Search results for " LANGUAGE"
showing 10 items of 7270 documents
Play it by ear? An ERP study of Chinese polysemous verb yǒu
2021
Abstract Mandarin Chinese yŏu is a polysemous verb. It can be interpreted as meaning either ‘have’ or ‘there be/exist’ in sentences of the form ‘NP1 yŏu NP2’, which can correspondingly be analyzed as either a Have-Possessive construction (‘NP1 has NP2’) or an existential/locative construction (‘(At/in) NP1 there is NP2’), or both. This study used event-related brain potentials to investigate whether and how the interpretation of yŏu in a given ‘NP1 yŏu NP2’ construction is determined by the semantics of the nouns involved and their relationship. Twenty-seven participants read sentences of this construction. The results showed that there were different patterns of brain activity that can be …
Prosodic modulation as a mark to express pragmatic values: The case of mitigation in Spanish
2021
Abstract One of the functions of prosody in discourse is to convey pragmatic values that add up to the core semantic meaning of spoken units or segments. Regarding mitigation, Caffi (1999: 890) specifically discusses “the very important prosodic and kinesic means of mitigation, such as changes in pitch prominence, rhythm, speech rate, as well as eye-contact, gaze, gaze aversion, smile, particular postures, etc.” In this paper, I focus on some prosodic factors such as pitch, intensity, duration and speech rate that can be used in European Spanish, in combination with pragmatic meanings. The first aim is to establish a theoretical deliberation on prosody as a clear marker to convey pragmatic …
Discourses on encountering multilingual learners in Finnish schools
2020
Abstract The study examines the narratives of Finnish lower secondary school teachers working in linguistically diverse schools by analysing their narratives’ discourses on encountering multilingual learners. The study reflects the current period when the Finnish education system is experiencing growth in linguistic diversity and a change in educational policies that require language awareness from all teachers. In the study, 16 teachers participated in semi-structured group interviews. The teachers’ narratives were analysed by applying a framework for linguistically responsive teaching (Lucas & Villegas, 2013) in combination with discourse analytical methods. The analysis resulted in six d…
Recognising mitigation: Three tests for its identification
2020
Abstract Linguistic mitigation is a pragmatic phenomenon that has been profusely treated in the literature, and yet there are few studies dedicated exclusively to offering methodological criteria for its recognition and analysis (but see Albelda, 2010 and Albelda et al., 2014). Consequently, the researcher must infer the methods for its recognition through problems arising during the analysis or through the examples and reflections offered by the authors who have addressed the issue. The purpose of this article is twofold. Firstly, to present some of the main keys for the recognition of mitigation presented by the bibliography, such as the catalogues of mitigation devices, the context, the …
Example Markers at the Intersection of Grammaticalization and Lexicalization
2020
Givon’s words “today’s morphology is yesterday’s syntax” have been widely used to describe grammaticalization, a process of linguistic change which implies an increase in the grammatical status of ...
Risks in neural machine translation
2020
Abstract The new paradigm of neural machine translation is leading to profound changes in the translation industry. Surprisingly good results have led to high expectations; however, there are substantial risks that have not yet been sufficiently taken into account. Risks exist on three levels: first, what kind of damage can clients and end users incur in safety-critical domains if the NMT result contains errors; second, who is liable for damage caused by the use of NMT; third, what cyber risks can the use of NMT entail, especially when free online engines are used. When establishing sustainable measures to reduce such risks, we also need to consider general principles of human behaviour if …
Of ostriches, pyramids, and Swiss cheese
2018
Abstract Risk management for translations is a relatively new topic in translation science. Damages caused by translation errors can have grave consequences for all agents involved in the translation process, especially in safety-critical sectors. In these sectors, effective models and instruments for risk mitigation have long been established, with near-misses management being one of the most effective instruments. In this paper, we examine the structure of damages caused by translation errors and compare them to the structure of damages in safety-critical sectors in general. We find that damages caused by translation errors in safety-critical sectors are comparable to damages in safety-cr…
À la recherche du lexique de la gestion hôtelière : de la magdalena de Proust a la WebQuest
2020
This paper describes the creation and design of a series of activities aimed at learning the hotel management lexicon in French within a professional context. The tool used to frame these activities is the WebQuest, based on the principles of socioconstructivism and focused on promoting learning by discovery, among other aims. Accordingly, the action research methodology and after the Webquest implementation with a group of university students taking the French for Specific Purposes subject in a professional context, the study results are presented. Finally, the following conclusions derived from the results obtained allow: (1) to verify the adequacy and effectiveness of the tool created, …
Attributional and relational influence of numerals in S’ncamtho metaphors
2020
AbstractYouth varieties in Africa such as S’ncamtho, the Ndebele-based youth variety in Zimbabwe, and urban vernaculars interact with urban and modern experiences which offer them new materials and experiences to base their metaphors on compared to older metaphors in the base languages. This paper explores the use of numeral qualities and associations in the conceptualisation and orthographic representation of S’ncamtho metaphors. S’ncamtho is popular with urban youth and this makes social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp, SMS and Instagram key in the performance of the youth variety, a performance that includes the creation, use and contraction of metaphors. Numerals off…
The language of recovery
2020
Abstract The present study attempts to make a comparative analysis of two Spanish and American political speeches, which belong to two different debate traditions, in terms of the metaphors used. For that purpose, we analyze the Economy sections of the 2015 State of the Union Address in the US and in the 2015 State of the Nation Debate in Spain. The present study aims at answering the following research questions: What metaphors do President Obama and Prime Minister Rajoy use in the American and Spanish political speeches to convince their audiences of America’s and Spain’s economic victory? What are the similarities and differences between the representations depicted by metaphor use in th…