boundary effectn
the effect of a test being too easy or too difficult for a particular group of test
takers, resulting in their scores tending to be clustered toward or at either
end or boundary of the test score distribution. A boundary effect that results
from a test being easy so that their scores are clustered toward or at the top
of the distribution is called a ceiling effect, whereas a boundary effect that
results from a test being too difficult so that their scores are clustered toward
or at the bottom of the distribution is called a floor effect.
bound formn
also bound morpheme
a linguistic form (a morpheme) which is never used alone but must be used
with another morpheme, e.g. as an affix or combining form. For example,
the English suffix -ing must be used with a verb stem, e.g. writing, loving,
driving.
A form which can be used on its own is called a free form, e.g. Betty, horse,
red, write, love, drive.
bounding noden
see bounding theory
bounding theoryn
in government/binding theory, a theory that is concerned with how far
a constituent can move within a sentence. The main principle of bounding
theory is the subjacencycondition, which forbids movement across more
than one bounding node. Bounding nodes in English include S, NP, and CP.
For example, the sentence *Who did you hear the rumour that Mary kissed?
is ungrammatical, because it is derived from the structure in (a) which
would require moving who over two bounding nodes, NP and CP.
(a) Who did you hear [NP the rumour [CP that Mary kissed t]]
In (a) the NP stands for Noun Phrase; the CP stands for Complement
Phrase, and the t stands for “trace” and shows the place from which the
wh-word was extracted.
bound morphemen
another term for bound formb-parametern
see item response theory
brainstormingn brainstormv
1 (in language teaching) a group activity in which learners have a free
and relatively unstructured discussion on an assigned topic as a way of
brainstorming