Search results for "Linguistic description"

Language Documentation and Descriptive Linguistics

2021

Commentary on Jakab's “Ineffability of Qualia”

2000

Zoltan Jakab has presented an interesting conceptual analysis of the ineffability of qualia in a functionalist and classical cognitivist framework. But he does not want to commit himself to a certain metaphysical thesis on the ontology of consciousness or qualia. We believe that his strategy has yielded a number of highly relevant and interesting insights, but still suffers from some minor inconsistencies and a certain lack of phenomenological and empirical plausibility. This may be due to some background assumptions relating to the theory of mental representation employed. Jakab's starting assumption is that there is no linguistic description of a given experience such that understanding t…

Language Learning Methodology for Adults: A Study of Linguistic Transfer

2014

Abstract The purpose of the present research is to bring together the evidence on transfer in adult L2 and L3 language acquisition and investigate the use and the relationship between languages in contact. The role of linguistic transfer ( Odlin, 1989 ) i.e. the imposition of previously learned patterns onto a new learning situation, has a facilitation or inhibition effect on the learner's progress in mastering a new language (L2 or L3). Our findings reveal that the cross-linguistic influence occurs both from the direction of the L2 to the L3 and from the L3 to the L2 ( Odlin, 2003 , Jarvis and Pavlenko, 2008 ). In the case of our participants, in the acquisition of L2 as the foreign langua…

The interaction of language and thought in children's language acquisition: a crosslinguistic study

1997

The purpose of this research was to investigate the potential interaction of conceptual representations and linguistic systems in the process of language acquisition. Language–thought interactions were studied in 80 American, 48 Finnish and 48 Polish preschool children. The research focused on the conceptual and linguistic development of space and time. The spatial and temporal conceptual tasks were designed to measure the transition from experiential to inferential knowledge of space/time representations. In the linguistic domain, comprehension and production tests were used to evaluate the children's capacity to understand mono- and bi-referential location in space and time, where mono-re…

Cognitive status and referential acts in functional discourse grammar

2018

In Functional Discourse Grammar, both Ascription and Reference are characterized as actional processes and are captured at the Interpersonal Level of linguistic description. Additionally, the temporal sequencing of Discourse Acts seems relevant to establishing dependency relations among them. However, the remainder of the levels of representation in the theory contain static descriptions of linguistic structures and not of processes. In this paper, I will argue that this is the result of an inherent contradiction between FDG’s characterization as a static grammar and the dynamicity of verbal interaction, which is best solved if the theory commits itself to the procedural nature of the Inter…

Words, Corpus and Back to Words : From Language to Discourse

2018

The aim of this issue of is to bring together investigation into the lexicon in a variety of languages, in a diversity of manifestations – both at the word level and beyond the word level – and from a variety of perspectives, including not only those which focus on how the vocabulary is internally organized, but also those which deal with the role that lexical units and lexical relations play in the organization of other language levels, particularly in the organization of the discourse. These issues are approached from a variety of perspectives that include not only developments in several disciplines of theoretical and descriptive linguistics, particularly in lexicology, phraseology, word…

The cognitive shift in terminology and specialized translation

2009

Este artículo propone un análisis crítico y una visión global de las teorías terminológicas con especial atención a la traducción científica y técnica. El estudio de los tecnolectos está sometido en la actualidad a un cambio hacia el cognitivismo, que a su vez conduce a un énfasis mucho mayor tanto en el significado como en las estructuras conceptuales que subyacen en los textos y en la lengua en general. La terminología parece estar pasando del prescriptivismo al descriptivismo, con un interés creciente por enfocar el estudio de las unidades de los tecnolectos desde una perspectiva social, lingüística y cognitiva. En esta misma línea, comienzan a oírse nuevas voces que ofrecen perspectivas…

THE RELEVANCE OF MORAL DISAGREEMENT. SOME WORRIES ABOUT NONDESCRIPTIVIST COGNITIVISM

2002

Nondescriptivist Cognitivism vindicates the cognitive value of moral judgements despite their lack of descriptive content. In this paper, I raise a few worries about the proclaimed virtues of this new metaethical framework Firstly, I argue that Nondescriptivist Cognitivism tends to beg the question against descriptivism and, secondly, discuss Horgan and Timmons' case against Michael Smith's metaethical rationalism. Although I sympathise with their main critical claims against the latter, I am less enthusiastic about the arguments that they provide to support them.

Topological linguistics and the study of linguistic variation

1994

Publisher Summary This chapter focuses on topological linguistics and the study of linguistic variation. It discusses the problem of linguistic variation. A topological model has been developed for internal linguistics, starting from the epistemological problem that all linguists must deal with. A topological space could be conceived of as a set of elements where some elements limit the others and are said to be open-sets, and the former and the latter together constitute the closed-sets. Linguistics, when approaching its object of study, is faced with a very similar situation: a language is a set of elements—from utterances to minimal phonic items—where each is described by other surroundi…

Nad kartami prac profesora Witolda Mańczaka. Notatki z marginesów

2017

In the works written in the last period of his life, Professor Witold Mańczak often emphasized the need to formulate a criterion of truth in linguistics. He pursued it in textual reality (in “what is written and what is said”) and in statistical, frequentative and quantitative data which describe it. On the margin of this search, this author shares his own experiences in the field of ethnolinguistics, related to attempts to determine the actual (and, in this sense, true) ontological status of analyzed objects. He postulates that the diversification of the objects of analysis should be complemented by an adequate diversification of how their names are recorded in the narration, i.e. by a pre…