Search results for " speech"
showing 10 items of 519 documents
Morphological features of Kiswahili youth language(s): Evidence from Dar es Salaam, Goma, Lubumbashi and Nairobi
2020
AbstractSince the late 1980s, linguists’ analyses of Sheng, the urban youth language from Nairobi, have led to the growth of a considerable body of literature. In contrast, only a few studies are available that cover other youth registers from the Kiswahili-speaking parts of Africa. While most of the available studies either deal with techniques of manipulation or with adolescents’ identity constructions, our paper intends to give a comparative overview of specific morphological features of Kiswahili-based youth languages. While certain characteristics of Sheng (Nairobi/Kenya), Lugha ya Mitaani (Dar es Salaam/Tanzania), Kindubile (Lubumbashi/DR Congo) and Yabacrâne (Goma/DR Congo) largely d…
Entwicklung der satzinternen Großschreibung kontrastiv
2021
Abstract Während die Entwicklung der satzinternen Großschreibung von Nomina und Nominalisierungen fürs Deutsche gut untersucht ist, stellt sie für viele andere Sprachen, in denen ebenfalls eine (wenn auch kurzlebige) Tendenz zur satzinternen Großschreibung festzustellen ist, ein Forschungsdesiderat dar. In diesem Beitrag stellen wir methodische Überlegungen zur kontrastiven Untersuchung der Entwicklung der satzinternen Großschreibung im Deutschen, Englischen und Niederländischen vor und diskutieren die Ergebnisse erster Pilotstudien. Neben übergreifenden Tendenzen zeigen sich auch deutliche Unterschiede, aus denen sich die Notwendigkeit zu einer differenzierten Betrachtung der einzelsprachl…
Si todos lo dicen, ¿será cierto? La evidencialidad de folclore o acervo común: de la teoría a la investigación sociopragmática
2021
espanolEn este trabajo, se presentan los planteamientos teoricos, la metodologia y los primeros resultados del estudio de la evidencialidad de folclore o acervo comun en corpus de entrevistas semidirigidas PRESEEA. La categoria objeto de estudio se relaciona con los conocimientos compartidos en las comunidades de habla, las creencias generalizadas y la sabiduria popular. Se considera que el empleo de los mecanismos de evidencialidad de folclore es altamente estrategico. Los objetivos del estudio son, por una parte, conocer el rendimiento funcional y patrones linguistico-pragmaticos de este tipo de evidencialidad, y, por otra, y como principal, documentar y analizar patrones sociopragmaticos…
Deep neural attention-based model for the evaluation of italian sentences complexity
2020
In this paper, the Automatic Text Complexity Evaluation problem is modeled as a binary classification task tackled by a Neural Network based system. It exploits Recurrent Neural Units and the Attention mechanism to measure the complexity of sentences written in the Italian language. An accurate test phase has been carried out, and the system has been compared with state-of-art tools that tackle the same problem. The computed performances proof the model suitability to evaluate sentence complexity improving the results achieved by other state-of-the-art systems.
De Praepositione: The Emerging of Donatus’s Thought on Syntax?
2020
The paper aims at investigating the syntax treatment in late Antiquity through the analysis of the description of prepositions within Donatus’s Artes. As far as an organic and dedicated description of syntax is concerned, the Roman tradition of grammatical studies in late Antiquity shows an overall gap. However, reflections on syntax emerge from the parts of speech descriptions made by grammarians. The ultimate purpose of this paper is to understand if, and to what extent, traces of emerging thought on syntax can be found in Donatus’s description of prepositions. These are regarded as a syntactic object of study by the modern linguistic theory. To that end, the paper focuses on the textual …
Continuous and discontinuous nominal expressions in flexible (or “free”) word order languages: Patterns and correlates
2020
AbstractThis study explores continuous and discontinuous word order patterns of multi-word nominal expressions in flexible word order languages (traditionally referred to as “free word order” or “non-configurational” languages). Besides describing syntagmatic patterns, this paper seeks to identify any functional or other correlates that can be associated with different word orders. The languages under investigation are a number of Australian languages as well as Vedic Sanskrit, all of which have long been known for their syntagmatic flexibility. With respect to continuous order, evidence from several of these languages suggests that default ordering is primarily governed by functional templ…
What is an indirect speech act?
2019
Abstract The notion of an indirect speech act is at the very heart of cognitive pragmatics, yet, after nearly 50 years of orthodox (Searlean) speech act theory, it remains largely unclear how this notion can be explicated in a proper way. In recent years, two debates about indirect speech acts have stood out. First, a debate about the Searlean idea that indirect speech acts constitute a simultaneous realization of a secondary and a primary act. Second, a debate about the reasons for the use of indirect speech acts, in particular about whether this reason is to be seen in strategic advantages and/or observation of politeness demands. In these debates, the original pragmatic conception of sen…
Signs activate their written word translation in deaf adults: An ERP study on cross-modal co-activation in German Sign Language
2020
Since signs and words are perceived and produced in distinct sensory-motor systems, they do not share a phonological basis. Nevertheless, many deaf bilinguals master a spoken language with input merely based on visual cues like mouth representations of spoken words and orthographic representations of written words. Recent findings further suggest that processing of words involves cross-language cross-modal co-activation of signs in deaf and hearing bilinguals. Extending these findings in the present ERP-study, we recorded the electroencephalogram (EEG) of fifteen congenitally deaf bilinguals of German Sign Language (DGS) (native L1) and German (early L2) as they saw videos of semantically a…
Outlining a grammaticalization path for the Spanish formula en plan (de): A contribution to crosslinguistic pragmatics
2020
Abstract This article discusses the diachronic development of the Spanish multifunctional formula en plan (with its variant en plan de, literally ‘in plan (of)’ but usually equivalent to English like). The article has two main aims: firstly, to describe the changes that the formula has undergone since its earliest occurrences as a marker in the nineteenth century up to the early 21st century. The diachronic study evinces a process of grammaticalization in three steps: from noun to clause adverbial and then to discourse marker. Secondly, to conduct a contrastive analysis between en plan (de) and the English markers like and kind of/kinda so as to shed new light on the potential existence of …
From engl-isc to whatever-ish: a corpus-based investigation of -ish derivation in the history of English
2020
Drawing on a wide array of historical and contemporary corpora, this article provides one of the first empirical analyses of the intricately related functional changes that -ish underwent in the course of English language history. By investigating the distribution of -ish formations, the analysis sheds light on the productivity of the suffix, which does not only become evident in the numerous hapax legomena, but also in the trajectory of change itself in which -ish occurs with ever new base categories and new functions. Moreover, the article revisits theoretical claims made in the literature about the diachronic development and synchronic properties of -ish and reassesses them in the light …