LingBaW. Linguistics Beyond and Within, 2024, Vol. 10

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https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12153/8157

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    Mixed compounds in code-switching contexts
    (Wydawnictwo KUL, 2024) Pierantozzi, Cristina; Cocchi, Gloria
    This pilot work analyses the acceptability of mixed compound words in code-switching contexts. In particular, we will discuss mixed Italian-German and Italian-English compounds, i.e. cases of mixing among languages where the process of compounding follows different rules for what concerns the position of the head, as well as inflection issues. An Acceptability Judgment Task featuring different types of mixed compounds has been administered to two groups of participants, who are either bilingual or highly fluent in the two languages involved (Italian-German or Italian-English). Our conclusion is that it is overall possible to have mixed compounds. However, the two groups provide different judgments. For the Italian-German language pair, the possibility of mixed compounds is severely constrained, especially because of the different head-modifier parameters exhibited by the two languages and the interference of gender inflection. Though the English language patterns with German with regard to the head-modifier parameter, Italian-English participants accept a much higher number of combinations; indeed the fact that both Italian and English exhibit exocentric compounds, and that gender features do not interfere with judgments, might favour acceptability.
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    The irrelevance of case for DP movement in English
    (Wydawnictwo KUL, 2024) Newson, Mark
    A particular view of English case assignment falls out from an assumption within Dependent Case theory that there are only two structural cases: dependent and unmarked. The different forms of DPs do not necessarily indicate different assigned cases, but may be different contextually determined exponents of the same case. From this perspective, it can be argued that English has a neutral case system. Pronouns have contextually determined forms realising one underlying case. As a consequence, standard assumptions about the interaction of case assignment and movement can be questioned. Many assumptions concerning the exceptional status of certain constructions can be dropped in favour of a simpler theory in which case is assigned to DPs in their base positions.
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    Rising and falling diphthongs in Romance languages: A study of the phonological string
    (Wydawnictwo KUL, 2024) Savoia, Leonardo M.; Baldi, Benedetta
    This article discusses the phonological status of diphthongs and their role in the melodic and rhythmic organization of vowel and consonant sequences. We examine the nature of rising diphthongs and their distribution in relation to syllabic structure. Structural approaches, such as GP, admit only falling diphthongs, insofar as only these respect the governing relation within the nucleus or rhyme, which requires the head to be on the left. However, rising diphthongs are widespread in languages and are subject to similar distributional constraints as falling diphthongs. The latter, in turn, also show realizations different from those generally considered canonical in the literature, such as English [ai] of my. Furthermore, not only rising but also falling diphthongs can occur in closed syllables. We argue for a model capable of unifying the treatment of diphthongs, aiming to achieve at least a descriptive adequacy. We adopt a CVCV approach, which aims to account for the organization of phonetic sequences and the licensing relations between vowels (and consonants) based on the melodic strength of the vowels.
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    Aspect and pragmatics in Polish with a view to Sorbian
    (Wydawnictwo KUL, 2024) Zuchewicz, Karolina
    In this paper, I discuss the meaning of the perfective aspect in Polish by taking a look at the so-called general-factual contexts, i.e., contexts that refer to completed events. Slavic languages rely on both perfective and imperfective aspect in such cases but differ concerning specific restrictions on aspect choice (Altshuler 2014; Dickey 2000; Gehrke 2022, 2023; Grønn 2004; Klimek-Jankowska 2020, 2022; Łaziński 2020; Mehlig 2011; Mueller-Reichau 2018; Wiemer 2001, 2008, among many others). Whereas speakers of East Slavic languages mostly choose the imperfective aspect in general-factual contexts, speakers of West Slavic languages face a stronger competition between imperfective and perfective forms. This paper highlights the role of pragmatics in aspect choice in general-factual contexts in Polish. It makes use of the notion of pragmatic contract (Israeli 1996 for Russian) and argues that, while the presence of a contract correlates with a preference for the perfective aspect, the absence of a contract triggers a preference for imperfective forms. These assumptions are verified with data from the Narodowy Korpus Języka Polskiego (Przepiórkowski et al. 2012). The paper further shows that the pragmatic contract does not influence aspectual distribution in Upper Sorbian, pointing to a difference in the aspectual systems of the two West Slavic languages and confirming the status of Polish as transitional between East and West Slavic.
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    “A glass half full” or “a breastless dwarf”: Metaphorical talk in women’s accounts of Turner syndrome
    (Wydawnictwo KUL, 2024) Ciepiela, Kamila
    This paper examines body-related metaphors used by Polish women to describe lived experiences associated with Turner syndrome (TS), and highlights the contribution this form of analysis can make to the study of health, emotional well-being, and social identity. Turner syndrome is a genetic aberration that affects females, and results in short stature, ovarian failure and a number of less typical body deformations; it often takes a long time to be appropriately diagnosed. Metaphor analysis is employed to analyze a data subset of four semi structured interviews audio recorded and translated from Polish into English. The analysis is carried out with metaphor operationalized as a framing device in discourse, whose main function is to impose a particular axiologically-charged construal of TS. Metaphorical concepts lying at the basis of the metaphors used were identified and grouped into four themes: (i) diagnosis and therapy; (ii) Turner syndrome (iii) appearance (iv) self-esteem and social positioning. The results of the analysis show that a range of composite metaphors develop on the basis of the BODY IS A PHYSICAL OBJECT as a primary metaphor but their occurrence depends on the salience of particular bodily symptoms of TS in individual women. Results are discussed with regard to the function and the utility of metaphor analysis in health, emotional well-being, and social identity research.
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    A critical study of group-defining categories in the discursive construal of national identity
    (Wydawnictwo KUL, 2024) Shtok, Nina
    On 24 February 2022, Russia launched a full-scale military invasion of Ukraine. The beginning of this war marked a significant turning point with far-reaching consequences for the countries involved. Russian political discourse has responded swiftly to the conflict with a marked increase in nationalist rhetoric. This surge underscores a renewed emphasis on national unity and a collective sense of purpose, alongside a growing imperative to safeguard Russian integrity and sovereignty. The discourse has increasingly framed the war as a battle against external threats, positioning Russia as a defender of traditional values and a bulwark against perceived Western encroachments. This nationalist narrative, actively promoted by the government, serves to mobilise public support for its policies. Official speeches by the head of state play a central role in disseminating this ideology. Accordingly, this paper sets out to analyse selected addresses by the Russian President delivered during the conflict’s initial year to uncover the discursive mechanisms shaping Russian national identity. It relies on a discourse-historical approach, which provides effective tools for advancing this endeavour.
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    Laying in a new course? A bibliometric analysis of L2 vocabulary research 1988-92
    (Wydawnictwo KUL, 2024) Meara, Paul
    This paper uses an author co-citation analysis to examine the research on L2 vocabulary acquisition published in 1992. Two analyses are presented. The first analysis provides a context for the 1992 data. It looks at work that was being cited in a five year window covering 1988-92. The second analysis is a more detailed account of the 1992 research on its own terms.
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    Pragmatic marker to in Hausa (West Chadic, A.1; Nigeria)
    (Wydawnictwo KUL, 2024) Zając, Patryk
    In Hausa language function words contribute to sentence structure mainly on the syntactic level. They can specify the attitude or mood of the speaker. The broad class of function words includes a sub-class of items known as Pragmatic Markers (PMs). So far interpretations of PM to in Hausa were based on its semantic rather than structural contributions to the utterance content. There is a lack of a closer look on to from the pragmatic perspective. The aim of this article is to demonstrate how the interpretation of to within the framework of PM can contribute to describing this item’s functions in discourse in a more precise way, i.a. for the purpose of preparation of resources for studying the Hausa language by foreigners such as bilingual dictionaries. I propose the interpretation of to as a PM with the binary category of procedural and representational meaning. It will be demonstrated with the examples extracted from radio conversations that PMs framework allows to comprehensively describe to marker in terms of its contextually determined functions and meanings.
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    Largest-chunking and group formation: Two basic strategies for a cognitive model of linguistic processing
    (Wydawnictwo KUL, 2024) Drienkó, László
    The present study aims at shedding further light on how Agreement Groups (AG) processing (e.g. Drienkó 2020a) and Largest Chunk (LCh) segmentation (e.g. Drienkó 2018a) can be combined to model the emergence of language. The AG model is based on groups of similar utterances which enable combinatorial mapping of novel utterances. LCh segmentation is concerned with cognitive text segmentation, i.e. with detecting word boundaries in a sequence of linguistic symbols. Previous cross-linguistic research on French, English, and Hungarian texts (Drienkó 2020b) demonstrated that LCh segmentation is not efficient when words are the basic segmentation units and utterances are the target sequences. However, almost all utterance boundaries were identified at the expense of inserting relatively many extra boundaries. These extra boundaries delineated reoccurring fragments for building longer utterances. The present analysis of English mother-child data confirms previous findings that in spite of the relatively low efficiency of word-based LCh segmentation with respect to utterance boundaries, LCh segments can still prove to be useful word combinations for AG processing. Furthermore, compared with the previous experiments, the data suggest higher boundary precision (42%) and higher coverage (85%). These findings, on the one hand, support the claim that LCh fragments can be useful in linguistic processing (with AGs), and, on the other hand, are in line with a view that mother-child language facilitates processing more than other speech contexts.
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    The impact of international trade relations on French borrowings into English in the sparkling wine industry: A corpus-driven study conducted by a terminologist
    (Wydawnictwo KUL, 2024) Nagórka, Piotr
    This article serves several purposes. First, it aims to consolidate the view that knowledge models make effective diagnostic tools that terminologists can use in their attempt to find answers to research questions about communication in professional fields. Secondly, the article serves to demonstrate the results of preliminary research into professional communication in the sparkling wine industry, with the working English-language model showing the presence of borrowings from French, the industry’s leading language. Notably, the percentage of French borrowings in the sparkling wine industry, an integral part of the domain of special wines, has been found to be greater than the percentage of loanwords from Portuguese and Spanish, leading languages in the fortified wine industries representing the same industrial domain (OIV 2022: I.1.4-1). This finding bears out the view that communication in a professional field may be typified by more than one leading (national) language. Moreover, outcomes of the study of encyclopaedic knowledge on sparkling wines, when combined with the results of the study into communication in the fortified wines sector (Nagórka 2021, Nagórka 2023: 94–105), indicate that the history of commercial ties between pertinent language communities (English-speaking community with French-, Portuguese- and Spanish-speaking communities) may be reflected in the scale of borrowing into English for professional purposes. The rise in borrowing from leading languages seems inversely proportional to the intensity of (amicable) trade relations between the communities concerned, a hypothesis that may contribute to explaining the observed differences in borrowability.
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    What lies beyond and within humour: A relevance-theoretic approach to propositional meanings in the sitcom Modern Family
    (Wydawnictwo KUL, 2024) Wieczorek, Magdalena
    Advancing the proposal that conversationalists frequently engage in humorous communication to convey propositional meanings, the paper aims to employ pragmatic inferential mechanisms specified in a relevance-theoretic framework in order to explicate the viewer’s recovery of additional cognitive effects in sitcom discourse. On this observation, it is assumed that processing of humorous utterances may result in the recipient’s being amused and/ or in making more insightful observations concerning goals a speaker wishes to attain. For example, an interactant would like to communicate a potentially impolite meaning, which is mitigated by means of humour. The corpus is drawn from the American situation comedy Modern Family (2009-2020), created by Steven Levitan and Christopher Lloyd. The focus in the paper is on how the viewer can grasp meanings that are (un)intentionally communicated by the production crew while s/he is sitting comfortably in the armchair. The main thrust of the present paper is twofold. First, extra cognitive effects can be best described in terms of propositional meanings they communicate, which in turn necessitates a relevance-theoretic notion of weak communication. Second, I postulate that accessing humorous effects is just the first step in order to fully understand a conversational episode in the sitcom, granted that viewers may be eager to spend more processing effort in exchange for extra cognitive rewards. It is frequently the case that the recipient’s mental representations are strengthened or challenged by the production crew’s (cultural) representations. More specifically, it will be demonstrated that the functions of conveying and/ or challenging of social norms, disclosing character-specific information and providing cultural references aim to strengthen or challenge the viewer’s personal beliefs.
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    Is there a “Meditative-polemic-May”?
    (Wydawnictwo KUL, 2024) Meinard, Maruszka Eve-Marie
    This article aims at displaying the results of a preliminary study on MAY and MIGHT in extraposed subject clauses where they compete with the meditative-polemic-Should. Two types of extraposed subordinate clauses will be compared, one in which MAY and MIGHT have an epistemic meaning and one in which they behave like the meditative-polemic-Should. The examples extracted from Google reveal that this specific use of MAY and MIGHT is mostly found in American English, that it is mostly used in journals, and that the subclause refers to past events that could logically be expected. What is more, the subordinate clause containing this modal auxiliary reformulates the title of the article or of a paragraph. This shows that the proposition in which it is found plays a crucial role in the text, which is to provide the main information of the article once the background has been explained. We will also see that when the subject of the content clause is animate, MAY and MIGHT are less likely to have an epistemic or root reading than when the subject is inanimate. Finally, the examples reveal that this form collocates with subjective markers denoting the point of view of the subject, via the use of verbs of cognition and perception or via the progressive aspect (it’s not surprising that he may want, need, choose, be feeling…). We propose to call it the “subjective-explanatory-May”.
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    Post-verbal agreement and obligatory presence of particle to in Polish dual copula clauses
    (Wydawnictwo KUL, 2024) Jurczyk, Rafał
    This paper addresses the obligatory particle to in Polish dual copula clauses (DCCs) with post-verbal agreement and two 3rd person nominative expressions with φ-feature(s) mismatch. It argues that to must be present because the syntax cannot successfully establish the φ-Agree relation between T and the post-verbal nominative expression (NPNOM2). Two crucial premises are adopted. One is Zeiljstra’s (2012) Upward Agree which requires i-features to c-command u-features and, hence, necessitates the closest NPNOM to T to SpecTP-move. The other is Vangsnes’s (2002) obligatory TP identification by the Tense- (provided by T) and φ-features (provided by NPNOM controlling agreement) to anchor the subject to the eventuality denoted by the complex predicate Pred’ [be NPNOM2] (Jurczyk 2021). The examination shows that T-NPNOM2 φ-Agree in DCCs under consideration cannot be established as SpecTP-movement of NPNOM2 is illegitimate; NPNOM2 if formally and syntactically part of Pred’ and is also farther from T than NPNOM1, the pre-verbal nominal expression. Consequently, T’s φ-features remain unvalued, which makes TP formally unidentified. However, since some of T’s NPNOM2-specified features are specified as those on NPNOM1, T attracts NPNOM1 to value them whereas features bearing NPNOM2’s specification get valued as default and lexicalised as the least-marked form in terms of feature specification (following Szucsich 2007), i.e., to[i-neut]. It is thus concluded that the obligatory presence of to is a means of formally identifying TP in case any of T’s NPNOM2-specified φ-features cannot be successfully valued by the T-NPNOM2 Agree relation.
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    Where authority, speech acts and modality meet: A pragmatic analysis of the trial record of King Charles I
    (Wydawnictwo KUL, 2024) Nakayasu, Minako; Shiina, Michi
    This paper investigates how speakers perform speech acts coordinating with modality in the flux of power in Early Modern courtroom interactions along the lines of historical pragmatics. The text used for analysis is the trial record of King Charles I in the Sociopragmatic corpus, in which the King was put on trial on the charge of high treason. First, examination of vocatives, noun phrases, verb phrases and grammatical subjects shows who has the authoritative power in interaction, the Lord President (the judge) or the King (the defendant). Next, quantitative and qualitative analyses of speech acts performed with the aid of modals demonstrate the tendency that the speech acts performed by the Lord President are highly relevant to deontic modality, while those performed by the King are closely related to dynamic modality. This reflects which authority the two parties depend upon: authority of the Court, and authority of the King/Kingdom, respectively. The analysis of authority, speech acts and modality reveals that the King becomes less authoritative as the trial proceeds, particularly after the sentence has been pronounced. On the other hand, the authority of the Court, which is manifested in the Lord President’s speech, stays the same throughout the course of the trial. To summarise, this research shows how the judge and the defendant interacted with each other in a fluctuating power relationship in the courtroom, at the interfaces between authority, speech acts and modality, where their viewpoints and attitudes are reflected.
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    Pushing boundaries in the measurement of language attitudes: Enhancing research practices with the L’ART Research Assistant app
    (Wydawnictwo KUL, 2024) Breit, Florian; Tamburelli, Marco; Gruffydd, Iant; Brasca, Lissander
    The importance of methodological developments has recently been emphasised both in language attitude research specifically (Kircher & Zipp 2022), and across linguistics and the social sciences more broadly, where there has been a particular focus on replicability (Sönnig & Werner 2021; Kobrock & Roettger 2023). One aspect of this concerns the adoption of more open, consistent, and comparable implementations of method. We introduce a new digital application (the L’ART Research Assistant) for research in multilingualism and language attitudes. Designed specifically for work with populations speaking a majority and a regional/minority/minoritised/heritage language, the app implements reference versions of some common research methods and tasks. This benefits the research community by enhancing consistency and comparability within and across studies and by improving replicability and reproducibility. We discuss technical and methodological considerations behind the app and illustrate its use with a brief case study of language attitudes across three European communities whose regional/minority languages receive radically different degrees of socio-political recognition: Lombard (Italy), Moselle-Franconian (Belgium), and Welsh (UK). The case study demonstrates not only how the app facilitates research across different communities that is easily comparable, results also reveal fundamental differences in attitude scores depending on the methods employed (AToL v. MGT). Consequently, we argue that there is a need to move toward both the adoption of more consistent, comparable methods as well as toward a more holistic approach to measuring language attitudes, where a battery of tests — as opposed to a single measure — should become the norm.