuana. What positive and negative impacts have they experienced as a result?
• Do tariffs increase the number of domestic jobs?
• Which prison reforms have proven most effective?
• Should governments be able to censor certain information on the internet?
• Which methods/programs have been most effective at reducing teen pregnancy?
• What are the benefits and drawbacks of the Keto diet?
• How effective are different exercise regimes for losing weight and maintaining weight loss?
• How do the healthcare plans of various countries differ from each other?
• What are the most effective ways to treat depression ?
• What are the pros and cons of genetically modified foods?
• Which methods are most effective for improving memory?
• What can be done to lower healthcare costs in the US?
• What factors contributed to the current opioid crisis?
• Analyze the history and impact of the HIV/AIDS epidemic .
• Are low-carbohydrate or low-fat diets more effective for weight loss?
• How much exercise should the average adult be getting each week?
• Which methods are most effective to get parents to vaccinate their children?
• What are the pros and cons of clean needle programs?
• How does stress affect the body?
• Discuss the history of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.
• What were the causes and effects of the Salem Witch Trials?
• Who was responsible for the Iran-Contra situation?
• How has New Orleans and the government's response to natural disasters changed since Hurricane Katrina?
• What events led to the fall of the Roman Empire?
• What were the impacts of British rule in India ?
• Was the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki necessary?
• What were the successes and failures of the women's suffrage movement in the United States?
• What were the causes of the Civil War?
• How did Abraham Lincoln's assassination impact the country and reconstruction after the Civil War?
• Which factors contributed to the colonies winning the American Revolution?
• What caused Hitler's rise to power?
• Discuss how a specific invention impacted history.
• What led to Cleopatra's fall as ruler of Egypt?
• How has Japan changed and evolved over the centuries?
• What were the causes of the Rwandan genocide ?

• Why did Martin Luther decide to split with the Catholic Church?
• Analyze the history and impact of a well-known cult (Jonestown, Manson family, etc.)
• How did the sexual abuse scandal impact how people view the Catholic Church?
• How has the Catholic church's power changed over the past decades/centuries?
• What are the causes behind the rise in atheism/ agnosticism in the United States?
• What were the influences in Siddhartha's life resulted in him becoming the Buddha?
• How has media portrayal of Islam/Muslims changed since September 11th?

Science/Environment

• How has the earth's climate changed in the past few decades?
• How has the use and elimination of DDT affected bird populations in the US?
• Analyze how the number and severity of natural disasters have increased in the past few decades.
• Analyze deforestation rates in a certain area or globally over a period of time.
• How have past oil spills changed regulations and cleanup methods?
• How has the Flint water crisis changed water regulation safety?
• What are the pros and cons of fracking?
• What impact has the Paris Climate Agreement had so far?
• What have NASA's biggest successes and failures been?
• How can we improve access to clean water around the world?
• Does ecotourism actually have a positive impact on the environment?
• Should the US rely on nuclear energy more?
• What can be done to save amphibian species currently at risk of extinction?
• What impact has climate change had on coral reefs?
• How are black holes created?
• Are teens who spend more time on social media more likely to suffer anxiety and/or depression?
• How will the loss of net neutrality affect internet users?
• Analyze the history and progress of self-driving vehicles.
• How has the use of drones changed surveillance and warfare methods?
• Has social media made people more or less connected?
• What progress has currently been made with artificial intelligence ?
• Do smartphones increase or decrease workplace productivity?
• What are the most effective ways to use technology in the classroom?
• How is Google search affecting our intelligence?
• When is the best age for a child to begin owning a smartphone?
• Has frequent texting reduced teen literacy rates?

How to Write a Great Research Paper

Even great research paper topics won't give you a great research paper if you don't hone your topic before and during the writing process. Follow these three tips to turn good research paper topics into great papers.

#1: Figure Out Your Thesis Early

Before you start writing a single word of your paper, you first need to know what your thesis will be. Your thesis is a statement that explains what you intend to prove/show in your paper. Every sentence in your research paper will relate back to your thesis, so you don't want to start writing without it!

As some examples, if you're writing a research paper on if students learn better in same-sex classrooms, your thesis might be "Research has shown that elementary-age students in same-sex classrooms score higher on standardized tests and report feeling more comfortable in the classroom."

If you're writing a paper on the causes of the Civil War, your thesis might be "While the dispute between the North and South over slavery is the most well-known cause of the Civil War, other key causes include differences in the economies of the North and South, states' rights, and territorial expansion."

#2: Back Every Statement Up With Research

Remember, this is a research paper you're writing, so you'll need to use lots of research to make your points. Every statement you give must be backed up with research, properly cited the way your teacher requested. You're allowed to include opinions of your own, but they must also be supported by the research you give.

#3: Do Your Research Before You Begin Writing

You don't want to start writing your research paper and then learn that there isn't enough research to back up the points you're making, or, even worse, that the research contradicts the points you're trying to make!

Get most of your research on your good research topics done before you begin writing. Then use the research you've collected to create a rough outline of what your paper will cover and the key points you're going to make. This will help keep your paper clear and organized, and it'll ensure you have enough research to produce a strong paper.

What's Next?

Are you also learning about dynamic equilibrium in your science class? We break this sometimes tricky concept down so it's easy to understand in our complete guide to dynamic equilibrium .

Thinking about becoming a nurse practitioner? Nurse practitioners have one of the fastest growing careers in the country, and we have all the information you need to know about what to expect from nurse practitioner school .

Want to know the fastest and easiest ways to convert between Fahrenheit and Celsius? We've got you covered! Check out our guide to the best ways to convert Celsius to Fahrenheit (or vice versa).

These recommendations are based solely on our knowledge and experience. If you purchase an item through one of our links, PrepScholar may receive a commission.

Christine graduated from Michigan State University with degrees in Environmental Biology and Geography and received her Master's from Duke University. In high school she scored in the 99th percentile on the SAT and was named a National Merit Finalist. She has taught English and biology in several countries.

Student and Parent Forum

Our new student and parent forum, at ExpertHub.PrepScholar.com , allow you to interact with your peers and the PrepScholar staff. See how other students and parents are navigating high school, college, and the college admissions process. Ask questions; get answers.

Ask a Question Below

Have any questions about this article or other topics? Ask below and we'll reply!

Improve With Our Famous Guides

• For All Students

The 5 Strategies You Must Be Using to Improve 160+ SAT Points

How to Get a Perfect 1600, by a Perfect Scorer

Series: How to Get 800 on Each SAT Section:

Score 800 on SAT Math

Score 800 on SAT Reading

Score 800 on SAT Writing

Series: How to Get to 600 on Each SAT Section:

Score 600 on SAT Math

Score 600 on SAT Reading

Score 600 on SAT Writing

Free Complete Official SAT Practice Tests

What SAT Target Score Should You Be Aiming For?

15 Strategies to Improve Your SAT Essay

The 5 Strategies You Must Be Using to Improve 4+ ACT Points

How to Get a Perfect 36 ACT, by a Perfect Scorer

Series: How to Get 36 on Each ACT Section:

36 on ACT English

36 on ACT Math

36 on ACT Reading

36 on ACT Science

Series: How to Get to 24 on Each ACT Section:

24 on ACT English

24 on ACT Math

24 on ACT Reading

24 on ACT Science

What ACT target score should you be aiming for?

ACT Vocabulary You Must Know

ACT Writing: 15 Tips to Raise Your Essay Score

How to Get Into Harvard and the Ivy League

How to Get a Perfect 4.0 GPA

How to Write an Amazing College Essay

What Exactly Are Colleges Looking For?

Is the ACT easier than the SAT? A Comprehensive Guide

Should you retake your SAT or ACT?

When should you take the SAT or ACT?

Stay Informed

Get the latest articles and test prep tips!

Looking for Graduate School Test Prep?

Check out our top-rated graduate blogs here:

GRE Online Prep Blog

GMAT Online Prep Blog

TOEFL Online Prep Blog

Holly R. "I am absolutely overjoyed and cannot thank you enough for helping me!”

• How It Works
• PhD thesis writing
• Master thesis writing
• Bachelor thesis writing
• Dissertation writing service
• Dissertation abstract writing
• Thesis proposal writing
• Thesis editing service
• Thesis proofreading service
• Thesis formatting service
• Coursework writing service
• Research paper writing service
• Architecture thesis writing
• Computer science thesis writing
• Engineering thesis writing
• History thesis writing
• MBA thesis writing
• Nursing dissertation writing
• Psychology dissertation writing
• Sociology thesis writing
• Statistics dissertation writing
• Buy dissertation online
• Write my dissertation
• Cheap thesis
• Cheap dissertation
• Custom dissertation
• Dissertation help
• Pay for thesis
• Pay for dissertation
• Senior thesis
• Write my thesis

211 Research Topics in Linguistics To Get Top Grades

Many people find it hard to decide on their linguistics research topics because of the assumed complexities involved. They struggle to choose easy research paper topics for English language too because they think it could be too simple for a university or college level certificate.

All that you need to learn about Linguistics and English is sprawled across syntax, phonetics, morphology, phonology, semantics, grammar, vocabulary, and a few others. To easily create a top-notch essay or conduct a research study, you can consider this list of research topics in English language below for your university or college use. Note that you can fine-tune these to suit your interests.

Linguistics Research Paper Topics

If you want to study how language is applied and its importance in the world, you can consider these Linguistics topics for your research paper. They are:

• An analysis of romantic ideas and their expression amongst French people
• An overview of the hate language in the course against religion
• Identify the determinants of hate language and the means of propagation
• Evaluate a literature and examine how Linguistics is applied to the understanding of minor languages
• Consider the impact of social media in the development of slangs
• An overview of political slang and its use amongst New York teenagers
• Examine the relevance of Linguistics in a digitalized world
• Analyze foul language and how it’s used to oppress minors
• Identify the role of language in the national identity of a socially dynamic society
• Attempt an explanation to how the language barrier could affect the social life of an individual in a new society
• Discuss the means through which language can enrich cultural identities
• Examine the concept of bilingualism and how it applies in the real world
• Analyze the possible strategies for teaching a foreign language
• Discuss the priority of teachers in the teaching of grammar to non-native speakers
• Choose a school of your choice and observe the slang used by its students: analyze how it affects their social lives
• Attempt a critical overview of racist languages
• What does endangered language means and how does it apply in the real world?
• A critical overview of your second language and why it is a second language
• What are the motivators of speech and why are they relevant?
• Analyze the difference between the different types of communications and their significance to specially-abled persons
• Give a critical overview of five literature on sign language
• Evaluate the distinction between the means of language comprehension between an adult and a teenager
• Consider a native American group and evaluate how cultural diversity has influenced their language
• Analyze the complexities involved in code-switching and code-mixing
• Give a critical overview of the importance of language to a teenager
• Attempt a forensic overview of language accessibility and what it means
• What do you believe are the means of communications and what are their uniqueness?
• Attempt a study of Islamic poetry and its role in language development
• Attempt a study on the role of Literature in language development
• Evaluate the Influence of metaphors and other literary devices in the depth of each sentence
• Identify the role of literary devices in the development of proverbs in any African country
• Cognitive Linguistics: analyze two pieces of Literature that offers a critical view of perception
• Identify and analyze the complexities in unspoken words
• Expression is another kind of language: discuss
• Identify the significance of symbols in the evolution of language
• Discuss how learning more than a single language promote cross-cultural developments
• Analyze how the loss of a mother tongue affect the language Efficiency of a community
• Critically examine how sign language works
• Using literature from the medieval era, attempt a study of the evolution of language
• Identify how wars have led to the reduction in the popularity of a language of your choice across any country of the world
• Critically examine five Literature on why accent changes based on environment
• What are the forces that compel the comprehension of language in a child
• Identify and explain the difference between the listening and speaking skills and their significance in the understanding of language
• Give a critical overview of how natural language is processed
• Examine the influence of language on culture and vice versa
• It is possible to understand a language even without living in that society: discuss
• Identify the arguments regarding speech defects
• Discuss how the familiarity of language informs the creation of slangs
• Explain the significance of religious phrases and sacred languages
• Explore the roots and evolution of incantations in Africa

Sociolinguistic Research Topics

You may as well need interesting Linguistics topics based on sociolinguistic purposes for your research. Sociolinguistics is the study and recording of natural speech. It’s primarily the casual status of most informal conversations. You can consider the following Sociolinguistic research topics for your research:

• What makes language exceptional to a particular person?
• How does language form a unique means of expression to writers?
• Examine the kind of speech used in health and emergencies
• Analyze the language theory explored by family members during dinner
• Evaluate the possible variation of language based on class
• Evaluate the language of racism, social tension, and sexism
• Discuss how Language promotes social and cultural familiarities
• Give an overview of identity and language
• Examine why some language speakers enjoy listening to foreigners who speak their native language
• Give a forensic analysis of his the language of entertainment is different to the language in professional settings
• Give an understanding of how Language changes
• Examine the Sociolinguistics of the Caribbeans
• Consider an overview of metaphor in France
• Explain why the direct translation of written words is incomprehensible in Linguistics
• Discuss the use of language in marginalizing a community
• Analyze the history of Arabic and the culture that enhanced it
• Discuss the growth of French and the influences of other languages
• Examine how the English language developed and its interdependence on other languages
• Give an overview of cultural diversity and Linguistics in teaching
• Challenge the attachment of speech defect with disability of language listening and speaking abilities
• Explore the uniqueness of language between siblings
• Explore the means of making requests between a teenager and his parents
• Observe and comment on how students relate with their teachers through language
• Observe and comment on the communication of strategy of parents and teachers
• Examine the connection of understanding first language with academic excellence

Language Research Topics

Numerous languages exist in different societies. This is why you may seek to understand the motivations behind language through these Linguistics project ideas. You can consider the following interesting Linguistics topics and their application to language:

• What does language shift mean?
• Discuss the stages of English language development?
• Examine the position of ambiguity in a romantic Language of your choice
• Why are some languages called romantic languages?
• Observe the strategies of persuasion through Language
• Discuss the connection between symbols and words
• Identify the language of political speeches
• Discuss the effectiveness of language in an indigenous cultural revolution
• Trace the motivators for spoken language
• What does language acquisition mean to you?
• Examine three pieces of literature on language translation and its role in multilingual accessibility
• Identify the science involved in language reception
• Interrogate with the context of language disorders
• Examine how psychotherapy applies to victims of language disorders
• Study the growth of Hindi despite colonialism
• Critically appraise the term, language erasure
• Examine how colonialism and war is responsible for the loss of language
• Give an overview of the difference between sounds and letters and how they apply to the German language
• Explain why the placement of verb and preposition is different in German and English languages
• Choose two languages of your choice and examine their historical relationship
• Discuss the strategies employed by people while learning new languages
• Discuss the role of all the figures of speech in the advancement of language
• Analyze the complexities of autism and its victims
• Offer a linguist approach to language uniqueness between a Down Syndrome child and an autist
• Express dance as a language
• Express music as a language
• Express language as a form of language
• Evaluate the role of cultural diversity in the decline of languages in South Africa
• Discuss the development of the Greek language
• Critically review two literary texts, one from the medieval era and another published a decade ago, and examine the language shifts

Linguistics Essay Topics

You may also need Linguistics research topics for your Linguistics essays. As a linguist in the making, these can help you consider controversies in Linguistics as a discipline and address them through your study. You can consider:

• The connection of sociolinguistics in comprehending interests in multilingualism
• Write on your belief of how language encourages sexism
• What do you understand about the differences between British and American English?
• Discuss how slangs grew and how they started
• Consider how age leads to loss of language
• Review how language is used in formal and informal conversation
• Discuss what you understand by polite language
• Discuss what you know by hate language
• Evaluate how language has remained flexible throughout history
• Mimicking a teacher is a form of exercising hate Language: discuss
• Body Language and verbal speech are different things: discuss
• Language can be exploitative: discuss
• Do you think language is responsible for inciting aggression against the state?
• Can you justify the structural representation of any symbol of your choice?
• Religious symbols are not ordinary Language: what are your perspective on day-to-day languages and sacred ones?
• Consider the usage of language by an English man and someone of another culture
• Discuss the essence of code-mixing and code-switching
• Attempt a psychological assessment on the role of language in academic development
• How does language pose a challenge to studying?
• Choose a multicultural society of your choice and explain the problem they face
• What forms does Language use in expression?
• Identify the reasons behind unspoken words and actions
• Why do universal languages exist as a means of easy communication?
• Examine the role of the English language in the world
• Examine the role of Arabic in the world
• Examine the role of romantic languages in the world
• Evaluate the significance of each teaching Resources in a language classroom
• Consider an assessment of language analysis
• Why do people comprehend beyond what is written or expressed?
• What is the impact of hate speech on a woman?
• Do you believe that grammatical errors are how everyone’s comprehension of language is determined?
• Observe the Influence of technology in language learning and development
• Which parts of the body are responsible for understanding new languages
• How has language informed development?
• Would you say language has improved human relations or worsened it considering it as a tool for violence?
• Would you say language in a black populous state is different from its social culture in white populous states?
• Give an overview of the English language in Nigeria
• Give an overview of the English language in Uganda
• Give an overview of the English language in India
• Give an overview of Russian in Europe
• Give a conceptual analysis on stress and how it works
• Consider the means of vocabulary development and its role in cultural relationships
• Examine the effects of Linguistics in language
• Present your understanding of sign language
• What do you understand about descriptive language and prescriptive Language?

List of Research Topics in English Language

You may need English research topics for your next research. These are topics that are socially crafted for you as a student of language in any institution. You can consider the following for in-depth analysis:

• Examine the travail of women in any feminist text of your choice
• Examine the movement of feminist literature in the Industrial period
• Give an overview of five Gothic literature and what you understand from them
• Examine rock music and how it emerged as a genre
• Evaluate the cultural association with Nina Simone’s music
• What is the relevance of Shakespeare in English literature?
• How has literature promoted the English language?
• Identify the effect of spelling errors in the academic performance of students in an institution of your choice
• Critically survey a university and give rationalize the literary texts offered as Significant
• Examine the use of feminist literature in advancing the course against patriarchy
• Give an overview of the themes in William Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar”
• Express the significance of Ernest Hemingway’s diction in contemporary literature
• Examine the predominant devices in the works of William Shakespeare
• Explain the predominant devices in the works of Christopher Marlowe
• Charles Dickens and his works: express the dominating themes in his Literature
• Why is Literature described as the mirror of society?
• Examine the issues of feminism in Sefi Atta’s “Everything Good Will Come” and Bernadine Evaristos’s “Girl, Woman, Other”
• Give an overview of the stylistics employed in the writing of “Girl, Woman, Other” by Bernadine Evaristo
• Describe the language of advertisement in social media and newspapers
• Describe what poetic Language means
• Examine the use of code-switching and code-mixing on Mexican Americans
• Examine the use of code-switching and code-mixing in Indian Americans
• Discuss the influence of George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” on satirical literature
• Examine the Linguistics features of “Native Son” by Richard Wright
• What is the role of indigenous literature in promoting cultural identities
• How has literature informed cultural consciousness?
• Analyze five literature on semantics and their Influence on the study
• Assess the role of grammar in day to day communications
• Observe the role of multidisciplinary approaches in understanding the English language
• What does stylistics mean while analyzing medieval literary texts?
• Analyze the views of philosophers on language, society, and culture

English Research Paper Topics for College Students

For your college work, you may need to undergo a study of any phenomenon in the world. Note that they could be Linguistics essay topics or mainly a research study of an idea of your choice. Thus, you can choose your research ideas from any of the following:

• The concept of fairness in a democratic Government
• The capacity of a leader isn’t in his or her academic degrees
• The concept of discrimination in education
• The theory of discrimination in Islamic states
• The idea of school policing
• A study on grade inflation and its consequences
• A study of taxation and Its importance to the economy from a citizen’s perspectives
• A study on how eloquence lead to discrimination amongst high school students
• A study of the influence of the music industry in teens
• An Evaluation of pornography and its impacts on College students
• A descriptive study of how the FBI works according to Hollywood
• A critical consideration of the cons and pros of vaccination
• The health effect of sleep disorders
• An overview of three literary texts across three genres of Literature and how they connect to you
• A critical overview of “King Oedipus”: the role of the supernatural in day to day life
• Examine the novel “12 Years a Slave” as a reflection of servitude and brutality exerted by white slave owners
• Rationalize the emergence of racist Literature with concrete examples
• A study of the limits of literature in accessing rural readers
• Analyze the perspectives of modern authors on the Influence of medieval Literature on their craft
• What do you understand by the mortality of a literary text?
• A study of controversial Literature and its role in shaping the discussion
• A critical overview of three literary texts that dealt with domestic abuse and their role in changing the narratives about domestic violence
• Choose three contemporary poets and analyze the themes of their works
• Do you believe that contemporary American literature is the repetition of unnecessary themes already treated in the past?
• A study of the evolution of Literature and its styles
• The use of sexual innuendos in literature
• The use of sexist languages in literature and its effect on the public
• The disaster associated with media reports of fake news
• Conduct a study on how language is used as a tool for manipulation
• Attempt a criticism of a controversial Literary text and why it shouldn’t be studied or sold in the first place

Finding Linguistics Hard To Write About?

With these topics, you can commence your research with ease. However, if you need professional writing help for any part of the research, you can scout here online for the best research paper writing service.

There are several expert writers on ENL hosted on our website that you can consider for a fast response on your research study at a cheap price.

As students, you may be unable to cover every part of your research on your own. This inability is the reason you should consider expert writers for custom research topics in Linguistics approved by your professor for high grades.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Comment * Error message

Name * Error message

Email * Error message

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

As Putin continues killing civilians, bombing kindergartens, and threatening WWIII, Ukraine fights for the world's peaceful future.

Ukraine Live Updates

1000+ FREE Research Topics & Ideas

If you’re at the start of your research journey and are trying to figure out which research topic you want to focus on, you’ve come to the right place. Select your area of interest below to view a comprehensive collection of potential research ideas.

Research Topic FAQs

What (exactly) is a research topic.

A research topic is the subject of a research project or study – for example, a dissertation or thesis. A research topic typically takes the form of a problem to be solved, or a question to be answered.

A good research topic should be specific enough to allow for focused research and analysis. For example, if you are interested in studying the effects of climate change on agriculture, your research topic could focus on how rising temperatures have impacted crop yields in certain regions over time.

To learn more about the basics of developing a research topic, consider our free research topic ideation webinar.

What constitutes a good research topic?

A strong research topic comprises three important qualities : originality, value and feasibility.

• Originality – a good topic explores an original area or takes a novel angle on an existing area of study.
• Value – a strong research topic provides value and makes a contribution, either academically or practically.
• Feasibility – a good research topic needs to be practical and manageable, given the resource constraints you face.

To learn more about what makes for a high-quality research topic, check out this post .

What's the difference between a research topic and research problem?

A research topic and a research problem are two distinct concepts that are often confused. A research topic is a broader label that indicates the focus of the study , while a research problem is an issue or gap in knowledge within the broader field that needs to be addressed.

To illustrate this distinction, consider a student who has chosen “teenage pregnancy in the United Kingdom” as their research topic. This research topic could encompass any number of issues related to teenage pregnancy such as causes, prevention strategies, health outcomes for mothers and babies, etc.

Within this broad category (the research topic) lies potential areas of inquiry that can be explored further – these become the research problems . For example:

• What factors contribute to higher rates of teenage pregnancy in certain communities?
• How do different types of parenting styles affect teen pregnancy rates?
• What interventions have been successful in reducing teenage pregnancies?

Simply put, a key difference between a research topic and a research problem is scope ; the research topic provides an umbrella under which multiple questions can be asked, while the research problem focuses on one specific question or set of questions within that larger context.

How can I find potential research topics for my project?

There are many steps involved in the process of finding and choosing a high-quality research topic for a dissertation or thesis. We cover these steps in detail in this video (also accessible below).

How can I find quality sources for my research topic?

Finding quality sources is an essential step in the topic ideation process. To do this, you should start by researching scholarly journals, books, and other academic publications related to your topic. These sources can provide reliable information on a wide range of topics. Additionally, they may contain data or statistics that can help support your argument or conclusions.

Identifying Relevant Sources

When searching for relevant sources, it’s important to look beyond just published material; try using online databases such as Google Scholar or JSTOR to find articles from reputable journals that have been peer-reviewed by experts in the field.

You can also use search engines like Google or Bing to locate websites with useful information about your topic. However, be sure to evaluate any website before citing it as a source—look for evidence of authorship (such as an “About Us” page) and make sure the content is up-to-date and accurate before relying on it.

Evaluating Sources

Once you’ve identified potential sources for your research project, take some time to evaluate them thoroughly before deciding which ones will best serve your purpose. Consider factors such as author credibility (are they an expert in their field?), publication date (is the source current?), objectivity (does the author present both sides of an issue?) and relevance (how closely does this source relate to my specific topic?).

By researching the current literature on your topic, you can identify potential sources that will help to provide quality information. Once you’ve identified these sources, it’s time to look for a gap in the research and determine what new knowledge could be gained from further study.

How can I find a good research gap?

Finding a strong gap in the literature is an essential step when looking for potential research topics. We explain what research gaps are and how to find them in this post.

How should I evaluate potential research topics/ideas?

When evaluating potential research topics, it is important to consider the factors that make for a strong topic (we discussed these earlier). Specifically:

• Originality
• Feasibility

So, when you have a list of potential topics or ideas, assess each of them in terms of these three criteria. A good topic should take a unique angle, provide value (either to academia or practitioners), and be practical enough for you to pull off, given your limited resources.

Finally, you should also assess whether this project could lead to potential career opportunities such as internships or job offers down the line. Make sure that you are researching something that is relevant enough so that it can benefit your professional development in some way. Additionally, consider how each research topic aligns with your career goals and interests; researching something that you are passionate about can help keep motivation high throughout the process.

How can I assess the feasibility of a research topic?

When evaluating the feasibility and practicality of a research topic, it is important to consider several factors.

First, you should assess whether or not the research topic is within your area of competence. Of course, when you start out, you are not expected to be the world’s leading expert, but do should at least have some foundational knowledge.

Time commitment

When considering a research topic, you should think about how much time will be required for completion. Depending on your field of study, some topics may require more time than others due to their complexity or scope.

Additionally, if you plan on collaborating with other researchers or institutions in order to complete your project, additional considerations must be taken into account such as coordinating schedules and ensuring that all parties involved have adequate resources available.

Resources needed

It’s also critically important to consider what type of resources are necessary in order to conduct the research successfully. This includes physical materials such as lab equipment and chemicals but can also include intangible items like access to certain databases or software programs which may be necessary depending on the nature of your work. Additionally, if there are costs associated with obtaining these materials then this must also be factored into your evaluation process.

Potential risks

It’s important to consider the inherent potential risks for each potential research topic. These can include ethical risks (challenges getting ethical approval), data risks (not being able to access the data you’ll need), technical risks relating to the equipment you’ll use and funding risks (not securing the necessary financial back to undertake the research).

If you’re looking for more information about how to find, evaluate and select research topics for your dissertation or thesis, check out our free webinar here . Alternatively, if you’d like 1:1 help with the topic ideation process, consider our private coaching services .

Psst… there’s more (for free)

This post is part of our dissertation mini-course, which covers everything you need to get started with your dissertation, thesis or research project. 

Creating a Successful Research Topic Statement (PSY)

In this tutorial, we will identify what makes for a successful research topic.

Most research topics start out as a general and often vague idea that a researcher has an interest in investigating.

Inexperienced researchers, including most doctoral learners, frequently think of topics that are quite interesting, but not narrowly enough focused for a dissertation.

This tutorial will guide you through a set of steps designed to help you come up with a topic, first of all, and secondly to focus it more tightly so that you can begin a meaningful and successful search of the existing literature to discover whether your topic is actually researchable.

This tutorial's primary objective is to prepare you to create a successful research topic that may become the topic of your dissertation. To do that, we'll work through the following issues:

• First, what are the characteristics of a well-formed research topic?
• Second, how are research topics evaluated?
• Third, how can the key concepts and the population be narrowed and focused so that they are researchable?
• Fourth, how can the relationship among concepts be named so that the appropriate methodological literature can be accessed in the literature review?

Obviously, in Track 1 you are at the beginning of your studies toward the doctorate, and perhaps your dissertation is far from your thoughts. We are starting the process now, however, because our experience has been that when learners wait to start searching for their topics, it often creates a serious problem for them when they actually start the dissertation. That problem can take many forms, but the most common one is that they have not had sufficient time (and training) in exhaustively searching the relevant literature to discover whether the topic they are interested in is even viable—and without a good topic statement, a good literature search is impossible. So let's begin.

What Is a Research Topic?

A research topic is an area of interest to a researcher that is first of all, researchable. It is focused narrowly enough that its key concepts are quite plain and well integrated. It is a topic or subject that can be found in the existing literature of the researcher's field, which shows that it is of some interest or importance to that field, and has some important characteristics.

Characteristics of a Well-formed Research Topic

The first mark of a well-formed topic is that it clearly states the key concepts to be investigated. Sometimes, only one concept is named—those studies often turn out to be qualitative, but not always. More often, two or more key concepts are named. Next, it identifies the relationship or relationships among those concepts that the researcher intends to explore. Obviously, if only one concept was named, there won't be a relationship, but in that case a word like "describes" or "experiences" will give a clue to the kind of information desired. Third, a research topic specifies the population of interest to be investigated. Finally, a research topic is just a phrase. That is, it is not a full sentence with a verb. However, the well-formed topic statement will embed the actual topic in a complete sentence. Let's look at some examples.

Some Examples of Topic Statements

Here are a few topic statements that eventually lead to successful dissertations:

• Elementary age students' needs for family-based counseling services.
• Indigenous people's responses to encounters with law enforcement.
• Impact of mother's death on daughters in poor, middle class, and wealthy families.
• The relationship between assignment strategies to prevent burnout used by managers of first responders and the occurrence of burnout.
• Employees' productivity as a function of their managers' management styles.
• Strategies used by mainstream classroom teachers to manage children with behavior problems who do not receive special education.

You can see immediately that all six examples, taken from the four schools in Capella University, are phrases, not complete sentences. So far, so good. The first mark of a successful topic statement is that it identifies the key concepts to be investigated, right? Let's see how the examples do that.

Evaluating the Form of the Examples: Key Concepts

In the first example, we seem to have two key concepts: "needs" and "family-based counseling services." Are they stated clearly? Probably not clearly enough: what is meant by "needs" and "family-based counseling services" is not immediately transparent. This topic will need some work, but most topics start out this way.

Let's try another: Indigenous people’s responses to encounters with law enforcement. Here, there seem to be two key concepts: "responses" and "encounters with law enforcement." These concepts are quite broad and will have to be narrowed considerably to support a researchable topic, but they provide a good start.

Let's do one more: Employees' productivity as a function of their managers' management styles.

Here, there are two key concepts, right? Productivity and management styles.

Evaluating the Form of Topics: Relationship(s) among the Key Concepts

The second mark of a successful topic is that it identifies any relationship to be investigated between or among the key concepts. Let's look at the third example to see about this.

This topic meets our criterion of being a phrase. It seems to state at least two concepts (but with multiple levels): "death" and "socio-economic status of daughters." What about the relationship? Well, it is captured in that word "impact."

An "impact" in research jargon means the effect that one concept—death—has on another concept, in this case, the daughters. One can, in fact, replace the word impact with the word effect without changing the meaning at all. So the topic is proposing a cause-and-effect kind of relationship.

Let's look at another example: The relationship between assignment strategies to prevent burnout used by managers of first responders and the occurrence of burnout

This seems complicated, but it really isn't. First, let's check the key concepts: "Assignment strategies to prevent burnout" would seem to be one key concept, and "occurrence of burnout" would be the other. These are reasonably clear, or probably would be to someone in the human resources or management worlds. No doubt they will be further clarified as the researcher works on the topic's wording. But what about the relationship? It is in the word "relationship," obviously. And in research jargon, a "relationship" between A and B is a particular kind of relationship, called a correlation.

Now, play with the other topics to see if you can identify the relationship—if any.

Evaluating the Form of Topics: Target Population

The third sign of a successful topic is that it names the target population, the group of people or organizations or groups that the researcher is interested in. Let's evaluate some of our examples on this point.

• Elementary age students' needs for family-based counseling services : The population here is stated: Students of elementary school age.
• Indigenous people's responses to encounters with law enforcement: Here as well, the population is indigenous people.
• Impact of mother's death on daughters in poor, middle class, and wealthy families: The population is daughters in three socio-economic groups.
• The relationship between assignment strategies to prevent burnout used by managers of first responders and the occurrence of burnout: You determine who the population is in this one.

Is It Managers or Is It First Responders?

The population is managers of first responders. Or is it? The awkward wording of the topic makes this a bit hard to digest. The burnout occurs in the first responders, so maybe they are the population. But the first responders' managers are the ones using the management strategies, so are they the population?

Well, the two key concepts are management strategies (used by managers) and rate of burnout (in first responders), so the researcher will have to get information from both groups of people, so both are the target population: first responders and their managers.

Take a minute and try to figure out the rest of our examples.

Summing Up the Characteristics of a Successful Topic

We've seen in action the three chief marks of a successful research topic.

• The topic states the key concepts to be investigated.
• It states what relationship between or among the concepts will be explored. Remember, if there is only one concept (which often is the case in qualitative studies), there won't be a relationship. But if there are two or more key concepts, look for the relationship between or among them.
• The successful topic names the population of interest for the study.

A well-formed research topic will have these characteristics, but simply having them is not sufficient. The elements also need to be well-focused and narrowed down to a point where the research becomes feasible. Let's take a look at a simple method for doing this.

Narrowing the Focus

Take a look at this grid. You'll see that one of our topics has been broken out into the first column. The population is first—indigenous people—followed by two concepts: responses and law enforcement. Now look at the central column, labeled "Narrower term." Notice how the very broad population has been narrowed. Similarly, "law enforcement" has been narrowed to police (there are many other types of law enforcement, such as FBI, Homeland Security, TSA, Customs and Immigration, sheriff's departments, and so on). Similarly, there are many kinds of behaviors and experiences that could be considered "responses," but the researcher is most interested in emotional responses. Now move to the third column. Can you see how each term is being narrowed yet again?

If we restated the topic now, after having narrowed it down a bit, it would look like this: Cherokee Indians' tolerance for stress when meeting traffic officers.

Let's work through another example, this time using the topic "Employees' productivity as a function of their managers' management styles."

You can see the key terms lined up in the first column. The other two columns are blank.

What would you ask yourself, if this were your topic, in order to narrow this down?

Questions to Ask for Narrowing a Topic

There are many questions you can ask yourself when you are narrowing your topic. A good opener is "So what do I really want to know about the concept?"

Another quite good question is to ask about your real interest or passion is about the concept or the population.

You can also find helpful terms by performing controlled vocabulary searches in library databases. You can find a nice tutorial on that method of searching in the Capella library at but whatever you ask yourself, keep your focus on what you truly most want to know and care about regarding the concept.

Now, let's get back to our example.

When the researcher asked herself what sort of employees and managers she was actually interested in, she realized it was service employees and managers. The more she pondered, and was helped by a quick check of the literature in her specialization, she realized that she was most interested in call center personnel. Then she tackled productivity . From her courses in management measurement, she knew that one way to think about productivity was days at work. But that seemed too dependent on factors outside the manager-employee relationship. She wanted a more fine-grained way to look at productivity, so she narrowed it to a specific measure, calls completed times minutes per call.

Then she took on management styl e. Knowing that there are many types, her first attempt at focusing this term was authoritarian style. That didn't satisfy her, and when she looked again at her topic, she realized that that word "function" was important. It implied to her that she was really interested in knowing how different management styles related to different degrees of productivity. At first, she put together a list of known management styles, but that felt intimidating. She decided to narrow it down to just two: authoritarian vs. flexible management style.

After all this, her topic now looked like this: Productivity as measured by calls completed times minutes per call in call center employees supervised by authoritarian managers compared to productivity in call center employees supervised by flexible managers.

She knew the wording was clunky and would need to be crafted better, but she had a much more focused topic. So far, we've been looking at two things about good research topics: what they should contain (concepts, relationships, and population), and how to narrow each element. In these narrowing exercises, we've focused on the concepts and the population. Now, let's turn our attention to the relationship . This is a very important element, because it offers an important clue about the nature of the study that might ensue.

Evaluating the Relationship Named in the Topic

Research asks all kinds of questions, and the relationship named in the research topic clues us into what kind of question the ensuing study will likely ask. Here are some questions you might ask in order to choose the right word to describe the relationship you're looking for.

What do you envision really doing?

• Looking at comparisons between variables or groups of people?
• Looking at relationships between two or more concepts?
• Looking at effects of one or more concept on another concept or group?
• Looking at outcomes of some process or treatment or condition?
• Looking at experiences?
• Developing a theory to explain some phenomenon?

For each of these (and there are other sorts of questions you can ask yourself), specific words can specify the relationship. Let's look at them.

If your topic compares two or more things compared with or some similar phrase indicates the relationship you want to know about. For instance, student retention rates in large urban school districts compared with small rural districts.

If your interest is about relationships between two or more concepts, try using words like relationship, in relation to, or other similar constructions. Here's an example: the frequency of church attendance in relation to socioeconomic status.

Suppose your interest is to see if one thing has an effect on something else. In that case, you can use that word, effect, or other words such as influence, impact, cause, predict, and the like. For example, the influence of tax policy on employment patterns in Midwestern communities.

An outcome is another version of a cause-and-effect relationship, specifically when you are interested in the final condition after some kind of process. For instance, the outcome of a training program. That word is excellent to use for the relationship, as in the outcome of training program A as measured by employee comprehension of corporate policies.

Are you interested in describing a certain experience, such as falling in love or being laid off work or having a baby or starting a new company? Having experiences is a very subjective thing, and the actual experience is a single thing—not one of a few variables. So there is no relationship to specify in such a topic, but the only way to learn about people's experiences is to ask them to describe them. So, words like descriptions of, accounts of, reports of, and the like can be very helpful. For instance, men's descriptions of their spiritual transformations when recovering from alcoholism.

Okay, we've covered the basics of how to craft a well-formed research topic. We've seen the marks of a good topic. They are:

• The key concepts are clearly stated and well-focused so that they can be profitably found in the literature.
• Second, the relationship, if any, between or among them is clearly stated. Even if there is no relationship, what you're really looking for (descriptions? accounts? reports?) can be seen in the wording.
• Third, the people you want to study, your population, is clearly stated and narrowed down to a workable point. You have all these points covered in a single phrase, and if after narrowing it down that phrase is awkward, you will work on crafting it into a more graceful form.

In a minute, you'll get to work crafting your own research topic, but first I want to show you why we emphasize the importance of narrowing and focusing the key concepts, relationships, and populations.

What Do You Do With the Research Topic?

The research topic is step 1 in the sequential process of research design. Once you have your topic in hand, step 2 is to take it to the library and begin searching for existing research and theory on the topic. Here's where your key concepts need to be well-defined and narrowly focused. You will be looking for all the existing research on those key concepts when you start.

At first, you'll investigate each of your key concepts individually, to find out what the existing literature has to say about them in and of themselves. Later, after you have developed a good working knowledge of the background concepts, you'll dig deeper into research linking the key concepts together.

At the third level, you'll follow the "breadcrumbs" all the way back to the earliest studies on your topic so that you will, ultimately, master that literature fully.

So your topic statement is the foundation. It organizes your various literature reviews. Searching on the key concepts (translated into various key words) will help you organize the content of your study.

Searching on the existing methodological literature about the relationship named in your topic will prepare you for your methodological decisions in later steps of research design.

There is an old Chinese proverb found in the I Ching and many other places: “Patience in the beginning brings success.” If you are careful and attentive, and work patiently to write your research topic, then rewrite it, then rewrite it again and again, you will have a solid foundation on which to start building your literature review. The topic is your beginning.

Remain patient and steady, and you will succeed.

Doc. reference: phd_t1_u04s1_mpsuccess.html

• Privacy Policy

Buy Me a Coffee

Home » Research Topics – Ideas and Examples

Research Topics – Ideas and Examples

Table of Contents

Research Topic

Definition:

Research topic is a specific subject or area of interest that a researcher wants to investigate or explore in-depth through research. It is the overarching theme or question that guides a research project and helps to focus the research activities towards a clear objective.

How to Choose Research Topic

You can Choose a Research Topic by following the below guide:

Identify your Interests

One of the most important factors to consider when choosing a research topic is your personal interest. This is because you will be spending a considerable amount of time researching and writing about the topic, so it’s essential that you are genuinely interested and passionate about it. Start by brainstorming a list of potential research topics based on your interests, hobbies, or areas of expertise. You can also consider the courses that you’ve enjoyed the most or the topics that have stood out to you in your readings.

Review the Literature

Before deciding on a research topic, you need to understand what has already been written about it. Conducting a preliminary review of the existing literature in your field can help you identify gaps in knowledge, inconsistencies in findings, or unanswered questions that you can explore further. You can do this by reading academic articles, books, and other relevant sources in your field. Make notes of the themes or topics that emerge and use this information to guide your research question.

Consult with your Advisor

Your academic advisor or a mentor in your field can provide you with valuable insights and guidance on choosing a research topic. They can help you identify areas of interest, suggest potential research questions, and provide feedback on the feasibility of your research proposal. They can also direct you towards relevant literature and resources that can help you develop your research further.

Consider the Scope and Feasibility

The research topic you choose should be manageable within the time and resource constraints of your project. Be mindful of the scope of your research and ensure that you are not trying to tackle a topic that is too broad or too narrow. If your topic is too broad, you may find it challenging to conduct a comprehensive analysis, while if it’s too narrow, you may struggle to find enough material to support your research.

Brainstorm with Peers

Discussing potential research topics with your peers or colleagues can help you generate new ideas and perspectives. They may have insights or expertise that you haven’t considered, and their feedback can help you refine your research question. You can also join academic groups or attend conferences in your field to network with other researchers and get inspiration for your research.

Consider the Relevance

Choose a research topic that is relevant to your field of study and has the potential to contribute to the existing knowledge. You can consider the latest trends and emerging issues in your field to identify topics that are both relevant and interesting. Conducting research on a topic that is timely and relevant can also increase the likelihood of getting published or presenting your research at conferences.

Keep an Open Mind

While it’s essential to choose a research topic that aligns with your interests and expertise, you should also be open to exploring new ideas or topics that may be outside of your comfort zone. Consider researching a topic that challenges your assumptions or introduces new perspectives that you haven’t considered before. You may discover new insights or perspectives that can enrich your research and contribute to your growth as a researcher.

Components of Research Topic

A research topic typically consists of several components that help to define and clarify the subject matter of the research project. These components include:

• Research problem or question: This is the central issue or inquiry that the research seeks to address. It should be well-defined and focused, with clear boundaries that limit the scope of the research.
• Background and context: This component provides the necessary background information and context for the research topic. It explains why the research problem or question is important, relevant, and timely. It may also include a literature review that summarizes the existing research on the topic.
• Objectives or goals : This component outlines the specific objectives or goals that the research seeks to achieve. It should be clear and concise, and should align with the research problem or question.
• Methodology : This component describes the research methods and techniques that will be used to collect and analyze data. It should be detailed enough to provide a clear understanding of how the research will be conducted, including the sampling method, data collection tools, and statistical analyses.
• Significance or contribution : This component explains the significance or contribution of the research topic. It should demonstrate how the research will add to the existing knowledge in the field, and how it will benefit practitioners, policymakers, or society at large.
• Limitations: This component outlines the limitations of the research, including any potential biases, assumptions, or constraints. It should be transparent and honest about the potential shortcomings of the research, and how these limitations will be addressed.
• Expected outcomes or findings : This component provides an overview of the expected outcomes or findings of the research project. It should be realistic and based on the research objectives and methodology.

Purpose of Research Topic

The purpose of a research topic is to identify a specific area of inquiry that the researcher wants to explore and investigate. A research topic is typically a broad area of interest that requires further exploration and refinement through the research process. It provides a clear focus and direction for the research project, and helps to define the research questions and objectives. A well-defined research topic also helps to ensure that the research is relevant and useful, and can contribute to the existing body of knowledge in the field. Ultimately, the purpose of a research topic is to generate new insights, knowledge, and understanding about a particular phenomenon, issue, or problem.

Characteristics of Research Topic

some common characteristics of a well-defined research topic include:

• Relevance : A research topic should be relevant and significant to the field of study and address a current issue, problem, or gap in knowledge.
• Specificity : A research topic should be specific enough to allow for a focused investigation and clear understanding of the research question.
• Feasibility : A research topic should be feasible, meaning it should be possible to carry out the research within the given constraints of time, resources, and expertise.
• Novelty : A research topic should add to the existing body of knowledge by introducing new ideas, concepts, or theories.
• Clarity : A research topic should be clearly articulated and easy to understand, both for the researcher and for potential readers of the research.
• Importance : A research topic should be important and have practical implications for the field or society as a whole.
• Significance : A research topic should be significant and have the potential to generate new insights and understanding in the field.

Examples of Research Topics

Here are some examples of research topics that are currently relevant and in-demand in various fields:

• The impact of social media on mental health: With the rise of social media use, this topic has gained significant attention in recent years. Researchers could investigate how social media affects self-esteem, body image, and other mental health concerns.
• The use of artificial intelligence in healthcare: As healthcare becomes increasingly digitalized, researchers could explore the use of AI algorithms to predict and prevent disease, optimize treatment plans, and improve patient outcomes.
• Renewable energy and sustainable development: As the world seeks to reduce its carbon footprint, researchers could investigate the potential of renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power, and how these technologies can be integrated into existing infrastructure.
• The impact of workplace diversity and inclusion on employee productivity: With an increasing focus on diversity and inclusion in the workplace, researchers could investigate how these factors affect employee morale, productivity, and retention.
• Cybersecurity and data privacy: As data breaches and cyber attacks become more common, researchers could explore new methods of protecting sensitive information and preventing malicious attacks.
• T he impact of mindfulness and meditation on stress reduction: As stress-related health issues become more prevalent, researchers could investigate the effectiveness of mindfulness and meditation practices on reducing stress and improving overall well-being.

Research Topics Ideas

Here are some Research Topics Ideas from different fields:

• The impact of social media on mental health and well-being.
• The effectiveness of various teaching methods in improving academic performance in high schools.
• The role of AI and machine learning in healthcare: current applications and future potentials.
• The impact of climate change on wildlife habitats and conservation efforts.
• The effects of video game violence on aggressive behavior in young adults.
• The effectiveness of mindfulness-based stress reduction techniques in reducing anxiety and depression.
• The impact of technology on human relationships and social interactions.
• The role of exercise in promoting physical and mental health in older adults.
• The causes and consequences of income inequality in developed and developing countries.
• The effects of cultural diversity in the workplace on job satisfaction and productivity.
• The impact of remote work on employee productivity and work-life balance.
• The relationship between sleep patterns and cognitive functioning.
• The effectiveness of online learning versus traditional classroom learning.
• The role of government policies in promoting renewable energy adoption.
• The effects of childhood trauma on mental health in adulthood.
• The impact of social media on political participation and civic engagement.
• The effectiveness of cognitive-behavioral therapy in treating anxiety disorders.
• The relationship between nutrition and cognitive functioning.
• The impact of gentrification on urban communities.
• The effects of music on mood and emotional regulation.
• The impact of microplastics on marine ecosystems and food webs.
• The role of artificial intelligence in detecting and preventing cyberattacks.
• The effectiveness of mindfulness-based interventions in managing chronic pain.
• The relationship between personality traits and job satisfaction.
• The effects of social isolation on mental and physical health in older adults.
• The impact of cultural and linguistic diversity on healthcare access and outcomes.
• The effectiveness of psychotherapy in treating depression and anxiety in adolescents.
• The relationship between exercise and cognitive aging.
• The effects of social media on body image and self-esteem.
• The role of corporate social responsibility in promoting sustainable business practices.
• The impact of mindfulness meditation on attention and focus in children.
• The relationship between political polarization and media consumption habits.
• The effects of urbanization on mental health and well-being.
• The role of social support in managing chronic illness.
• The impact of social media on romantic relationships and dating behaviors.
• The effectiveness of behavioral interventions in promoting physical activity in sedentary adults.
• The relationship between sleep quality and immune function.
• The effects of workplace diversity and inclusion programs on employee retention.
• The impact of climate change on global food security.
• The role of music therapy in improving communication and social skills in individuals with autism spectrum disorder.
• The impact of cultural values on the development of mental health stigma.
• The effectiveness of mindfulness-based stress reduction techniques in reducing burnout in healthcare professionals.
• The relationship between social media use and body dissatisfaction among adolescents.
• The effects of nature exposure on cognitive functioning and well-being.
• The role of peer mentoring in promoting academic success in underrepresented student populations.
• The impact of neighborhood characteristics on physical activity and obesity.
• The effectiveness of cognitive rehabilitation interventions in improving cognitive functioning in individuals with traumatic brain injury.
• The relationship between organizational culture and employee job satisfaction.
• The effects of cultural immersion experiences on intercultural competence development.
• The role of assistive technology in promoting independence and quality of life for individuals with disabilities.
• The impact of workplace design on employee productivity and well-being.
• The impact of digital technologies on the music industry and artist revenues.
• The effectiveness of cognitive behavioral therapy in treating insomnia.
• The relationship between social media use and body weight perception among young adults.
• The effects of green spaces on mental health and well-being in urban areas.
• The role of mindfulness-based interventions in reducing substance use disorders.
• The impact of workplace bullying on employee turnover and job satisfaction.
• The effectiveness of animal-assisted therapy in treating mental health disorders.
• The relationship between teacher-student relationships and academic achievement.
• The effects of social support on resilience in individuals experiencing adversity.
• The role of cognitive aging in driving safety and mobility.
• The effectiveness of psychotherapy in treating post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
• The relationship between social media use and sleep quality.
• The effects of cultural competency training on healthcare providers’ attitudes and behaviors towards diverse patient populations.
• The role of exercise in preventing chronic diseases such as type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
• The impact of the gig economy on job security and worker rights.
• The effectiveness of art therapy in promoting emotional regulation and coping skills in children and adolescents.
• The relationship between parenting styles and child academic achievement.
• The effects of social comparison on well-being and self-esteem.
• The role of nutrition in promoting healthy aging and longevity.
• The impact of gender diversity in leadership on organizational performance.
• The effectiveness of family-based interventions in treating eating disorders.
• The relationship between social media use and perceived loneliness among older adults.
• The effects of mindfulness-based interventions on pain management in chronic pain patients.
• The role of physical activity in preventing and treating depression.
• The impact of cultural differences on communication and conflict resolution in international business.
• The effectiveness of eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) in treating anxiety disorders.
• The relationship between student engagement and academic success in higher education.
• The effects of discrimination on mental health outcomes in minority populations.
• The role of virtual reality in enhancing learning experiences.
• The impact of social media influencers on consumer behavior and brand loyalty.
• The effectiveness of acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) in treating chronic pain.
• The relationship between social media use and body image dissatisfaction among men.
• The effects of exposure to nature on cognitive functioning and creativity.
• The role of spirituality in coping with illness and disability.
• The impact of automation on employment and job displacement.
• The effectiveness of dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) in treating borderline personality disorder.
• The relationship between teacher-student relationships and school attendance.
• The effects of mindfulness-based interventions on workplace stress and burnout.
• The role of exercise in promoting cognitive functioning and brain health in older adults.
• The impact of diversity and inclusion initiatives on organizational innovation and creativity.
• The effectiveness of cognitive remediation therapy in treating schizophrenia.
• The relationship between social media use and body dissatisfaction among women.
• The effects of exposure to natural light on mood and sleep quality.
• The role of spirituality in enhancing well-being and resilience in military personnel.
• The impact of artificial intelligence on job training and skill development.
• The effectiveness of interpersonal therapy (IPT) in treating depression.
• The relationship between parental involvement and academic achievement among low-income students.
• The effects of mindfulness-based interventions on emotional regulation and coping skills in trauma survivors.
• The role of nutrition in preventing and treating mental health disorders.

About the author

Muhammad Hassan

Researcher, Academic Writer, Web developer

You may also like

Data Collection – Methods Types and Examples

Delimitations in Research – Types, Examples and...

Research Process – Steps, Examples and Tips

Research Design – Types, Methods and Examples

Institutional Review Board – Application Sample...

Evaluating Research – Process, Examples and...

Have a language expert improve your writing

Run a free plagiarism check in 10 minutes, generate accurate citations for free.

• Knowledge Base
• Starting the research process
• How to Write a Research Proposal | Examples & Templates

How to Write a Research Proposal | Examples & Templates

Published on October 12, 2022 by Shona McCombes and Tegan George. Revised on November 21, 2023.

A research proposal describes what you will investigate, why it’s important, and how you will conduct your research.

The format of a research proposal varies between fields, but most proposals will contain at least these elements:

Introduction

Literature review.

• Research design

Reference list

While the sections may vary, the overall objective is always the same. A research proposal serves as a blueprint and guide for your research plan, helping you get organized and feel confident in the path forward you choose to take.

Table of contents

Research proposal purpose, research proposal examples, research design and methods, contribution to knowledge, research schedule, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about research proposals.

Academics often have to write research proposals to get funding for their projects. As a student, you might have to write a research proposal as part of a grad school application , or prior to starting your thesis or dissertation .

In addition to helping you figure out what your research can look like, a proposal can also serve to demonstrate why your project is worth pursuing to a funder, educational institution, or supervisor.

Research proposal length

The length of a research proposal can vary quite a bit. A bachelor’s or master’s thesis proposal can be just a few pages, while proposals for PhD dissertations or research funding are usually much longer and more detailed. Your supervisor can help you determine the best length for your work.

One trick to get started is to think of your proposal’s structure as a shorter version of your thesis or dissertation , only without the results , conclusion and discussion sections.

Download our research proposal template

Receive feedback on language, structure, and formatting

Professional editors proofread and edit your paper by focusing on:

• Academic style
• Vague sentences
• Style consistency

See an example

Writing a research proposal can be quite challenging, but a good starting point could be to look at some examples. We’ve included a few for you below.

• Example research proposal #1: “A Conceptual Framework for Scheduling Constraint Management”
• Example research proposal #2: “Medical Students as Mediators of Change in Tobacco Use”

Like your dissertation or thesis, the proposal will usually have a title page that includes:

• The proposed title of your project
• Your supervisor’s name
• Your institution and department

The first part of your proposal is the initial pitch for your project. Make sure it succinctly explains what you want to do and why.

Your introduction should:

• Introduce your topic
• Give necessary background and context
• Outline your  problem statement  and research questions

To guide your introduction , include information about:

• Who could have an interest in the topic (e.g., scientists, policymakers)
• How much is already known about the topic
• What is missing from this current knowledge
• What new insights your research will contribute
• Why you believe this research is worth doing

Here's why students love Scribbr's proofreading services

Discover proofreading & editing

As you get started, it’s important to demonstrate that you’re familiar with the most important research on your topic. A strong literature review  shows your reader that your project has a solid foundation in existing knowledge or theory. It also shows that you’re not simply repeating what other people have already done or said, but rather using existing research as a jumping-off point for your own.

In this section, share exactly how your project will contribute to ongoing conversations in the field by:

• Comparing and contrasting the main theories, methods, and debates
• Examining the strengths and weaknesses of different approaches
• Explaining how will you build on, challenge, or synthesize prior scholarship

Following the literature review, restate your main  objectives . This brings the focus back to your own project. Next, your research design or methodology section will describe your overall approach, and the practical steps you will take to answer your research questions.

To finish your proposal on a strong note, explore the potential implications of your research for your field. Emphasize again what you aim to contribute and why it matters.

For example, your results might have implications for:

• Improving best practices
• Informing policymaking decisions
• Strengthening a theory or model
• Challenging popular or scientific beliefs
• Creating a basis for future research

Last but not least, your research proposal must include correct citations for every source you have used, compiled in a reference list . To create citations quickly and easily, you can use our free APA citation generator .

Some institutions or funders require a detailed timeline of the project, asking you to forecast what you will do at each stage and how long it may take. While not always required, be sure to check the requirements of your project.

Here’s an example schedule to help you get started. You can also download a template at the button below.

Download our research schedule template

If you are applying for research funding, chances are you will have to include a detailed budget. This shows your estimates of how much each part of your project will cost.

Make sure to check what type of costs the funding body will agree to cover. For each item, include:

• Cost : exactly how much money do you need?
• Justification : why is this cost necessary to complete the research?
• Source : how did you calculate the amount?

To determine your budget, think about:

• Travel costs : do you need to go somewhere to collect your data? How will you get there, and how much time will you need? What will you do there (e.g., interviews, archival research)?
• Materials : do you need access to any tools or technologies?
• Help : do you need to hire any research assistants for the project? What will they do, and how much will you pay them?

If you want to know more about the research process , methodology , research bias , or statistics , make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples.

Methodology

• Sampling methods
• Simple random sampling
• Stratified sampling
• Cluster sampling
• Likert scales
• Reproducibility

 Statistics

• Null hypothesis
• Statistical power
• Probability distribution
• Effect size
• Poisson distribution

Research bias

• Optimism bias
• Cognitive bias
• Implicit bias
• Hawthorne effect
• Anchoring bias
• Explicit bias

Once you’ve decided on your research objectives , you need to explain them in your paper, at the end of your problem statement .

Keep your research objectives clear and concise, and use appropriate verbs to accurately convey the work that you will carry out for each one.

I will compare …

A research aim is a broad statement indicating the general purpose of your research project. It should appear in your introduction at the end of your problem statement , before your research objectives.

Research objectives are more specific than your research aim. They indicate the specific ways you’ll address the overarching aim.

A PhD, which is short for philosophiae doctor (doctor of philosophy in Latin), is the highest university degree that can be obtained. In a PhD, students spend 3–5 years writing a dissertation , which aims to make a significant, original contribution to current knowledge.

A PhD is intended to prepare students for a career as a researcher, whether that be in academia, the public sector, or the private sector.

A master’s is a 1- or 2-year graduate degree that can prepare you for a variety of careers.

All master’s involve graduate-level coursework. Some are research-intensive and intend to prepare students for further study in a PhD; these usually require their students to write a master’s thesis . Others focus on professional training for a specific career.

Critical thinking refers to the ability to evaluate information and to be aware of biases or assumptions, including your own.

Like information literacy , it involves evaluating arguments, identifying and solving problems in an objective and systematic way, and clearly communicating your ideas.

The best way to remember the difference between a research plan and a research proposal is that they have fundamentally different audiences. A research plan helps you, the researcher, organize your thoughts. On the other hand, a dissertation proposal or research proposal aims to convince others (e.g., a supervisor, a funding body, or a dissertation committee) that your research topic is relevant and worthy of being conducted.

Cite this Scribbr article

If you want to cite this source, you can copy and paste the citation or click the “Cite this Scribbr article” button to automatically add the citation to our free Citation Generator.

McCombes, S. & George, T. (2023, November 21). How to Write a Research Proposal | Examples & Templates. Scribbr. Retrieved April 3, 2024, from https://www.scribbr.com/research-process/research-proposal/

Is this article helpful?

Shona McCombes

Other students also liked, how to write a problem statement | guide & examples, writing strong research questions | criteria & examples, how to write a literature review | guide, examples, & templates, unlimited academic ai-proofreading.

✔ Document error-free in 5minutes ✔ Unlimited document corrections ✔ Specialized in correcting academic texts

• Bibliography
• More Referencing guides Blog Automated transliteration Relevant bibliographies by topics
• Automated transliteration
• Relevant bibliographies by topics
• Referencing guides

Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'English syntax'

Create a spot-on reference in apa, mla, chicago, harvard, and other styles.

Consult the top 50 dissertations / theses for your research on the topic 'English syntax.'

Next to every source in the list of references, there is an 'Add to bibliography' button. Press on it, and we will generate automatically the bibliographic reference to the chosen work in the citation style you need: APA, MLA, Harvard, Chicago, Vancouver, etc.

You can also download the full text of the academic publication as pdf and read online its abstract whenever available in the metadata.

Browse dissertations / theses on a wide variety of disciplines and organise your bibliography correctly.

Baskaran, Lohanayahi. "Aspects of Malaysian English syntax." Thesis, University College London (University of London), 1987. http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1317756/.

Manga, Louise. "The syntax of adverbs in English." Thesis, University of Ottawa (Canada), 1992. http://hdl.handle.net/10393/7948.

Barbe, Pauline. "Exploring variation in Guernsey English syntax." Thesis, Birkbeck (University of London), 1993. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.365841.

Rosta, Andrew. "English syntax and word grammar theory." Thesis, University College London (University of London), 1997. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.288690.

Elenbaas, Marion. "The synchronic and diachronic syntax of the English verb-particle combination /." Utrecht : LOT, 2007. http://bvbr.bib-bvb.de:8991/F?func=service&doc_library=BVB01&doc_number=015659575&line_number=0002&func_code=DB_RECORDS&service_type=MEDIA.

Eppler, Eva Maria. "The syntax of German-English code-switching." Thesis, University College London (University of London), 2005. http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1383656/.

Rupp, Laura Marie. "Aspects of the syntax of English imperatives." Thesis, University of Essex, 1999. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.284607.

Jensen, Britta. "Imperatives in English and Scandinavian." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2003. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.273234.

Al-Qudhai'een, Muhammad A. I. "The syntax of Saudi Arabic-English intrasentential codeswitching." Diss., The University of Arizona, 2003. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/289965.

Trips, Carola. "The OV-VO word order change in early middle English evidence for Scandinavian influence on the English language /." [S.l. : s.n.], 2001. http://www.bsz-bw.de/cgi-bin/xvms.cgi?SWB9556634.

Backman, Mayumi. "Teaching Methods in Japan with relation to English Syntax." Thesis, Högskolan i Halmstad, Sektionen för lärarutbildning (LUT), 2012. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:hh:diva-17854.

Pacheco, Silvana Zardo. "Syntax-pragmatics interface : brazilian-portuguese L2 acquisition of english." Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul, 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/10923/4197.

Ackles, Nancy M. "Historical syntax of the English articles in relation to the count/non-count distinction /." Thesis, Connect to this title online; UW restricted, 1996. http://hdl.handle.net/1773/8405.

Shen, Xingjia. "Late assignment of syntax theory : evidence from Chinese and English." Thesis, University of Exeter, 2006. http://hdl.handle.net/10036/30017.

Whelpton, Matthew James. "The syntax and semantics of infinitives of result in English." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1995. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:acba134d-c3b0-4acb-ab80-13de3eb2daa9.

Casielles-Suarez, Eugenia. "The syntax-information structure interface : evidence from Spanish and English /." New York : Routledge, 2004. http://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb412264587.

Tatjana, Milicev. "Syntax and information structure of the Old English Verb Phrase." Phd thesis, Univerzitet u Novom Sadu, Filozofski fakultet u Novom Sadu, 2016. https://www.cris.uns.ac.rs/record.jsf?recordId=100340&source=NDLTD&language=en.

Callies, Marcus. "Information highlighting in advanced learner English : the syntax-pragmatics interface in second language acquisition /." Amsterdam : John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2009. http://opac.nebis.ch/cgi-bin/showAbstract.pl?u20=9789027254313.

Chu, Ho-tat Matthew, and 朱可達. "Grammar and world-view: a comparative investigation of the syntax of English and Chinese." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 1997. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B31951235.

Pocock, Simon James. "Prepositions, syntax and the acquisition of English as a foreign language." Thesis, University of London, 1996. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.243437.

Dewa, Roberta Jean. "The Old English elegies : coherence, genre, and the semantics of syntax." Thesis, University of Nottingham, 2000. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.364448.

Herat, Sandra Manel Florence. "The expression of syntax in Sri Lankan English : speech and writing." Thesis, University of Leeds, 2002. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.399929.

Hong, Sun-ho. "Aspects of the syntax of wh-questions in English and Korean." Thesis, University of Essex, 2005. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.411217.

Tucker, Daniel. "Scope Licensing in English Sentences Containing Universal Quantifiers and Negation by L1-Mandarin Chinese L2-English Adult Learners." OpenSIUC, 2013. https://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/theses/1188.

Amer, Walid Mohammad Abdelghaffar. "On double object and dative constructions in English and Arabic." Thesis, University of Essex, 1996. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.336940.

Blöhdorn, Lars M. "Postmodifying attributive adjectives in English an integrated corpus-based approach." Frankfurt, M. Berlin Bern Bruxelles New York, NY Oxford Wien Lang, 2008. http://d-nb.info/99131008X/04.

Ono, Hajime. "An investigation of exclamatives in English and Japanese syntax and sentence processing /." College Park, Md. : University of Maryland, 2006. http://hdl.handle.net/1903/3868.

Lock, Elizabeth Ann. "Critical period effects on the acquisition of English syntax by deaf individuals." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1997. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk2/ftp01/MQ29745.pdf.

Lock, Elizabeth A. (Elizabeth Ann). "Critical period effects on the acquisition of English syntax by deaf individuals." Thesis, McGill University, 1996. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=37519.

Egbe, Daniel Isimhenmhen. "An approach to the syntax and semantics of the imperative in English." Thesis, University of Newcastle Upon Tyne, 1985. http://hdl.handle.net/10443/740.

Wheeler, Dan Lowe. "Machine translation through clausal syntax : a statistical approach for Chinese to English." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/46535.

Matheson, Colin Angus. "Syntax and semantics of English partitive noun phrases : a phrase structure account." Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 1990. http://hdl.handle.net/1842/19994.

Adhikari, Bidhya. "A syntactic contrastive study of Sherpa and English with occasional reference to Nepali and Hindi and a brief Sherpa-English dictionary data interpretation based on a linguistic fieldwork research project." Berlin Viademica-Verl, 2008. http://d-nb.info/988160994/04.

Mani, Nivedita. "Prosody, syntax and the lexicon in parsing ambiguous sentences." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2006. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:eb0da21f-d381-4a5c-95c2-7ddae2cd1c30.

Toyota, Junichi. "Diachronic change in the English passive /." Basingstoke : Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. http://opac.nebis.ch/cgi-bin/showAbstract.pl?u20=9780230553453.

Brenchley, Mark David Tristan. "The developing relationship between spoken and written syntax in an English secondary school." Thesis, University of Exeter, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/10871/19913.

Jaworska, Ewa. "Aspects of the syntax of prepositions and prepositional phrases in English and Polish." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1987. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:f5aaca25-2abc-412c-aa1e-a97f743d885b.

Pereira, Noeme Cunha. "A tentative analysis of the initial development of english syntax in UFSC students." reponame:Repositório Institucional da UFSC, 2013. https://repositorio.ufsc.br/handle/123456789/106225.

Leuckert, Sven. "Copula Deletion in English as a Lingua Franca in Asia." Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg, Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, 2016. https://tud.qucosa.de/id/qucosa%3A34476.

Kuribara, Chieko. "Resettability of UG parameters in SLA : acquisition of functional categories by adult Japanese learners of English." Thesis, University of Reading, 2000. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.314310.

Lai, Yee-king Regine, and 黎爾敬. "Language mixing in an English-Cantonese bilingual child with uneven development." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 2006. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B3579379X.

Kwok, Wai Hung, of Western Sydney Macarthur University, and Faculty of Education and Languages. "Some linguistic devices in legal English that cause problems to the translation of legislative texts from English to Chinese." THESIS_FEL_XXX_Kwok_W.xml, 2000. http://handle.uws.edu.au:8081/1959.7/400.

Ursini, Francesco-Alessio. "The Language Of Space : The Acquisition And Interpretation of Spatial Adpositions In English." Doctoral thesis, Macquarie University, Faculty of Human Sciences, Macquarie Centre for Cognitive Science, 2011. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:su:diva-85019.

Bohnacker, Ute. "Icelandic plus English : language differentiation and functional categories in a successively bilingual child." Thesis, Durham University, 1998. http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/5043/.

Hu, Yuxiu Lucille, and 胡玉秀. "The acquisition of English articles by Mandarin-speaking learners: an optimality-theoretic syntax account." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 2011. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B46482738.

Chu, Ho-tat Matthew. "Grammar and world-view : a comparative investigation of the syntax of English and Chinese /." Hong Kong : University of Hong Kong, 1997. http://sunzi.lib.hku.hk/hkuto/record.jsp?B18685353.

Stanelytė, Indrė. "The Realization of Non-spatial Functions in English." Bachelor's thesis, Lithuanian Academic Libraries Network (LABT), 2013. http://vddb.laba.lt/obj/LT-eLABa-0001:E.02~2013~D_20130627_161413-66823.

Saurenbach, Holger. "Secondary-predicate constructions in English : from a critique of small clauses to a construction-grammar account /." Saarbrücken : VDM Verl. Müller, 2008. http://bvbr.bib-bvb.de:8991/F?func=service&doc_library=BVB01&doc_number=016701416&line_number=0002&func_code=DB_RECORDS&service_type=MEDIA.

Hoa, Nguyen, and n/a. "English and Vietnamese political news dicourse : a contrastive analysis in terms of stucture, lexis and syntax." University of Canberra. Education, 1990. http://erl.canberra.edu.au./public/adt-AUC20060725.100742.

Styan, Evelyn Matheson. "Elementary sentences containing 'be' : a semantic analysis of subject-predicate relations." Thesis, McGill University, 1987. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=75679.

Syntax Research Paper

View sample Syntax Research Paper. Browse other  research paper examples and check the list of research paper topics for more inspiration. If you need a religion research paper written according to all the academic standards, you can always turn to our experienced writers for help. This is how your paper can get an A! Feel free to contact our custom writing service for professional assistance. We offer high-quality assignments for reasonable rates.

The linear arrangement of the words in a sentence is rarely arbitrary, and the morphological shape which words take often depends on other words they cooccur with. The part of grammar that deals with the pertinent regularities is called syntax.

Academic Writing, Editing, Proofreading, And Problem Solving Services

Get 10% off with 24start discount code, 1. functions of syntax.

Loosely speaking, the variations in form and position that constitute syntax fulfill a number of functions: The words and phrases of a sentence stand in various meaning relations to each other, and these relations are encoded by syntactic differences. A basic function is the expression of so-called ‘thematic relations’ or ‘argument linking’: a verb such as kill expresses a two-place predicate KILL (x, y), a relation between an agent x and a patient y in an event of killing. Such argument roles of a predicate must be linked to the argument expressions in a sentence, and at least in the ideal case, this linking is carried out systematically in natural language, for example by word order, as in English (1), or by case, as in German (2):

(1) the tiger killed the buffalo.

agent predicate patient

(2) dass der Tiger den Buffel totete

that the.nom tiger the.acc buffalo killed.

Argument linking is not the only semantic-pragmatic function figuring in syntax. Argument places of verbs can, for example, be questioned (who did he see?), and languages may require that question phrases appear in specific positions (e.g., clause initially, as in English). Information structure (‘new vs. old information,’ ‘focus vs. topic’) is a relevant dimension for sentence construction too, and may influence word order, for example. Unlike (2), German (3) seems to be fully felicitous only in a situation in which the crucial new information is the identification of the tiger as the agent of killing.

(3) dass den Buffel der Tiger totete.

A characterization of the functions that syntax encodes must be complemented by an identification of the means of encoding. Word order and shape variation are two options. The latter comes in two varieties. The fact that a noun is the agent of a verb may be encoded by shape variation of the noun ( = case), or by shape variation of the verb (agreement markers)—or a combination of both. ‘Word order,’ on the other hand, seems to be the result of mapping the two-dimensional hierarchical structure of a sentence onto the unidimensional sound (or letter) stream (see Sect. 4 below). Intonational differences often serve to express pragmatic and semantic functions, but they seem to be employed only rarely in argument linking.

2. Argument Roles

In a sentence such as (4), we can distinguish words and phrases that are linked to argument places (in italics) of the predicate (boldface), and words and phrases that are not; which have an adjunct function (underlined).

(4) Jack saw the girl in the park yesterday.

Let us confine our attention to argument roles. They are linked to (the meaning of ) the predicate hierarchically. For a verb such as kill, the agent is higher in this hierarchy than the patient. Grammatical differences reflect these hierarchies systematically. When two arguments of a predicate refer to the same entity, the higher argument will, for example, be realized in its usual shape, whereas the lower argument takes a special form (it is, e.g., realized as a reflexive pronoun) but not vice versa.

(5) (I expect) Bill to wash himself.

(I expect) *himself to wash Bill.

[Ungrammatical strings are preceded by a*]

For prototypical instances of ‘transitive’ relations, that is, for verbs expressing instantaneous causation of an event affecting a patient by an agent (kill, beat), the hierarchy seems to be the same in all languages, with agents always being more prominent than patients. Potential exceptions to this (Dyirbal, Arctic Eskimo; see e.g., Marantz 1984) can presumably be explained away. For less prototypical relations—e.g., for psychological predicates—grammatical hierarchies are linked to semantics less systematically, as the difference between like and please suggests: the ‘experiencer’ of the psychological state is encoded as the subject (as the higher role) with like, but as an object (the lower role) with please. Languages may differ in this respect—in some, nearly all psychological predicates follow the model of please (Basque), in others, all relevant verbs pattern with like (Lezghian), and in still others (like English), both construction types occur (see Bossong 1998).

In addition to identifying their place in the hierarchy, argument roles have often been classified in terms of notions that we have already used informally, namely/thematic (‘theta’) roles (Gruber 1965, Dowty 1991, Jackendoff 1990; but also Hjelmslev 1972, 1935–7, Jakobson 1971, 1936) such as ‘agent,’ ‘instrument,’ ‘goal,’ ‘experience,’ ‘source,’ ‘patient,’ etc. One needs to refer to these notions in the context of selecting the proper preposition or semantic case, but for capturing core syntactic laws, the necessity of integrating theta roles (in addition to hierarchy statements) into grammatical descriptions has yet to be established (apart, perhaps, from the special role played by the agent function). At least, most if not all current grammatical models can do without them easily (Fillmore 1968 and approaches following him are notable exceptions).

3. Grammatical Functions

One issue of syntactic theory is whether argument roles can be linked directly to the formal means of encoding, or whether the rules of encoding crucially employ ancillary notions, namely, the grammatical functions ‘subject,’ ‘direct object,’ ‘indirect object,’ etc. Some grammatical models (Relational Grammar, Perlmutter (1983); Lexical Functional Grammar, (Bresnan 1982)) assume that such grammatical relations are indispensable primitive notions of syntax. Other approaches, such as the Standard Theory (Chomsky 1965), or the Government and Binding (GB) framework (Chomsky 1981) take grammatical functions (at best) to be mere classificatory concepts of little explanatory value, which can be defined in terms of structure and hierarchy: a ‘direct object’ is a noun phrase ‘governed’ by the verb, or it is a noun phrase which is a structural sister of the verb.

Thus, Lexical Functional Grammar assumes that sentences are linked to a functional structure, in which, e.g., the verb kill is linked to two abstract grammatical functions, subject and object. How these grammatical relations are spelled out is a function of language-particular rules. In English, grammatical functions are encoded by word order (more precisely, hierarchically)—the direct object has to follow the verb immediately (1). In German (2, 3), the grammatical functions seem encoded by case marking (direct objects bear accusative case). The mapping from argument structure to formal means of expression would thus proceed as in (6):

(6) kill (role 1, role 2)

kill (subject, object)

kill (nominative, accusative)

Lexical Decomposition Grammar (Wunderlich 1997) translates argument hierarchies directly into morphological markings or order relations; that is, the second step in (6) is skipped. The Standard Theory and the GB framework assume that sentences are linked to an abstract ‘deep structure,’ in which the words and phrases combine hierarchically, with argument role hierarchies being reflected by argument expression hierarchies in deep structure, as in (7). Such deep structures are mapped on to audible representations in various ways, e.g., by case marking, reordering, etc.

(7) [ Infl-Phrase Infl [ VP [the tiger] [killed [the buffalo]]]]

In other words, there is no consensus concerning the status of grammatical functions. It seems fair to say however, that no universally applicable definitional criteria for, e.g., subjecthood, have been found so far. This suggests that grammatical functions must either be considered fuzzy concepts, or that they reflect a grammatical perspective that may be adequate in some languages only.

The nature of grammatical functions has often been discussed in the context of the claim that one type of linking argument expressions to argument places, namely the hierarchical-positional (‘configurational’) one that we find in English, is more fundamental than the others (such as case marking) in the sense that it underlies the grammatical system of all languages: at deep structure level, all languages follow roughly the constructional logic of English. This is the position held by the mainstream version of the GB framework, and has been taken over in the Minimalist program (Chomsky 1995). The contrary view that there are no privileged systems has been a minority position in GB (e.g., Hale 1983), and is the position held by Lexical Functional Grammar and Relational Grammar. Debates in the 1980s primarily contrasted languages with rigid word order and little case marking (English, Chinese) with languages with a relatively elaborate case system and free constituent order (German, Japanese). One outcome is the insight that a strong hierarchy-based configurational component can be identified in the grammar of languages with a fairly rich case marking too (e.g., Haider 1993).

On the other hand, it may also be uncontroversial that polysynthetic languages (such as Mohawk) with a very rich system of verbal agreement have a grammatical system that differs radically from, say, English and Japanese. It appears as if nominal expressions in the polysynthetic languages do not show a grammatical behavior that is even remotely reminiscent of subjects and objects—rather, their grammar is com- parable to what holds for adjuncts (like adverbs) in English. Argument linking and other important grammatical factors seem to be dealt with in the morphology only. Why this is so, and whether this means that there are languages without a syntax proper (a position strongly argued against by Baker 1996) is an open issue.

4. Movement

If more than one semantic–pragmatic relation has to be expressed, and if the same encoding mechanism is used for the different functions, the encoding rules may impose incompatible requirements on a phrase in a sentence. In English, the positional system of identifying arguments requires that objects follow the verb, whereas question phrases have to appear at the beginning of a clause. These requirements cannot be met simultaneously:

(8) (a) *(I do not care) you like who

(b) (I do not care) who you like

One way of dealing with this problem has been the postulation of various levels of representation, such that different requirements have to be met at different levels. In the Chomskyian tradition (see e.g., Chomsky 1957, 1965, 1981) a level called deep structure/d-structure, representing the thematic relations among arguments and predicates has played a prominent role until quite recently. This d-structure (corresponding to (9a)) would then be mapped on to representations coming close to the phonetic ‘surface’ by a set of structure-changing operations (‘transformations’), of which the movement (more precisely: fronting) of phrases has been the most important one (relative to (9a), who has moved to clause initial position in (9b)). The law that requires that complement questions begin with a question word applies at ‘surface structure’ (s-structure) only, not at deep structure.

(9) (a) you like who?

(b) who do you like?

Details changed in the 1990s, but the distinction between structure building operations encoding argument linking and structure-changing operations (movement) is still a key property of all grammatical models inspired by Chomsky. Most alternative approaches (e.g., Generalized Phrase Structure Gram- mar; Gazdar et al. 1985) differ at a purely technical level only. Optimality Theory borrowed from phonology (Prince and Smolensky 1993; see also Grimshaw 1997, Kager 1999, Muller 2000) allows the handling of conflicts between incompatible grammatical requirements in a quite different way: the grammatical principles are ordered, and lower principles (such as: the object appears to the right of the verb) may be violated in the interest of higher ones (such as: question phrases appear clause-initially). Whether such options will eventually reduce the importance of movement metaphors in grammatical descriptions is an open question at the time of writing.

Beginning with the seminal work of Ross (1967), investigations on syntactic movement have brought to light a new type of syntactic law. There is a set of ‘locality conditions’ on movement, in the sense that words and phrases cannot be moved out of certain kinds of construction. Thus, in English, simple complement clauses are transparent for movement, while complement questions or relative clauses are not. (The place where a phrase has moved from is indicated by.)

(10) (a) you think that she likes someone

who do you think that she likes

(b) you wonder when she kissed someone

*who do you wonder when she kissed

(c) you know a man who kissed someone

*who do you know a man who kissed

In (10b) and (10c), we observe an ‘intervention’ effect. The phrase who should be placed in the position indicated by at d-structure (because of the laws of argument linking), and in sentence initial position at s-structure because of the laws of question formation. The ‘preposing’ of who yields ungrammaticality in (10b) and (10c) because phrases cannot cross similar phrases (like when in (10b)) when they move to their surface position.

A similar intervention effect can be observed in (11) when a choice must be made between different phrases that could be placed into sentence-initial position: again, a phrase of type X must not cross a phrase of the same type in this context. This is the so-called superiority effect (see Chomsky 1973, also Chomsky 1995, Rizzi 1990).

(11) (a) who do you expect to buy what

(b) *what do you expect who to buy

Furthermore, only complement clauses with an object function are transparent for movement, but not subject clauses (12a) and adjunct clauses (12b):

(12) (a) *who is to kiss fun?

(b) *who do you weep because you met_ ?

The Chomskyan approach (in the narrower sense) tries to identify a set of purely formal and universally valid syntactic laws that characterize such ‘island’ effects (see Chomsky 1981, 1986). The empirical challenge is that the constraints proposed so far are not being respected in all languages in the same way.

5. Logical Forms

Not all languages require that constituent questions be formed by the fronting of a question word or phrase (wh-phrase). In Chinese, wh-phrases are realized in the position where they should appear according to the laws of argument linking.

(13) ni xihuan shei

you like who

‘who do you like?’

Interestingly, the scope options of Chinese wh- phrases are constrained, and in a way reminiscent of what we saw in the preceding section for English. Thus, a wh-phrase which takes scope over the whole matrix clause may appear as part of an object clause (14), but cannot show up in a subject clause (15). This is identical to what we have just observed for English (10a), (12).

(14) Zhangsan xiangxin shei mai-le shu

Zhangsan believe who bought books

‘who does Zhangsan believe bought books?’

(15) *Zhangsan tao-le shei zhen kexi

Zhangsan marry who real pity

‘for which x: that Zhangsan married x is a real pity’

Such observations gave rise to the idea (Huang 1982), quite popular in the GB framework, that shei undergoes movement to the clause initial position corresponding to its semantic scope as well (so that it is clear why its scope behavior is constrained by restrictions on movement), but ‘invisibly’ so. There are two ways in which the relevant observations may be interpreted, one that gives priority to syntax, and one that does not.

The GB framework postulated a grammatical architecture as in (16): by putting together words from the lexicon, a deep structure arises. This d-structure undergoes a number of transformations, mainly movement, in order to reach the interface levels Phonetic Form (PF) (interface with the articulatory–perceptory system) and Logical Form (LF) (interface with the cognitive system). The first steps, so-called ‘overt’ syntax, are common to these two derivations targeting PF and LF; they yield surface structure (s-structure). ‘After’ s-structure, the two paths split. The syntactic derivation of LF proceeds in the standard way, but no longer affecting phonetic material (covert syntax).

(17) shei Zhangsan xiangxin mai-le shu

who Zhangsan believe bought books

Note that the major argument for such a view is the empirical observation that conditions that constrain c visible movement in some languages (see (12)) restrict the scope-taking behavior of certain phrases that have not been moved visibly (see (15)) in other languages. If one presupposes or shows that the relevant constraints c are formal-syntactic in nature, the conclusion that there is a syntactic component with invisible movement is quite compelling—but one must keep in mind that the overt movement operations constrained by c serve the purpose of scope-taking too.

Thus, one can also take quite a different perspective on facts as represented by (12) and (15): language could be governed by an elaborate system of semantic constraints on scope taking, and apparent syntactic conditions on movement might turn out to be superficial consequences of these constraints. Such semantic constraints affect the distribution of, for example, question words quite independently of whether they are moved syntactically or not. Proposals that can be related to this idea can be found in the literature (see, e.g., Erteshik-Shir 1977, Szabolsci and Zwarts 1997), but a full semantic account of constraints on movement has yet to be developed.

6. Structural Hierarchies

The previous section illustrated the difficulty of disentangling syntax and semantics in the domain of constraints on movement. This difficulty reappears when one considers the role which the geometry of abstract syntactic structures plays for quite a variety of relations and processes. (18)–(20) illustrate probably universal asymmetries that are cases in point: the pronoun he can be bound semantically by no one in (18a) only, but not in (18b): (18b) cannot have the interpretation sketched in (18c). E er in (19) is a socalled ‘negative polarity item.’ It can appear in a sentence only if there is a negating expression present in that sentence. Nobody manages to license the polarity element e er in (19a), but not in (19b). (20) illustrates the fact that question (wh-) phrases are almost always moved to the left (if at all), but not the right.

(18) (a) No one thinks that he is incompetent.

(b) *He thinks that no one is incompetent.

(c) Vx (x thinks: x is incompetent)

(19) (a) Nobody thinks he will ever have enough money.

(b) *Bill ever thinks nobody will have enough money.

(20) (a) you tell me that she likes who

who do you tell me that she likes?

(b) you tell who that she likes Mary

*you tell that she likes Mary who

Such asymmetries were noted very early in modern syntax theory. After several unsuccessful attempts involving crucial reference to precedence, Culicover (1976) and Reinhart (1976) discovered the relevant purely structural factor at more or less the same time. The term c-command goes back to Reinhart (1976). We have reformulated it here as in (21), in a way that fits easily into present-day assumptions.

(21) a c-commands b if b is part of the structural

sister of a

Recall that argument hierarchies are mapped, e.g., on to hierarchical abstract deep-structures, which are then transformed to surface structures by further operations. For (22), one might postulate a surface structure such as (23) in the bracket notation, and (24) in the tree notation.

(22) the dangerous tiger has killed the old buffalo

(23) [the [[dangerous] [tiger]]] [has [[killed]

[the [[old] [buffalo]]]]]]

the dangerous tiger has killed the old buffalo

We have labeled the nodes in the tree (24) for ease of reference. We say that A dominates B iff there is a uniquely downwards directed path in the tree from A to B. Thus, s dominates x, but neither y nor z dominate w. A immediately dominates B iff A dominates B and there is no C that dominates B but not A. A is a sister of B if there is a C such that C immediately dominates A and B. Therefore, (21) implies that z c-commands w but not vice versa.

The following generalizations then hold for natural languages:

(25) A noun phrase A can bind a pronoun B only if

A c-commands B.

(26) A negating expression A licenses a polarity

element B only if A c-commands B.

(27) An element can move from position A to

position B only if A c-commands B.

Let us exemplify the impact of these statements with (25) only. The examples in (18) translate into the simplified partial structural representations (28). It is easy to figure out that no one c-commands he in (28a), but not in (28b), so that (25) correctly predicts that no one can bind the pronoun in (18a) only.

(28) (a) [no one [thinks [that [he [is [incompetent]]]]]]

(b) [he [thinks [that [no one [is [incompetent]]]]]]

Reference to the structural notion c-command in (25) cannot be replaced by precedence, because such an account would fail to explain why nobody can neither bind the pronoun nor license the polarity element in (29).

(29) *a letter to nobody would ever please him Presumably, the establishment of syntactic relations between A and B always presupposes that A c-commands B, or vice versa.

Kayne (1994) has proposed that elements α that asymmetrically c-command β precede β in all natural languages. If his approach is correct, we would understand why the basic orders subject–verb–object (SVO, English), SOV (Japanese), and VSO (Irish) predominate among the world’s languages; subjects occupy a hierarchically higher position in sentence structure than objects, and should therefore precede them if Kayne is right.

7. Operations Affecting Grammatical Relations

That the formation of questions, relative clauses, topicalization, etc. involves a preposing operation in certain languages such as English seems to be accepted quite generally, There may even be psycholinguistic evidence suggesting that such movement dependencies are processed in a special way by the human parser (see, e.g., Frazier and Clifton 1993).

In addition to such dependencies, in which phrases are displaced in order to encode semantic or pragmatic functions (so-called A-bar-movement), there are grammatical operations such as ‘passive’ (as in (30)) or ‘raising to subject’ (as in (31)) which primarily affect the grammatical functions of arguments: in a thematic sense, a moose in (30c) has properties of an object (it expresses the patient role); in other respects, it behaves like a subject (in terms of position and agreement with the verb).

(30) (a) one shot a moose

(b) there was a moose shot

(c) a moose was shot

(31) (a) it seems that he likes Mary

(b) he seems to like Mary

That such operations affecting grammatical functions should be expressed in terms of movement (see (32)) is less obvious (at least for languages in which grammatical functions are not straightforwardly en- coded positionally) and less widely accepted.

(32) d-structure

_was shot a moose

s-structure

a moose was shot_

Although the proper analysis of these processes is still subject to some debate, a number of locality restrictions on the process have, however, been un-covered, which are illustrated in (33).

(33) (a) I shoot a moose

a moose was shot

(b) I laugh at him

he was laughed at

(c) I expect her to win

she was expected to win

(d) I expect she will win

*she was expected will win

(e) I prefer very much for you to kiss Mary

*Mary was preferred very much for you to

The passive operation may map a direct object (33a), an object in a prepositional phrase (33b), and the subject of a nonfinite complement (33c) to the subject position, but fails to be able to establish such a relation for the subject of an embedded finite clause (33d), or any object in an embedded clause (33e).

The restrictions may be slightly different in other languages, as the contrast between English and German in (34) shows, but the crucial observation is that similar locality restrictions can be observed with the binding of reflexive pronouns, at least in the most restrictive subcase of this domain, as it is realized in English; see (35).

(34) (a) he forgot to repair the car

*the car was forgotten to repair

(b) er vergass den Wagen

he.nom forgot the.acc car

zu.repaieren

der Wagen wurde zu reparieren

the.nom car was to repair

(35) he shot himself

he laughs at himself

he expects himself to win

*he expects himself will win

*he prefers very much for her to kiss himself

The set of constructions to which these locality restrictions common to passivization and the grammar of reflexives apply is larger: it includes quantifier scope. A quantifier s can always take scope over a quantifier t if s c-commands t at s-structure. Thus, since subjects are higher in the structural hierarchy than objects, sentence (36a) allows a reading in which the existential quantifier takes scope over the universal quantifier

(36) (a) some man loves every woman

(b) there is a man such that this man loves every woman

(c) for every woman there is a man (possibly a different one for each woman) such that that man loves the woman

In English, however, a structurally lower quantifier s in position S may additionally take scope over t in position T if S and T could interact in terms of, say, passive formation, or the binding of reflexive pronouns. Thus, (36a) allows the further interpretation indicated in (36c), in which the object quantifier takes scope over the subject quantifier. A comparison of (33), (35), and(37) exemplifies the parallelism between wide scope options for a hierarchically lower quantifier, and the possibility of passive formation binding of reflexive pronouns. See also Hornstein (1995).

(37) some woman laughs at every man

(wide scope for every man possible)

some woman expects every man to be a loser

some woman expects every man will be a loser

(wide scope for every man impossible)

some woman prefers very much for me to kiss every man

If formal syntax is responsible for the restrictions exemplified in (33), the binding rules for reflexives and the scope taking behavior of quantifiers must be reducible to syntactic operations too. However, it is hard to exclude the possibility that some extrasyntactic constraints governing quantifier scope or reflexive binding have side effects on passivization or raising, so that (33) would find a nonsyntactic account. Note, furthermore, that the impression that the same factor constrains the three different types of process discussed here may be spurious. Thus, in many languages (e.g., Swedish) the domain for the binding of reflexive pronouns is much larger than the domain for passive formation.

8. A Note Of Autonomy

As a reaction to so-called Generative Semantics, the hypothesis of the autonomy of syntax governed much of the history of current syntactic theorizing (see Newmeyer 1980): syntax was considered to be the only ‘generative’ component, the results of which are merely interpreted by semantics and by phonology. The preceding sections have revealed that it is often difficult to draw a sharp boundary between syntax and semantics, and strong adherence to the autonomy hypothesis may nowadays reflect a rather parochial perspective.

The same may be true for the interaction of phonology and syntax. The laws of the placement of clitics (e.g., unstressed pronouns) as we find them in Romance and Slavic languages often make crucial reference to phonological conditions (no clitic element must appear in the initial position of an intonation phrase) and syntactic conditions (elements bearing a given case etc. must appear in the leftmost position of, say, the verbal projection) at the same time. Phonological conditions may even be responsible for the application of syntactic operations such as verb movement.

The idea of a completely autonomous and encapsulated syntactic component, in which all processes can be understood in purely formal syntax-based terms only, in which syntactic processes are driven by syntactic conditions only, which was most popular in the GB tradition, therefore has to be modified, at least.

9. Approaches To Universals

The discovery of syntactic universals and their explanation has always been the major goal of syntactic theory. The typological tradition tries to attain this goal by comparing a large and representative sample of languages with respect to specific grammatical properties. Often this presupposes that the constructions can only be looked at in less detail than in the generative tradition. In the generative approach, the idea is to uncover abstract universal laws by an in-depth analysis of a few languages only.

The GB approach (Chomsky 1981) tried to identify a small set of simple yet universally valid syntactic principles, defining a Universal Grammar. It was assumed, especially in later stages of the theory, that formal differences between languages reduce to differences in the lexical inventory. The quest for such simple yet universally valid syntactic generalization was not successful, however, so the GB framework was replaced by, essentially, two new models. The Minimalist Program (Chomsky 1995) tries to understand syntactic properties in terms of so-called interface conditions (phonology, semantics). It may have explanatory value, but its empirical coverage is sometimes limited. Optimality Theory (OT) (Prince and Smolensky 1993, Grimshaw 1997) assumes that there are universally valid and simple conditions. Phonology, syntax, and semantics are not necessarily isolated subcomponents. OT acknowledges that simple principles will be in conflict with each. Such conflicts are resolved by ordering the principles hierarchically. Hierarchies are different in various languages, the only source of grammatical differences.

In particular, the major principles assumed in OT may correspond to ‘ideal types’ that languages may come close to in different degrees (as a function of the ranking of the relevant principles), so OT may have moved the generative enterprise closer to typology. This may be true in yet another sense; in contrast to GB, OT declared explicitly itself as a theory of variation and its explanation.

Bibliography:

• Baker M 1996 The Polysynthesis Parameter. Oxford University Press, New York
• Bossong G 1998 Le marquage de l’experient dans les langues d’Europe. In: Feuillet J (ed.) Actance et Valence dans les Langues de l’europe. Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin, pp. 259– 94
• Bresnan J (ed.) 1982 The Mental Representation of Grammatical Relations. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA
• Chomsky N 1957 Syntactic Structures. Mouton, The Hague, The Netherlands
• Chomsky N 1965 Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA
• Chomsky N 1973 Conditions on transformations. In: Anderson S, Kiparsky P (eds.) A Festschrift for Morris Halle. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York, pp. 232–86
• Chomsky N 1981 Lectures on Government and Binding. Foris, Dordrecht, The Netherlands
• Chomsky N 1986 Barriers. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA
• Chomsky N 1995 The Minimalist Program. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA
• Culicover P 1976 A constraint on coreferentiality. Foundations of Language 14: 109–18
• Dowty D 1991 Thematic protoroles and argument selection. Language 67: 574–619
• Erteshik-Shir N 1977 On the Nature of Island Constraints. IULC, Bloomington, IN
• Fillmore C 1968 The case for case. In: Bach E, Harms R (eds.) Universals in Linguistic Theory. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York, pp. 1–88
• Frazier K, Clifton C 1993 Construal. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA
• Gazdar G, Klein E, Pullum G, Sag I 1985 Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar. Blackwell, London
• Grimshaw J 1997 Projections, heads and optimality. Linguistic Inquiry 28: 373–422
• Gruber J 1965 Studies in lexical relations. Diss., MIT, Cambridge
• Haider H 1993 Deutsche Syntax—generati . Narr, Tubingen, Germany
• Hale K 1983 Warlpiri and the grammar of non-configurational languages. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 1: 5–47
• Hjelmslev L 1972 [1935–7] La categorie des cas. Etude de grammaire generale. W Fink, Munich, Germany
• Hornstein N 1995 Logical Form. Blackwell, Oxford, UK
• Huang C T J 1982 Move WH in a language without Wh movement. The Linguistic Review 1(4): 369–416
• Jackendoff R 1990 Semantic Structures. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA
• Jakobson R 1971, [1936] Beitrag zur allgemeinen Kasuslehre. Gesamtbedeutungen der russischen Kasus. Selected Writings II. Mouton, The Hague, pp. 23–71
• Kager R 1999 Optimality Theory. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK
• Kayne R 1994 The Antisymmetry of Syntax. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA
• Marantz A 1984 On the Nature of Grammatical Relations. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA
• Muller G 2000 Elemente der optimalitatstheoretischen Syntax. Stauffenburg, Tubingen, Germany
• Newmeyer F 1980 Linguistic Theory in America. Academic Press, New York
• Perlmutter D (ed.) 1983 Studies in Relational Grammar 1. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL
• Prince A, Smolensky P 1993 Optimality theory Ms., Rutgers University, NJ
• Reinhart T 1976 The syntactic domain of anaphora. Ph.D. diss., MIT, Cambridge, MA
• Ross J R 1967 Constraints on variables in syntax. Ph.D. diss., MIT, Cambridge, MA
• Rizzi L 1990 Relativized Minimality. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA
• Szabolcsi A, Zwarts F 1997 Weak islands and an algebraic semantics for scope taking. In: Szabolcsi A (ed.) Ways of Scope Taking. Kluwer, Dordrecht, The Netherlands
• Wunderlich D 1997 Cause and the structure of verbs. Linguistic Inquiry 28(1): 27–68

ORDER HIGH QUALITY CUSTOM PAPER

• SUGGESTED TOPICS
• The Magazine
• Newsletters
• Managing Yourself
• Managing Teams
• Work-life Balance
• The Big Idea
• Data & Visuals
• Reading Lists
• Case Selections
• HBR Learning
• Topic Feeds
• Account Settings
• Email Preferences

6 Strategic Concepts That Set High-Performing Companies Apart

• Kaihan Krippendorff

Lessons from Microsoft, NVIDIA, Netflix, Tesla, and others.

Strategic concepts come in and out of fashion as the needs and dynamics of the marketplace change. Research and analysis of today’s landscape identifies six key strategic concepts that set outperforming companies apart: Borrow someone’s road, partner with a third party, reveal your strategy, be good, let the competition go, and adopt small scale attacks.

At the close of 2023, the California-based chip company Nvidia announced yet another quarter of record sales — an achievement that came hot on the heels of its entry to the elite club of U.S. enterprises with a $1 trillion market valuation earlier in the year. The company, whose success has been fueled by the AI boom, now holds approximately 80% of the global market share for GPU semiconductor chips .

• Kaihan Krippendorff is the co-author, with Robert C. Wolcott, of Proximity: How Coming Breakthroughs in Just-in-Time Transform Business, Society, and Daily Life  and founder of Outthinker Networks .

Partner Center

An official website of the United States government

Here’s how you know

Official websites use .gov A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS A lock ( Lock A locked padlock ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

• Science and Technology Directorate
• Feature Article: New Geo-Tracking Buoys Live Test Events

Feature Article: New Geo-Tracking Buoys Make a Splash During Live Test Events

New rugged buoy technologies equipped with Automatic Identification Systems aim to help the U.S. Coast Guard mark and track objects in the water.

Recent years have seen an uptick in the use of geo-tracking technology, which has become so widespread and affordable that we are able to attach small trackers to car keys or luggage to find them with our smartphones. The Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) is working with the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) to develop buoys with improved geo-tracking technology for mission specific field use.

Instead of looking for car keys, USCG crews can use this technology to find and mark critical locations or objects in the water using buoys deployed from air or surface vessels. These could include stranded boats, contraband, or hazardous waste that are required to be reidentified after initial search and rescue or interdiction efforts are complete. The two new buoy systems, created by S&T industry partners, are moving into the final round of testing this year after successfully completing functional tests in 2023.

Building a Better Buoy

The USCG handles thousands of cases each year , each potentially involving the deployment of numerous supporting assets necessary to complete those missions. After the initial response efforts, ocean currents and associated weather conditions can carry away watercraft or other manmade materials from the original incident site. This presents a challenge for USCG crews since those materials left behind can become navigation hazards in busy shipping lanes or involve illegal goods. During a drug interdiction, for example, suspects will often throw contraband overboard while fleeing. Determining where these illegal materials are located is an essential part of gathering evidence and protecting the nation’s coasts; therefore, finding them quickly is key.

“The availability of accurate, real-time geo-position data is critical in verifying the drift and motion of items of interest and assisting in the planning of a search and rescue or other response mission,” said Edwin Thiedeman of the USCG Office of C4 & Sensors Capabilities.

“S&T is working closely with the vendors, USCG subject matter experts, and operators to deliver more capable buoys to support multiple USCG missions. These new improved buoys will provide the USCG with much improved accuracy and reliability to execute their important maritime missions,” stated Ron McNeal, S&T Silicon Valley Innovation Program (SVIP) transition director.

While the USCG currently has geo-tracking buoys, the existing systems do not have a secondary locator that is visible at sea level day and night in case of geo-tracking failure. The existing systems are not reusable or rechargeable, so they have to be replaced frequently, representing a significant cost and a potential loss in data. S&T’s SVIP put out a call to industry through the Maritime Object Tracking Technology (MOTT) solicitation for rugged geo-tracking buoys that could be quickly deployed from both air and surface vessels traveling at high speeds. The buoys needed to transmit Automatic Identification System (AIS) and Global Positioning System (GPS) data, which large ships use to share and receive location data while traversing the world’s waterways. Having AIS/GPS capabilities built into the buoy helps ensure USCG crews would be able to quickly pick up signals using their existing communications equipment.

“The ability to link small innovative businesses directly with the government to provide new technologies to fit government needs has a wide range of benefits for all parties. With all of this in mind, MOTT’s goal was to find a start-up company with a new or existing buoy system that could be tailored to the USCG’s needs, resulting in more efficient technology transition and acquisition processes,“ said CDR Rebecca Fosha, deputy of the USCG Research, Development, Test & Evaluation and Innovation Program .

Following the solicitation’s initial launch in March 2020, SVIP awarded funds to two companies: Kenautics, Inc. and Morcom International, Inc . Each business had an existing system they could adapt to the USCG’s requirements: the Kenautics Global Positioning System AIS Navigation and Tracking Buoy and the Morcom Tracking Unit for Navigational Aid. Both companies reached Phase 3 of the SVIP funding lifecycle in 2023, which required functional tests in a real-world setting.

“Startups typically don’t have the human or financial capital to champion large R&D projects,” said Melissa Oh, SVIP managing director. “Using the SVIP phased approach, we are quickly able to assess if a technology will have the ability to respond to the given need and transition the technology to the operators on a timeline that allows smaller businesses to be competitive.”

Go For Test Launch

In August and November 2023, staff from SVIP and the USCG Research, Development, Test & Evaluation and Innovation Program traveled to USCG Base Elizabeth City, North Carolina, to conduct separate test runs for each of the new MOTT buoys. The tests focused on how the buoys operated when dropped from different altitudes and velocities, which involved deploying the systems from an MH-60T helicopter and an HC-130J fixed wing aircraft traveling at various speeds and altitudes. Evaluators were interested in how the rugged designs held up upon impact, given that one version of the buoy has a parachute and the other does not.

It was also important to see whether the buoys successfully continued to function when they impacted the water, while at the same time determining whether the buoy went too deep under the surface of the water. Going too deep underwater could risk the system striking the bottom, where it might potentially get stuck or malfunction once it resurfaced. Participants conducted 10 drops over the course of four days, which provided valuable feedback on improvements that Kenautics and Morcom International can incorporate into the next version of their prototypes.

“It was important to test the buoys in a realistic, operational environment—in this case Base Elizabeth City—to evaluate the structure, functions, and software integrity. Observation from USCG personnel and the companies provided valuable feedback to modify the buoys’ performance to better fit USCG missions,” noted Jason Pharr from the Tactical/Navigation Program Office in the Engineering Support Branch of the USCG Aviation Logistics Center.

In addition to testing the buoys’ ability to withstand water impact, S&T and USCG staff also evaluated their battery life and cybersecurity. Rechargeable batteries are one of the design components that will help make the new buoys more cost effective than current models, so it was important to see how long they could operate in an open ocean environment.

Test sessions were conducted over several flights lasting approximately two hours for each sortie, which gave a realistic scenario of how long it might take USCG crews to return to an incident site once conditions were safe. During operational deployment, the buoys utilized strobe lights, radio beacons and transmitted AIS information approximately every 10 minutes so crews could pick up the signals on both visual and radio frequency scanners. Separate from the drop tests but related to the buoys’ communications capabilities, S&T also conducted Red Team testing with a third party to determine whether there were any cybersecurity issues for either system. The goal was to see whether the buoy signals could be vulnerable to detection or hacking by civilian systems, since this could represent a potential risk.

The Next Wave

Last year’s Phase 3 test sessions provided critical insight into how the MOTT buoys could be improved moving forward. The next rounds of operational evaluations are scheduled to take place later in 2024. The MOTT buoy is one of S&T’s joint projects between S&T and the USCG through SVIP, which also includes a Language Translation device that operates offline in a zero-connectivity environment. These systems could potentially join a growing list of solutions that empower our nation’s homeland security operations while promoting more efficient technology transition-to-market.

For additional information about S&T’s maritime security work and the SVIP program, contact [email protected] .

• Science and Technology
• U.S. Coast Guard (USCG)

• Vehicle Technologies Office
• About the Vehicle Technologies Office
• Technology Areas
• Technology Integration
• Reports and Publications

Office: Vehicle Technologies Office FOA number:  DE-FOA-0003248 Link to apply:  Apply on EERE Exchange FOA Amount: $45,800,000

Today, the Department of Energy (DOE) announced $45.8 million in new funding for projects that will advance research, development, demonstration, and deployment (RDD&D) critical to achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions in the transportation sector. The funding will drive innovation in equitable clean transportation and is aligned with strategies detailed in the U.S. National Blueprint for Transportation Decarbonization . 

The funding is through DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE). Topic areas in the Vehicle Technologies Office (VTO) Fiscal Year (FY) 2024 R&D funding opportunity include:

• Next-generation phosphate-based cathodes.
• Advancing the state of the art for sodium-ion batteries.
• Developing concepts for decreasing greenhouse gas emissions from off-road vehicles such as construction, agriculture, mining, and forestry vehicles.
• Developing and deploying vehicle-to-everything technologies that can lead to meaningful savings at the vehicle and transportation system level.
• Developing high-performance, domestically produced electrical steels (E-steels) for use in electrified powertrains.
• Addressing critical cybersecurity needs for smart and secure electric vehicle charging.

As part of the Biden-Harris Administration’s commitment to ensuring the benefits of a clean transportation system are shared equally, the funding seeks the participation of underserved communities and underrepresented groups. Applicants are required to describe how diversity, equity, and inclusion objectives will be incorporated into their project. 

VTO provides a series of funding opportunity announcement (FOA) information session videos , which help applicants understand VTO’s FOA process and requirements. The recently released, Session 3: Tips for a Strong FOA Application, includes best practices for incorporating Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility in a project.

Learn more about this and other funding opportunities on VTO’s funding webpage . 

Topic Areas

Topic Area 1: Next-Generation Phosphate-Based Cathodes

This topic area targets the development of phosphate-based cathode materials that surpass the performance of state-of-the-art lithium iron phosphate (LFP) cathode materials, which are currently gaining traction as an alternative low-cost solution. The primary objective of this area of interest is to develop high energy density battery cells containing phosphate-based cathodes at the material and cell level.

Topic Area 2: Na-ion Battery Seedling Projects for Electric Vehicle Applications

While shifting to alternative cathode materials like LFP can alleviate the impact of nickel and cobalt, the impact of lithium has not been adequately addressed. One alternative to lithium is sodium (Na). While there is much promise for Na-ion chemistries, key issues still limit their adoption. This objective of this topic area is to advance the state of the art for Na-ion batteries by solving key challenges for the cathode, anode, or electrolyte through the development of 1 Ah full cells utilizing cell chemistries that are significant advancements over current industry state-of-the-art Na-ion technology.

Topic Area 3: Low-GHG Concepts for Off-Road Vehicles

The objective of this topic area is to develop and validate technology concepts capable of significantly decreasing greenhouse gas emissions, energy use, harmful criteria emissions, and total cost of ownership across the entire off-road vehicle sector, including construction, agriculture, mining, forestry, ports, warehouses, etc. Concepts must demonstrate they can meet the unique requirements for off-road vehicles and gain customer acceptance.

Topic Area 4: Saving Energy with Connectivity

Research has shown that vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communications can lead to meaningful energy savings at the vehicle and transportation system level by integrating interoperable vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V), vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I), and vehicle-to-pedestrian (V2P) communications. The objective of this topic area is to develop and deploy V2X technologies with a focus on the efficiency and convenience of the mobility ecosystem, while reducing transportation’s environmental impacts. Examples could include but are not limited to eco-driving along connected corridors, transit or freight priority, integrated corridor management, or passenger or freight trip-chaining optimization.

Topic Area 5: Domestically Produced Electrical Steels (E-Steels)

The US transportation sector is in a technology revolution where light-duty vehicles are rapidly transitioning from internal combustion engines to electrified powertrains. Although most of the vehicles are produced in the US, many of the powertrain components rely on imports and foreign supply chains. Of particular interest are traction motors and their components. The objective of this topic are is to develop E-Steels meeting properties including frequency, thickness, ductility, cost, and manufacturability. 

Topic Area 6: Cybersecurity for Smart and Secure Electric Vehicle Charging

This topic area is addressing critical cybersecurity needs to address through two subtopics: 

• Subtopic 6.a: Enabling Wide-scale, Cybersecure EV/EVSE Aggregation for Grid Services :  To support the integration of electric vehicles (EVs) and their charging requirements with the electric grid, both government and the private sector have made significant investments in the development of smart charge management (SCM) systems and technologies for EV charging infrastructure. The objective of this subtopic area is to research, develop, and demonstrate systems, technologies, and tools necessary for the cybersecure aggregation of EVs and charging infrastructure to provide widescale, cybersecure grid services.
• Subtopic 6.b: Tools to Assess EV/EVSE/Charging System Cybersecurity Posture and Compliance with Standards and Protocols for Communications, Controls, and Monitoring :   Testing and evaluation of Electric Vehicle Supply Equipment (EVSE) by DOE national laboratories has clearly indicated a lack of compliance by many vendors with certified and/or regulated EV charging standards and protocols. In addition to creating cybersecurity vulnerabilities, this non-compliance greatly inhibits interoperability, supplier-managed SCM, and right-to-repair. The objective of this subtopic is to research, develop, and validate a suite of tools and associated procedures to comprehensively assess EV/EVSE/charging system compliance with relevant standards and protocols and cybersecurity posture.

Additional Information

• Download the full funding opportunity  on the EERE Exchange website.
• For FOA-specific support, contact  [email protected] . 
• Sign up for the  Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) funding email list  to get notified of new EERE funding opportunities. Also sign up for  VTO’s newsletter to stay current with the latest news.
• Watch the VTO Funding Opportunity Announcement information series webinars.

Read our research on: Gun Policy | International Conflict | Election 2024

Regions & Countries

How public attitudes toward martin luther king jr. have changed since the 1960s.

About eight-in-ten American adults (81%) say civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. has had a positive impact on the United States, according to a Pew Research Center report that comes ahead of the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom . This majority includes nearly half of Americans (47%) who say King’s impact has been very positive. Just 3% say his impact on the country has been negative.

Sixty years after Martin Luther King Jr. gave his “I Have a Dream” speech at the March on Washington, Pew Research Center conducted this analysis to determine how views of King have changed over time in the United States.

This analysis uses data from a 2023 Center survey as well as data from Gallup surveys conducted in May 1963, August 1964, May 1965, August 1966, May 1969 and August 2011. The Center survey polled 5,073 U.S. adults from April 10 to April 16, 2023. Everyone who took part is a member of the Center’s American Trends Panel (ATP), an online survey panel that is recruited through national, random sampling of residential addresses. Address-based sampling ensures that nearly all U.S. adults have a chance of selection. The survey is weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education and other categories. Read more about the ATP’s methodology .

Here are the Pew Research Center survey questions used for this analysis , along with responses, and the survey methodology .

However, views of King haven’t always been so positive.

In May 1963, only about four-in-ten Americans (41%) had a favorable opinion of King, according to a Gallup survey . That included just 16% who viewed him highly favorably, rating him +4 or +5 on a scale of -5 (most unfavorable) to +5 (most favorable). The survey was conducted shortly after King’s Birmingham Campaign , which led the Alabama city to remove signs enforcing segregation of restrooms and drinking fountains and to desegregate lunch counters.

King’s favorable ratings remained about the same in Gallup surveys conducted in 1964 and 1965. But by August 1966, only a third of Americans had a favorable view of the civil rights leader. More than six-in-ten (63%) viewed him unfavorably, including 44% who viewed him highly unfavorably.

Gallup’s survey questions about King between 1963 and 1966 coincided with his civil rights work in a variety of areas:

• In August 1963, King delivered the “I Have a Dream” speech during the March on Washington.
• In June 1964, he demanded equal treatment at a segregated Florida restaurant, an act that led to his arrest.
• In December 1964, he received the Nobel Peace Prize and pledged the full financial award to civil rights efforts.
• In March 1965, he led a civil rights march from Selma, Alabama, to the state capital of Montgomery.
• In June 1966, he completed fellow civil rights leader James Meredith’s March Against Fear after Meredith was wounded by a White gunman.
• In August 1966, he was hit by a rock while marching through an all-White neighborhood in Chicago as part of the Chicago Freedom Movement. The movement sought to expand civil rights work to northern U.S. cities.

King was assassinated in April 1968 in Memphis, Tennessee. Gallup did not ask Americans to rate King again until August 2011, when the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial was officially dedicated in Washington, D.C. By then, views of King had changed dramatically, as 94% of Americans had a favorable opinion of him. Americans were also broadly supportive of the memorial: 91% approved of it and 70% were at least somewhat interested in visiting it, according to the Gallup survey.

Racial differences in views of King

Throughout the mid-1960s, Black Americans had much more favorable views of King than White Americans did. In the May 1963 Gallup survey, for example, 92% of Black Americans but only 35% of White Americans had a favorable opinion of the civil rights leader.

As more White Americans learned who King was over the next three years, a higher share of them viewed him unfavorably. Around four-in-ten White adults (41%) had an unfavorable view of King in May 1963 – a figure that rose to 69% by August 1966.

In 1969, Gallup asked Black adults in the U.S. whether they thought King’s beliefs about nonviolence had gained or lost support since his assassination a year earlier. About half of Black Americans (52%) said they thought King’s beliefs had lost support, while 30% said his beliefs had gained support.

By 2011, White Americans’ attitudes toward King had become much more positive. Fully 100% of Black adults and 93% of White adults had a favorable opinion of him, and majorities of both Black and White Americans (96% and 65%, respectively) had highly favorable views of him.

Views of racial equality after King

More than 40 years after King’s assassination, Americans were still divided on whether his dream of racial equality had been realized. In the 2011 Gallup survey, 51% of Americans said King’s dream had been realized, while 49% said it had not.

Pew Research Center’s new report, which uses survey data from April 2023, finds that Americans are similarly divided today about whether the U.S. has made progress on racial equality over the last 60 years.

About half of U.S. adults (52%) say that the country has made a great deal or a fair amount of progress, while 33% say it has made some progress and 15% say it has not made much or any progress. But Black Americans are more pessimistic: Just 30% say the U.S. has made a great deal or a fair amount of progress, compared with 58% of White adults. And 32% of Black adults say the country has made little or no progress, compared with 11% of White adults.

Note: Here are the Pew Research Center survey questions used for this analysis , along with responses, and the survey methodology .

Sign up for our weekly newsletter

Fresh data delivered Saturday mornings

Striking findings from 2021

Public sees black people, women, gays and lesbians gaining influence in biden era, economy and covid-19 top the public’s policy agenda for 2021, 20 striking findings from 2020, our favorite pew research center data visualizations of 2019, most popular.

About Pew Research Center Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. It is a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts .