bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Porphyrin - Phosphoramidate Conjugates: Synthesis, Photostability and Singlet Oxygen Generation
Authors: Pedrosa Leandro F. , de Souza Marcos C. , Faustino Maria A. F. , Neves Maria G. P. M. S. , Silva Artur M. S. , Tomé Augusto C. , Ferreira Vitor F. , Cavaleiro José A. S.
Published: July 2011

meso-Tetrakis(pentafluorophenyl)porphyrin reacts with aminoalkylphosphoramidates to afford porphyrins substituted with one or four phosphoramidate groups in the 4-position of the meso-aryl groups. The new porphyrin derivatives show high photostability and some are better singlet oxygen generators than meso-tetrakis(1-methylpyridinium-4-yl)porphyrin, a well known good singlet oxygen producer.
The German mit-predicative construction
Authors: Hilpert Martin
Published: July 2011

This paper discusses a usage pattern with German mit ‘with’ that is labelled here as the German mit-predicative construction. The pattern has been mentioned in previous research, but a usage-based constructional account is still missing. A qualitative analysis shows that the construction is subject to a number of constraints that point to its function as a predicative construction. It is argued that its constructional meaning can be adequately captured through the semantic frames of being in a category and having an attribute. Through the application of Hierarchical Configural Frequency Analysis to a corpus-based sample of 356 instances of the mit-predicative, it is shown that the construction can be analyzed as a cluster of five subtypes that display different typical structural and semantic traits. Through the analysis, the paper offers a perspective on intra-constructional variation and how such variation can be exploited for the purpose of grammatical description.
The development of sentential complement constructions in Greek
Authors: Katis Demetra , Stampouliadou Chrysoula
Published: July 2011

The development of sentential complements in Greek, a language with systematic use of two complementizers, is studied in a corpus of spontaneous conversations by one girl and her family in the age range of 1;8 to 4 years. Formal, semantic and pragmatic analyses of child and child-directed constructions indicate parallels and divergences from previous acquisition research. Early formal marking of complements suggests ambient language effects. Yet, emergence of semantically/pragmatically more prototypical ones is protracted, favoring usage-based and semantically motivated explanations. The data also contribute to the theoretical description of sentential complement constructions, by charting some of their varieties and also suggesting explanations for the relations holding among these varieties.
Aspectual meanings in two cognitive domains
Authors: Filipović Luna
Published: July 2011

I argue that certain aspectual forms that have given rise to descriptive problems in the past can be accounted for if we understand the contexts in which these forms appear as constructions. I provide evidence for two aspectual constructions in Serbian, which are used to describe situations in two cognitive domains, motion and consumption. These two domains are chosen because of their ubiquity in both language and cognition. The two aspectual constructions, termed type focus and duration focus, license the use of imperfective verb forms in Serbian with external arguments that refer to specified quantity, which other theories dismiss as exceptions to the rule or consider odd or even impossible. Furthermore, I show how adverbials such as for an hour add aspectual meaning in their own right and should be treated as construction elements on a par with verbs and internal arguments. I discuss these constructions in a contrastive context by looking at their potential meaning counterparts in Russian, English and Italian. I also show how semantic, syntactic and pragmatic information is integrated in the formulation of construction meaning.
A constructional account of genre-based argument omissions
Authors: Ruppenhofer Josef , Michaelis Laura A.
Published: July 2011

Authors like Fillmore 1986 and Goldberg 2006 have made a strong case for regarding argument omission in English as a lexical and construction-based affordance rather than one based on general semantico-pragmatic constraints. They do not, however, address the question of how grammatical restrictions on null complementation might interact with broader narrative conventions, in particular those of genre. In this paper, we attempt to remedy this oversight by presenting a comprehensive overview of genre-based argument omissions and offering a construction-based analysis of genre-based omission conventions. We consider five genre-based omission types: instructional imperatives (Culy 1996, Bender 1999), labelese, diary style (Haegeman 1990), match reports (Ruppenhofer 2004) and quotative clauses. We show that these omission types share important traits; all, for example, have anaphoric rather than indefinite construals. We also show, however, that the omission types differ from each other in idiosyncratic ways. We then address several interrelated representational problems posed by the grammatical treatment of genre-based omissions. For example, the constructions that represent genre-based omission conventions must interact with the lexical entries of verbs, many of which do not generally permit omitted arguments. Accordingly, we offer constructional analyses of genre-based omissions that allow constructions to override lexical valence constraints.
Don’t go V-ing in Cypriot Greek
Authors: Terkourafi Marina
Published: July 2011

This article deals with the expression oi na+V realizing mild prohibitions in Cypriot Greek. Drawing on spoken corpus and experimental results, I propose that oi na+V simultaneously expresses two speech acts: (1) a prohibition against some act; (2) the assumption that this act is likely. In this way, the speaker appears to be adopting the hearer’s perspective, advising him accordingly. The resulting account of oi na+V as a neg-raising construction motivated by positive face in contemporary Cypriot society is supported by prosodic and psycholinguistic evidence, and has implications for the contribution of prosody to constructional meaning, the relationship between arbitrariness and generativity in language, and the importance of face in the emergence of constructions.
From language structures to language use
Authors: Chen Liang , Guo Jiansheng
Published: July 2011

The place of Mandarin Chinese in Talmy’s two-way typology of motion expressions has been a focus of debate. Based primarily on linguistic intuition, some researchers consider Mandarin a Satellite-framed language, and some others consider it a Verb-framed language. This paper reports results from analyses of three different types of data from speakers’ actual language use in narrative discourse (one from elicited adults’ spoken narratives, one from written narratives in nine contemporary novels, and one from elicited children’s spoken narratives from ages 3 to 9) that suggest otherwise. Specifically, Mandarin shows a unique discourse style that matches neither Satellite-framed nor Verb-framed languages. The data provide evidence for categorizing Mandarin Chinese as the third language type: an equipollently-framed language. It is argued that examination of language use in discourse can provide insights for solving nutty problems that may not be resolved by merely looking at static linguistic structures.
Dialectal and normative registers in Yangzhou storytelling
Authors: Børdahl Vibeke
Published: July 2011

Chinese storytelling is inseparably bound up with local dialect. However, normative language also plays a distinctive role in many performance arts. In this paper the interplay of dialectal and normative registers in Yangzhou storytelling (Yangzhou pinghua) is analysed. Audio recordings of storytellers born during the late Qing and Republic demonstrate their subtle handling of linguistic registers: dialogue and narrative are regularly rendered in alternating registers, reflecting local Yangzhou dialect (Yangzhou fangyan), local Mandarin (difang guanhua) and Northern Mandarin (Beifang guanhua). The usage of storytelling registers provides new source material on the Yangzhou variety of difang guanhua. On this background the paper raises the question of the linguistic habits of former storytellers and — tentatively — offers a key to the riddle of the famous Liu Jingting’s (1592–1674) spoken language-in-performance.
Deviant writing and youth identity
Authors: Liu Jin
Published: July 2011

This paper examines the emergence of the representation of dialect with Chinese characters (fangyan wenzihua) on the Internet. The online dialect writing is primarily identified as a subject of Internet language and youth language study. The CMC discourse as a hybrid register mixing spoken and written language features facilitates the written use of oral dialect on the Internet. Deviating from the standard Chinese writing system, the Internet-savvy youth transcribe their native dialects on an ad hoc basis, which celebrates multiplicity, creativity, individuality and resists uniformity, standardization, and institutionalization. Taking the SHN website (www.shanghaining.com) as a case study, the paper discusses how the written Shanghai Wu words are explored to mark a distinct visual style and to articulate a distinct local youth identity. Furthermore, this paper examines the dominant strategy of phonetic borrowing in dialect transcription on the Internet. It is argued that diachronically, the youth’s phonocentric obsession tapped into the May Fourth tradition of the baihua vernacular movement that was heavily influenced by the European logocentrism; and synchronically, the celebration of dialect sound on the Internet echoes the contemporary soundscape of local dialects formed in the mass media in recent years.
Nonverbal aspects of turn taking in Mandarin Chinese interaction
Authors: Yang Ping
Published: July 2011

This paper examines the nonverbal aspects of turn taking system in Mandarin Chinese talk-in-interaction. Based on the audio and video data collected from real conversational settings in Chinese universities, this project uses conversation analysis (CA) theory to analyze how university-educated Mandarin Chinese speakers utilize various nonverbal resources with reference to turn yielding, turn up-taking and turn maintaining strategies to achieve effective interpersonal communication . The research results show that the current speaking party (SP) and listening party (LP) use nonverbal tokens such as hand drop in yielding turns, gaze and touch in taking up turns, and non-gaze, thinking face and finger count in maintaining turns. Understanding of these nonverbal cues employed can help prospective intercultural communicators interact with Mandarin Chinese speakers more effectively and successfully.
We, ourselves and who else?
Authors: Rundblad Gabriella
Published: July 2011

The role of passive voice as a device used in medical and scientific discourse to mystify the author is clearly articulated and well-known. Through analysis of the Methods section of nine medical research articles, this paper shows that metonymy is another frequently used impersonalisation strategy in medical discourse. Furthermore, this paper argues that impersonalisation is not restricted to the authors and that two types of impersonalisation need be distinguished: generalisation and socialisation. Discourse agents were categorised into the ‘present authors’ versus ‘other researchers and health professionals not part of the research team’. Agents were investigated in relation to impersonalisation and social identity. Results show that possessive/causative metonyms are used to produce genderless, generic ‘present authors’ as well as ‘other researchers’. In contrast, more significant ‘health professionals’ are often referred to in terms of representational/locative metonyms highlighting their authoritative social identity. The study also shows that for these non–authorial professionals co-occurrence of metonymy and passive voice is generally avoided. Although ‘present authors’ are mainly absent, this analysis reveals a higher than expected author presence resulting in a significantly higher degree of impersonalisation for non-authorial agents.
Too chatty
Authors: Gilquin Gaëtanelle , Paquot Magali
Published: July 2011

The study reported on in this paper uses corpus data in order to examine how upper-intermediate to advanced EFL learners from a wide range of mother tongue backgrounds perform a number of rhetorical functions particularly prominent in academic discourse, and how this compares with native academic writing. In particular, it is shown that one of the problems experienced by EFL learners is that they tend to use features that are more typical of speech than of academic prose, which suggests that they are largely unaware of register differences. Four possible explanations are offered to account for this register confusion, namely the influence of speech, L1 transfer, teaching-induced factors and developmental factors.
The speaker’s voice
Authors: Defour Tine
Published: July 2011

In present-day English, well and now function as pragmatic markers with a wide range of text-structuring and interpersonal meanings. Both markers are used as topic-changers and serve as a means to signal speaker-attitudes or to gain a shared level of understanding between speaker and addressee on the interpersonal level. Whereas well is generally back-looking, now directs the hearer to the upcoming topic (e.g. Aijmer 2002). Because well and now have developed from a similar — adverbial — origin, this paper will examine to what extent the propositional source of the two markers serves a role in their later semantic-pragmatic development.

Our aim is to examine, by means of a historical corpus study, to what extent the development of well and now has been directed by underlying theories of grammaticalisation — implying semantic bleaching and pragmatic strengthening — and (inter)subjectification (Traugott 1999). Specific attention will be paid to contexts in which speaker and addressee have diverging views and where the use of a pragmatic marker can help in expressing personal stance and in creating interpersonal ties with the addressee. The material for this paper is taken from three historical corpora which contain speech-based data, viz. the diachronic part of the Helsinki Corpus of English Texts (HC), the Corpus of Early English Correspondence (Sampler) (CEECS), and the Corpus of English Dialogues (CED).
Rediscovering the sound of the voice in Caribbean fiction
Authors: Birat Kathie
Published: July 2011

This article examines the way in which the use of effects of orality in fiction by Caribbean novelists makes possible a re-examination of the assumptions underlying the use of voice in fiction. By looking at definitions of voice proposed by twentieth-century critics and exploring the ambiguity that underlies the metonymic extension of the term to designate the voice that is ‘heard’ in a written text, we attempt to show that there are two facets of voice, one of which is related to sound and to the body, the other to the notion of space and to the position of the speaking subject. A reflection on the conventions of oral storytelling reveals the distance between these two poles of voice, a distance which has been masked by the conventions of written narrative and has led to a certain confusion in the use of the term. The novel Divina Trace by Robert Antoni is used as an example of the way in which a writer’s desire to imitate orality allows us to understand the functioning of voices in fiction. Antoni’s novel creates a complex relation between the sound of voices and their positioning in the narrative structure. Antoni explores the process through which oral communication gives birth to stories in the Caribbean, thus offering an interesting perspective not only on the culture of the Caribbean, but also on the very nature of voice and its relation to storytelling.
A remainder that spoils the ear
Authors: Paccaud-Huguet Josiane
Published: July 2011

This paper explores the potentialities opened by the Lacanian concept of voice as object in the study of literary texts: is not the literary voice, by definition, silent, since we hear it with our eyes? Through examples taken among modernist writers, we shall see different modalities of voice: how, in a chapter of Ulysses dedicated to the ear, “Sirens”, Joyce puts the Other’s discourse and its excess of significance to silence, through a particular binding of voice to letter. Katherine Mansfield’s stories centre on an epiphanic moment of suspension which always ends in a trickle of voice uttering the impossibility of finding a signifier for femininity. In Conrad, the ‘acousmatic’ voice is indissolubly associated with a spot of time, a blind spot in the picture which betrays the authority of established models or ideals. Voice, then, is more than ever what is at stake in modernity insofar as its presence foregrounds epistemological uncertainty and the lack of guarantee in human utterances. It is most often the vehicle for recording and transmitting affects like anxiety, joy, bliss, horror which can be the hallmark of a writer’s style.
The use of literature as a means of dealing with different language levels within the same classroom
Authors: Sánchez Purificación
Published: July 2011

Literature has a long history in the teaching of language: it was essential in the classical paradigm and still plays a fundamental role in the language classroom in many countries. The advantages of using literary texts for teaching language have been widely discussed (Maley and Duff 1989; Carter et al. 1989; Widdowson 1992; Kramsch 1993; Lazar 1993; Carter and McRae 1996; Edmonson 1997). The text is the perfect vehicle to investigate the stylistic features of an author and the characteristics of a period. Texts can also be explored at different levels: they can present information about culture and society and may be analysed with different purposes. Literature also provides the teacher with a flexible instrument to deal with classes where not all the students have the same level of language. This paper presents the design of a course to teach English language and literature, highlighting the role of literature in dealing with classes where there is a heterogeneous proficiency level.
Positioning the reader
Authors: Alonso Belmonte Isabel
Published: July 2011

The present contribution analyzes the linguistic realization of the Problem-Solution pattern, the Question-Answer pattern and the Claim-Response pattern (Hoey 2001) in a sample of US written newspaper editorials and opinion articles. The objectives pursued are twofold: to explore how these textual patterns interact in the newspaper opinion genre and to unveil the kind of writer-reader relationship this interaction reflects. To achieve these goals, sample texts were analyzed first for the three textual patterns under consideration, and then the patterns themselves were characterized by identifying their most frequent textual components (e.g. Problem, Solution, Evaluation, Question, Answer, Claim, Affirm, etc.). Findings reveal different types of interaction among text patterns, which respond to different persuasive strategies unfolded by writers to achieve their communicative objectives. Results presented here can be of interest to researchers in discourse analysis and written communication.
Power in politeness
Authors: Chikogu Ray Nwabenu
Published: July 2011

The nature of most human societies, where the aspirations and desires of people are never completely fulfilled, and where such aspirations always conflict with those of other persons, presupposes a conscious effort by persons to strive for the recognition of and acceptance of their goals. They also crave the freedom to aspire towards the realization of their dreams. Because human relations and communication are conveyed principally by linguistic vehicles, much of the struggle for power is also expressed through language. It is shown in this study how a social miscreant occupying the lowest rung of the social class structure, effects a change in power relations with society’s top notchers through the deployment of the linguistic concept of politeness in dramatic dialogue, from which we draw conclusions that may be reflective of real life.
Verbal conflicts in Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and Burney’s The Wanderer
Authors: Blanchemain Laure
Published: July 2011

Both Pride and Prejudice and The Wanderer offer a revision of the traditional image of woman as the domestic peacemaker: not only do female characters take part in verbal conflicts, going against the traditional reserve expected from them, but they actively provoke verbal warfare, which becomes a means to achieve some degree of power. Studying the verbal conflicts with the modern tools of conversational patterns in interpersonal conflicts brings to the fore the tendency of those characters to resort to some strategies belonging to what has been defined as a masculine argumentation style. But the temptation to parrot men is discarded, not to come back to a more personal and emotional perspective, but to favour a third approach, a more indirect ironical or playful style which proves to be much more efficient in women’s quest for empowerment.
A transgressive story of the flood
Authors: Holdsworth Marie
Published: July 2011

Jeanette Winterson’s overlooked revision of the biblical text of the Flood, Boating for Beginners (1985), epitomises postmodern narratives that question patriarchal and capitalist society by means of irony, parody and pastiche. Focusing on the theme of creation and re-creation, this article explores how — through several textual processes — discredit is brought on the biblical text and on the God figure, so as to reaffirm the power of creative writers. Yahweh, a subversive character, is allegedly the Creator, but quickly turns out to be Noah’s Frankenstein-like creation. Noah’s function as God’s maker and writer of Genesis furthermore mirrors the author’s own writing process. By using Feuerbach’s projection theory, I examine how, while the godhead is de-constructed, the status of the author is subversively reasserted.
“I never saw such people”
Authors: Dyen Jonathan
Published: July 2011

In this essay, I argue that John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath has taken on renewed significance in the midst of the current economic downturn known in the United States as “the Great Recession.” While in the 1930s Steinbeck’s novel offered a way of understanding and responding to the economic conditions of the Depression, today the novel foregrounds the degree to which postmodernism has foreclosed the utopian possibilities of the novel’s grand narrative. I contend that the novel’s methodology can provide a flawed but potent framework for an effective literary response to the current economic crisis.
Strengthening uses of pure/puur in English and Dutch
Authors: Vandewinkel Sigi
Published: July 2011

In both English and Dutch, the adjective “pure/puur” has developed subjectified meanings, denoting speaker involvement rather than lexical unmixedness, as in the reinforcing “pure madness/pure waanzin”. “Pure/puur” can also express focusing discourse-structuring functions (“That’s pure luck/Da’s puur geluk”) and submodifier-of-classifier uses (“a pure economic measure/een puur economische maatregel”), structuring local discourse along precise subclassifications.This synchronic comparative study aims at describing these uses and at finetuning the analytical apparatus on which current accounts are based. Specific research questions are: what patterns do “pure/puur” engage in and what are their lexicosyntactic properties? What parameters explain distributional similarities? And how do these findings fit in with hypotheses about the unidirectionality of subjectification and the accompanying leftward movement in the NP?
Imperatives of visual versus auditory perception as pragmatic markers in English and Dutch
Authors: Van Olmen Daniël
Published: July 2011

This article examines the English and Dutch imperatives of intentional visual and auditory perception and in particular their use as pragmatic markers. Look, listen, kijk ‘look’ and luister ‘listen’ are compared with respect to frequency, distribution and usage. The difference between look and kijk, on the one hand, and listen and luister, on the other, is argued to be indicative of a more general cross-linguistic tendency. This tendency is explained in terms of the imperatives’ effectiveness in and likely recruitment for what has traditionally been called attention-getting and in terms of the common view of the nature of visual and auditory perception.
Establishing the phraseological profile of a text type
Authors: Römer Ute
Published: July 2011

Starting from the observation that meaning does not primarily reside in individual words but in the phrase, this paper focuses on the examination of recurring phrases in language. It introduces a new analytical model that leads corpus researchers to a profile of the central phraseological items in a selected text or text collection. In this paper, the model is applied to a 3.5-million word corpus of online academic book reviews that represents part of the specialized discourse of the global community of linguists. This demonstrates how the model facilitates the study of the occurrence and distribution of the central phraseological items in linguistic book reviews, and how it helps to determine the extent of the phraseological tendency of language.
‘Where am I, lurking in what place of vantage?’
Authors: Vandelanotte Lieven
Published: July 2011

On the basis of a case study of The Book of Evidence and The Sea, this paper looks at the linguistic means through which at different levels distance is created in the fiction of John Banville. In addition to more or less ‘local’ but frequent instances where the first-person narrator’s own discourse is metatextually commented on, or another’s discourse is evoked from his perspective, distancing effects are to be found at the broader levels of the situation of discourse, as in the case of the fictive address of judge and jury in The Book of Evidence, and of the narrator’s identity and perspective, as in The Sea, where the narrator zooms out to take an outside perspective on his own vantage point.
Intertwined voices
Authors: Sanders José
Published: July 2011

In this contribution, a mental space analysis model is presented to conceptualize and explain voice intertwining in journalistic texts. News text genres abound with clearly recognizable representations of source discourse, such as direct and indirect speech. In addition, blended representation types can be described, such as free indirect speech and implicit viewpoint, in which voices of journalist and source are less easy to discern. Comparison of various news texts concerned with a particular criminal case shows that news reports have a preference for direct or indirect speech and avoid the intertwined type of free indirect speech; by contrast, in feature stories and opinion contributions free indirect speech is not uncommon. Even free indirect thought, stemming from fictional genres, appears to be possible in these subgenres. Finally, blending of journalist and source voices is present in references to characters and events. Analysis of mental spaces attributed to sources in various news genres helps to explain how the intertwining of voices is established by linguistic form. Consequences for theory on functions and effects of source representation are discussed.
LIFE IS MUSIC
Authors: Górska Elżbieta
Published: July 2011

Following Blending Theory, this article analyses a novel metaphor LIFE IS MUSIC which formed a leitmotif of Daniel Barenboim’s BBC Reith Lectures of 2006. The main focus is on the means and techniques employed by Barenboim, and his use of “verbo-musical” metaphors in particular. Because it goes beyond verbo-pictorial modes of representation, the proposed study of verbo-musical metaphors in a dynamically evolving discourse constitutes a new contribution not only to studies of multimodal metaphor in actual language use, but also to debates on conceptual nature of metaphor, “(metaphorical) thinking for speaking”, and language and cognition.
N-rhemes in English problem–solution texts
Authors: Herriman Jennifer
Published: July 2011

It has been claimed that the last constituent of the clause, the N-rheme, is the part of the message which the writer wants the reader to remember and which is most likely to correlate with the goals of the text (Fries 2002). This study investigates the N-rhemes in two samples of problem–solution texts written by advanced Swedish learners of English and British university students, respectively. It was found that the majority of the N-rhemes in both samples are concerned with the chief elements of problem–solution texts, i.e. with the description of the problem, different means of solving it and the evaluation of both. It was also found that a small proportion of the N-rhemes formed progressions from their preceding theme or rheme. Five broad types of semantic connections were distinguished, Continuation, Expansion, Contrast, Summation, and Enhancement, each of which contributes to the unfolding discourse in different ways. Continuation and Expansion N-rheme progressions are used, for instance, to emphasise and elaborate on the writer’s point, Contrast and Summation N-rheme progressions to organise the content, and Enhancement N-rheme progressions to develop aspects of circumstantial meaning. The texts by advanced Swedish learners, which are written in a somewhat subjective and emphatic style, contain a greater number of Expansion and Continuation N-rheme progressions than the texts written by the British students, whose style of writing is expository and less personal.
Grammatical knowledge of Korean heritage speakers
Authors: Lee Teresa
Published: July 2011

This paper examines the effects of onset age of exposure to a dominant language (English) with respect to Korean heritage speakers’ knowledge of unaccusativity involving quantifier float. In an attempt to see how the acquisition of heritage grammar is affected by this factor, the present study compares two groups of heritage speakers: early (US-born, n = 13) and late (Korean-born, n = 14) bilinguals. The results show that compared to the late bilinguals, the early bilinguals did not give differential ratings to unergative and unaccusative verbs, which confirms the widely noted observation that the earlier onset age of exposure to English is, the more likely heritage speakers’ linguistic knowledge of the heritage language is incomplete. In addition, the results show that incomplete knowledge was also found with the late bilinguals (mean onset age 9), in that they did not accept unaccusative verbs as strongly as the native controls did.
Jij doe wat girafe?
Authors: Strik Nelleke , Pérez-Leroux Ana T.
Published: July 2011

In this study we consider the role of cross-linguistic influence in the domain ofwh-movement and subject-verb inversion in children simultaneously acquiring Dutch and French, two typologically different languages.Wh-questions were elicited in Dutch by means of an elicited production task. The participants consisted of 5- and 7-year-old Dutch-French bilingual children, and two control groups of monolingual Dutch children and adults (N = 46). Target-likewh-fronted questions with subject-verb inversion formed the majority of responses. However, two qualitatively different structures were produced as a result of transfer from French:wh-in-situ questions andwh-fronted questions without inversion. Structural overlap approaches to transfer can predict cross-linguistic influence from the language with more structural options (French) to the one with only one interrogative construction (Dutch). However, we argue that a complexity-based theory of transfer provides a better account for the presence of the attested structures than a structural overlap approach.
The ontological priority of representations
Authors: Iacoboni Marco
Published: July 2011

This paper reviews empirical data from monkey neurophysiology and human brain imaging regarding mirror neurons and language. These data are interpreted as suggesting that some of our cognitive intuitions about language and representations may be misleading. For centuries, representations have been conceptualized as secondary, both temporally and spatially, to a primary entity. What if representations have ontological priority? Can we even conceive this idea?
Indeterminacy in dialogue
Authors: Bazzanella Carla
Published: July 2011

Indeterminacy in language is commonly resorted to for a variety of reasons, in several different forms. After touching on the fuzzy boundaries of indeterminacy with respect to vagueness and ambiguity, several linguistic devices (among which, unexpectedly, also cardinal numbers) are introduced and discussed in relation to the prototypical form of dialogue, the role of context/co-text, and the interactional level. Not surprisingly, ‘interaction’ turns out to be a key word in understanding the widespread recourse to indeterminacy in dialogue, especially in face-to-face situations, which provide interactants with a wide range of contextual components. These are useful for retrieving the overall picture and, in certain cases, making it clear, also thanks to multiple resources that are integrated in the dialogic development and in the process of understanding. Unavoidably, indeterminacy in dialogue, a complex phenomenon, has to be dealt with in an integrated perspective.
Is pragmatics the answer to our quest for meaning?
Authors: Teubert Wolfgang
Published: July 2011

In this paper, I aim to explore the contribution (neo-)Gricean pragmatics, as seen by Mira Ariel, can make to the notion of meaning. In her view, the ‘semantic meaning’ of a sentence, seen as the core unit of grammar, can be computed on the basis of the (rule-based) code of a given natural language, revealing the range of meaning(s) this sentence has in isolation. Pragmatic meaning starts with semantic meaning; it is calculated through ‘inferencing’, involving the contextualisation of this sentence and the application of (universal) reasoning. It makes us understand a sentence. This view comes with problems, e.g. the notion of language as ‘code’, the status of rules, the borderline between grammar and pragmatics, the issues of cognition and of the speaker’s intentions (problems of which Ariel is very much aware). As an alternative, I will suggest an approach that bases the interpretation of text segments on discourse evidence shared by the interpretive community, without recourse to people’s minds.
The study of early comprehension in language development
Authors: Kail Michèle
Published: July 2011

The last twenty years have witnessed the development of promising methodologies and new paradigms that have brought substantial findings and have changed our views on early language acquisition. Focusing on early comprehension, this article is mainly devoted to a review of these new paradigms analyzing their benefits and limits. One of the main challenges is the development of reliable on-line behavioural methods coupled with neurophysiological data in cross-sectional and longitudinal studies. Another challenge is the extension of these new paradigms within a powerful crosslinguistic perspective. In the second part of the article, we focus on some advances in different domains directly linked to new methodologies: the evaluation of task dependence in early syntactic comprehension, some new insights on production/comprehension asymmetries and the predictive value of speed of processing language in two-year-olds for language and cognitive abilities in later childhood.
Exploring patterns of adaptation in child-directed speech during the process of early grammaticalization in child language
Authors: van Dijk Marijn , van Geert Paul
Published: July 2011

This contribution analyzes adaptation between child language and child-directed speech (CDS) during the development of grammaticalization in child language. The study compares developmental trajectories of three children (learning Dutch, Austrian German and French) with the trajectories of the CDS of their caretakers. It takes an exploratory approach to describing patterns of development and variability in specific aspects of language development, such as the relative frequency of one-, two/three- and more-word utterances, noun proportions in vocabulary, and determiner/filler use and omission. The analyses consist of descriptive techniques that can be used to visualize patterns of development, which are transferable to other contexts. The results point to real time, ongoing processes of accommodation that are part of an effective communicative flow.
For a constitutive pragmatics
Authors: Cooren François , Matte Frédérik
Published: July 2011

This paper proposes to explore the mechanisms by which speaking, writing and, more generally, interacting pragmatically contribute to the mode of being and acting of social forms, whether these forms be identities, relations or collectives. Such an approach to pragmatics, which we propose to call constitutive, amounts to showing, both theoretically and empirically, that human interactants are not the only ones who should be deemed as “doing things with words” (Austin 1975), but that other figures — which can take the form of policies, statuses, tools, groups, collectives, etc. — can also be identified as being active in a given situation, especially through the way they are mobilized and staged in interaction. According to this approach, interactions can therefore be considered dislocated loci where specific con-figurations are (re-)produced and embodied. As we will see, such a constitutive view also allows us to deal with issues of power, authority and responsibility, three questions that tend to be relatively marginalized in pragmatic studies, especially when a performative and interactive viewpoint is adopted.
Performance pragmatics, neuroscience and evolution
Authors: Beeman William O.
Published: July 2011

This paper addresses the question question: How do individuals affect others cognitively and emotionally through performance? Performance here is broadly defined as purposeful enactment or display behavior carried out in front of an audience. Following Alfred Schütz, Erving Goffman, Deborah Tannen and others, the paper posits that performance works through the creation of behavior that is embedded in cognitive “frames” that determine the symbolic interpretation of events. The framed event allows the performer to stimulate the emotions of the audience through pragmatically determined communication in a psychologically protected environment. Both performer and audience utilize the natural human ability to predict the emotional states of others, currently known as Theory of Mind, in order to generate and feel these emotions in an act of co-creation of experience. It is posited that performance has evolutionary value in allowing humans to practice the experience of emotions, and to create group solidarity.
The ranked list as Panopticon in enterprise culture
Authors: Wee Lionel
Published: July 2011

The emergence of enterprise culture has raised the issue of how techniques of governmentality are being used to re-make individuals and institutions as bearers of enterprising qualities. This paper examines one such specific technique of governmentality, that of the ranked list. The ranked list is interesting for three reasons. One, just about anything can be ranked. Two, it is a widely accepted and normalized communicative genre. Three, there are properties of the ranked list that make it particularly potent as a technique of governmentality, including the following: it is strongly oriented towards the consumer; it encourages the view of ranking as competition; and its hegemonic status makes it difficult to resist, so that any opposition to a proposal for ranking is usually put on the defensive.
Irony beyond criticism
Authors: Tsakona Villy
Published: July 2011

Taking into account recent pragmatic and sociolinguistic approaches to irony, the present study investigates irony as a discursive resource Greek parliamentarians employ to fulfill their institutional roles and to negotiate verbal rules of conduct in highly institutionalized and confrontational debates. It is suggested that, besides criticism, parliamentary irony is used to sharpen attacks against the Opposition, to elicit vivid reactions from the audience and disaffiliate from, or align with, participants, to restore parliamentary order, and to establish cohesive ties between successive parliamentary speeches. Moreover, the recorded reactions to irony reveal that irony is considered a common and ‘legitimate’ discursive practice in the Greek parliament and is not negatively evaluated by Greek MPs. Such findings highlight the significance of contextual parameters for the sociolinguistic analysis of pragmatic phenomena and lead to a critical evaluation of those previous results which are based on the study of decontextualized and/or fictional ironical utterances and exchanges.
Ideological manipulation in mobilising Arabic political editorials
Authors: Al Sharoufi Hussain
Published: July 2011

This study presents the particular discursive strategies used by some Arabic newspapers to serve the Islamist fundamentalists’ goals and strengthen their hegemonic ideology in the Middle East. It also describes the move to create and sustain a new wave of Occidentalism, the doctrine of negatively representing the West, a counterpart to Edward Said’s Orientalism, the doctrine of negatively representing the East. Occidentalism is a retaliatory ideological strategy that rebuffs hegemonic Western ideas; it is used by some chauvinistic Arabs trying to create a distorted image of the West in the minds of Middle Easterners. In this paper, I will investigate the negative side of the concept of Occidentalism, as exploited by today’s fanatics in their justification for attacking the West. Some Arabic newspapers contribute to fanaticism through antagonistic rhetoric that glorifies Pan-Arab brotherhood, chauvinistic Arab nationalism, and martyrdom. By glorifying these demagogic mottoes, such newspapers create an ideological polarisation against the West, in that they try to win their readers’ sympathy, control their emotions, and deepen their nostalgic feelings for the great Arab past.
Linguistic Marketing in “… a marketplace of ideas”
Authors: Ifukor Presley
Published: July 2011

The virtual community under consideration is called the Nigerian Village Square (NVS), ‘… a marketplace of ideas’. As an online discussion forum, NVS combines the features of listservs and newsgroups with a more elegant and user-friendly interface. While computer-mediated communication (CMC) technologies augment political discourse in established democracies, new media and mobile technologies create avenues for a virtual sphere among Nigerians. Therefore, the ideal virtual sphere guarantees equal access to all connected netizens, equal right for all languages in netizens’ linguistic repertoire, and it fosters democratic deliberation through policy debates, public dialogues and ‘online polylogues’. By linguistic marketing is meant discourse as a vehicle for ‘promotional acts’ and for ‘selling’ particular cultures and ideologies to multicultural and multilingual readers/audiences. One interpretation of this is in terms of asserting language rights and linguistic equality. The use of Nigerian languages with Nigerian Pidgin online is promotional and for existential negotiation. This results in language mixture which is an instantiation of freedom of speech, freedom of switch and freedom to switch. The underlying pragmatic motivation for top-down language mixture and alternation in Nigerian virtual discourse is attention-getting with the aim of inducing an interdiscursive writer-reader cognitive as well as communicative interaction. Other pragmatic functions of code switching discussed in the paper include allusive textuality, amusing phaticity, anticipated interactivity, affective expressivity and audience affiliation or alienation, among others. Thus, intertextuality is an explanatory technique for investigating previously unexplored phenomena in digital code switching.
Recent developments in metaphor theory
Authors: Kövecses Zoltán
Published: July 2011

Several scholars have proposed alternative views to conceptual metaphor theory (see, for example, Ortony, 1993; Barnden, 2006; Wilson and Carston, 2006, 2008; Vega, 2007; Gibbs, 2008). How are the modified, refined, and alternative theories related to each other and standard conceptual metaphor theory, and which theory provides the best account of the phenomenon of metaphor? The particular approaches I will consider in this paper include the theory of metaphor as categorization, standard conceptual metaphor theory, blending theory, the neural theory of metaphor, conceptual metaphor theory as based on the idea of main meaning focus, and relevance theory. I will present the various theories through the analysis of a single metaphorical sentence: This surgeon is a butcher. I will propose that conceptual metaphor theory as based on the idea of the main meaning focus gives us a good way of characterizing the emergence of the sentence’s meaning. This characterization consists of a four-stage process. First, there exist two independent conceptual categories: BUTCHERY and SURGERY. Second, due to the similarity between the two, a metaphorical relationship is established between them. Third, the property of incompetence emerges in the concept of BUTCHERY in light of and against the background of the concept of SURGERY. Fourth, this property is projected into the blend, in which the property will now characterize the surgeon. I will point out that this approach is compatible with several other views, such as Ruiz de Mendoza’s Combined Input Hypothesis and with aspects of relevance theory.
Distinguishing near-synonyms and translation equivalents in metaphorical terms
Authors: Rojo Ana
Published: July 2011

This paper aims to study the applications of Metaphorical Pattern Analysis (MPA) to contrastive analysis and translation by researching the differences in the metaphorical mappings instantiated by the English words ‘crisis’ and ‘recession’ and their translation equivalents in Spanish crisis and recesión. Since no translation or comparable corpora for this type of study are available for English and Spanish, the search engine Webcorp is used to research the occurrences of these terms in news texts via the web sites of a number of different English and Spanish newspapers. Our data reveal language-specific differences in the way in which both the synonyms and their respective translation equivalents participate in the metaphorical mappings found in each language.
Corpus linguistics and the study of literature
Authors: Biber Douglas
Published: July 2011

The present paper introduces corpus-based analytical techniques and surveys some of the specific ways in which corpus analysis has been applied to the study of literature. In recent years, those research efforts have been mostly carried out under the umbrella of ‘corpus stylistics’. Most of these studies focus on the distribution of words (analyzing keywords, extended lexical phrases, or collocations) to identify textual features that are especially characteristic of an author or particular text. Corpus-based grammatical and pragmatic analyses of literary language are also briefly considered. Then, in the concluding part of the paper, I briefly survey earlier computational and statistical research on authorship attribution and literary style. While that research tradition is in some ways the precursor to more recent work in corpus stylistics, it is also complementary to recent research in its application of sophisticated statistical and computational methods.