Exploring the Meaning-Making Process in Conceptual Mathematics: The Case of Linguistic Markers in Algebraic Equations

Abstract

As research established, linguistic features are essential to understanding mathematical word problems, and these features are seen as a significant factor of students’ difficulty in word problems. Students are unable to translate the words into numbers or formula to work on the needed mathematical operations. This present study’s aim is two-fold. First, the analysis of the syntactic features of mathematical language is hoped to contribute to the understanding of mathematical sentence by making its lexis, syntax and semantics explicit. Second, by focusing on the linguistic markers in algebraic equation, the meaningmaking process in the mathematical language was described by determining how these linguistic markers prompted the mathematical conditions in the expressions and statements. Results show that algebraic sentences of equalities were characterized by inflectional phrase (InflP) projection, and ‘if…then’ syntax, which are considered in lexico-grammatical precision. Predication in algebraic sentence of equalities was signified essentially by the linking verb ‘is’ in definition, description and illustration frames.