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

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

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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.
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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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    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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    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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    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.