Search results for "linguistic"
showing 10 items of 9380 documents
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…
Confronting blackface
2019
Abstract Recently, the Netherlands witnessed an agitated discussion over Black Pete, a blackface character associated with the Saint Nicholas festival. This paper analyzes a televised panel interview discussing a possible court ban of public Nicholas festivities, and demonstrates that participants not only disagree over the racist nature of the blackface character but also over the terms of the debate itself. Drawing on recent sociolinguistic work on stancetaking, it traces how panelists ‘laminate’ the interview’s participation framework by embedding their assessments of Black Pete in contrasting dialogical fields. Their stancetaking evokes opposing trajectories of earlier interactions and …
Towards multilingual competence: examining beliefs and agency in first year university students’ language learner biographies
2021
As working life across the world is increasingly multilingual, multicultural and multidisciplinary, higher education language teaching is faced with a challenge of how to prepare students for it. Many universities have recently developed multilingual pedagogies but central to their success is learners’ perceptions of these practices. To fill this gap, this article explores first year university students’ language learner biographies to gain insight into how learners construct their linguistic realities. The biographies were studied with discourse analytical methods to examine the participants’ beliefs about language learning and their sense of agency in it. The results reveal that participa…
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 …
Verbalization of nominalizations: A typological commentary on the article by Nikki van de Pol
2019
Abstract The present article provides a typological commentary on the article by Nikki van de Pol (2019) on the history of the English gerund. It is shown that in spite of certain idiosyncratic aspects, the history of the verbal gerund illustrates a well-known grammaticalization path of verbalization, whereby deverbal nouns are first grammaticalized into nonfinite forms (participles, infinitives, converbs), and may later be integrated into the verbal paradigm. It is further suggested that the mixed behavior attested for the verbal gerund, which deviates both from the nominal and from the clausal prototype, may be universally supported by constructional polysemy and blending with constructio…
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 …
Figure–Ground Spatial Relationships in Finnish Sign Language Discourse
2020
AbstractThis study is about expressing spatial relationships between Figure and Ground in Finnish Sign Language discourse and shows that the variation in this expression is primarily discourse dependent. The main findings are, first, that Ground mainly precedes Figure whether the Figure is new or a known referent within the discourse; the reverse order is possible only when the Figure is known. Second, the lexical signolla(‘have’) appears more frequently in expressing spatial relationships with a new Figure and less frequently with a known Figure but never in a construction with Figure preceding Ground; the formoli(‘had’), referring to the past, appears only in Figure preceding Ground const…
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…