bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
A dynamic field approach to goal inference, error detection and anticipatory action selection in human-robot collaboration
Authors: Bicho Estela , Erlhagen Wolfram , Louro Luís , Silva Eliana Costa e , Silva Rui , Hipolito Nzoji
Published: March 2014

In this chapter we present results of our ongoing research on efficient and fluent human-robot collaboration that is heavily inspired by recent experimental findings about the neurocognitive mechanisms supporting joint action in humans. The robot control architecture implements the joint coordination of actions and goals as a dynamic process that integrates contextual cues, shared task knowledge and the predicted outcome of the user’s motor behavior. The architecture is formalized as a coupled system of dynamic neural fields representing a distributed network of local but connected neural populations with specific functionalities. We validate the approach in a task in which a robot and a human user jointly construct a toy ‘vehicle’. We show that the context-dependent mapping from action observation onto appropriate complementary actions allows the robot to cope with dynamically changing joint action situations. More specifically, the results illustrate crucial cognitive capacities for efficient and successful human-robot collaboration such as goal inference, error detection and anticipatory action selection.
Accessing robot acceptance by motor interference
Authors: Kupferberg Aleksandra , Huber Markus , Glasauer Stefan
Published: March 2014

A possibly objective method for evaluation of the acceptance of humanoid robots in joint interaction with humans is based on the phenomenon of motor interference (MI) which claims that face-to-face or video observation of a different (incongruent) movement of another individual leads to a higher variance in one’s own movement trajectory. MI is supposed to be a consequence of the tendency to imitate our partner’s movements (motor resonance) during social interaction (e.g. contagious yawning). Since motor resonance correlates with the feeling of sympathy, togetherness and mutual rapport and also leads to an easier understanding of emotions and intentions of others, measuring MI can be used as an indicator of the quality of the human-robot interaction. In this review, we explain the neural basis of MI and show which features of robots trigger its emergence and thus should be taken into consideration during the development of robots for human-robot interaction scenarios.
Evaluation of robot body movements supporting communication
Authors: Bogdan Cristian , Ertl Dominik , Hüttenrauch Helge , Göller Michael , Green Anders , Severinson-Eklundh Kerstin , Falb Jürgen , Kaindl Hermann
Published: March 2014

In designing socially interactive robots we have focused on robot movement and its role in multi-modal human-robot communication. In this chapter we describe design and evaluation of robot body movements supporting communication, investigating the idea of using speed and orientation adjustments as design elements in human-robot interaction. The scenario studied includes a robotic shopping trolley that offers products via speech and GUI to the user while both are moving in a supermarket-like environment. Our results show that if the robot slows down while making such offers, users are more prone to react upon them and to take the product. However, even from our early pre-study with mock-up robots we observed that users tended not to mention the robot’s slow-down movements, even if these movements were shown several times to them during a video-based debriefing. This phenomenon, that users react implicitly on the robot’s movements without being consciously aware of them, was confirmed during an experimental study with a fully integrated robot prototype. We discuss our results by reflecting on human-robot interaction design methods, and we draw implications from the lessons learned in the study of the design of robot behaviours. In particular, we list a whole set of challenges for HRI when both the user and the robot are moving.
The acquisition of word semantics by a humanoid robot via interaction with a human tutor
Authors: Saunders Joe , Nehaniv Chrystopher L. , Lyon Caroline
Published: March 2014

This chapter describes a HRI case study which demonstrates how a humanoid robot can use simple heuristics to acquire and use vocabulary in the context of being shown a series of shapes presented to it by a human and how the interaction style of the human changes as the robot learns and expresses its learning through speech. The case study is based on findings on how adults use child-directed speech when socially interacting with infants. The results indicate that humans are generally willing to engage with a robot in a similar manner to their engagement with a human infant and use similar styles of interaction varying as the shared understanding between them becomes more apparent. The case study also demonstrates that a rudimentary form of shared intentional reference can sufficiently bias the learning procedure. As a result, the robot associates human-taught lexical items for a series of presented shapes with its own sensorimotor experience, and is able to utter these words, acquired from the particular tutor, appropriately in an interactive, embodied context exhibiting apparent reference and discrimination.
Communication robots
Authors: Kanda Takayuki , Shiomi Masahiro , Hagita Norihiro
Published: March 2014

In this chapter, we discuss challenges in applications of communication robots. A communication robot is a robot that communicates with people in the way people normally do with each other. To date, there is no actual deployment of communication robots, hence researchers have been actively conducting demonstrative field trials to seek a potential role of such robots, and investigate people’s acceptance of them. As an example, we introduce one of our own field trials, which was conducted in a shopping mall where a robot provides route and shop information while attempting to build rapport with repeated visitors. Building on this example, we further discuss the future challenges of the application of human-robot interaction.
Designing domestic robots with personality
Authors: Meerbeek Bernt , Saerbeck Martin
Published: March 2014

Research has shown that robots tend to induce the perception of personality through their behaviour and appearance. It has therefore been suggested that the concept of personality can be used as a guiding principle for designing the interface and interactions with robotic appliances. A well-defined and clearly communicated personality can assist users to form a mental model of the robot and facilitate their interactions with it. But this raises questions about what kind of personality to design for a robot and how to express this personality in its behaviour? A design process is described that supports the development and evaluation of personality profiles and expressive behaviour for robotic products. The process is explained with examples for a domestic robot.
Touch-triggered withdrawal reflexes for safer robots
Authors: Dahl Torbjørn S. , Swere Erick A.R. , Palmer Andrew
Published: March 2014

Covering robots with a skin-like sensor enables a range of skills that improve human-robot interaction (HRI) both in terms of safety and communication. In this chapter we review current knowledge of human reflexes and suggest a role for reflexes with tactile triggers in the context of robot safety. We focus in particular on the human nociceptive withdrawal reflex (NWR), i.e., the reflex that causes withdrawal from painful stimuli. We present experimental data from human NWR motion capture as well as a basic model and implementation of a set of NWRs for the Nao humanoid robot.
Rehabilitation robots
Authors: Amirabdollahian Farshid
Published: March 2014

Although today’s technology is improving the general safety and well being of society, there are still many accidents causing conditions such as spinal cord injury and traumatic brain injury, which result in impairment and disabling conditions. Despite the success of preventive strategies that control the risk factors that can cause stroke, such as control of blood pressure, weight and treatment of atrial fibrillation, recent studies have reported an upward incidence rate for stroke (Volpe et al., 2001, 745–752).The high prevalence and incidence rate of these conditions, alongside a growing ageing population, provides a demand for technological innovation in rehabilitation.During recent years, the progress in Rehabilitation Robotics (RR) has been significant and outstanding. Devices inspired by human dynamics, kinetics, kinematics and biomechanics have resulted in prototypes and marketable products for use with the fore mentioned conditions. A majority of these tools have indicated improvements in the recovery of motor and/or functional performance for patients recovering from stroke, cerebral palsy, traumatic brain injury, and spinal cord injury. This chapter reviews the current landscape and recent technological advancements in this field. The section entitled ‘Robots’ provides a short introduction to the origin of the word ‘robot’. In the section ‘Current developments in rehabilitation robotics’, some pioneering projects are introduced and their achievements are discussed. Section ‘Haptic interfaces’ provides an introduction to haptics, touch sense for humans, design of force-feedback devices, different control paradigms often used and finally common virtual behaviours and human-robot interaction paradigms. The final section highlights current and future trends in robot mediated therapeutic interactions.
Introduction.
Self-organization and selection in cultural language evolution
Authors: Steels Luc
Published: March 2014

This chapter outlines the main challenges a theory for the cultural evolution of language should address and
proposes a particular theory which is worked out and explored in greater detail in the remaining chapters of this book.
The theory rests on two biologically inspired mechanisms, namely selection and self-organization, mapped onto the
cultural, more specifically, linguistic domain. Selectionism is an alternative to rational
top-down design. It introduces a distinction between processes that generate possible
linguistic variants in a population (for example, different ways to express tense
and aspect) and processes that select some variants to survive and become dominant in a language,
based on criteria that translate into increased communicative success, such as expressive adequacy, minimal
cognitive effort, learnability and social conformity. Self-organization occurs when speakers and
hearers align their communication systems based on the outcome of each
interaction. It explains how convergence may arise without central coordination or direct telepathic meaning transfer.
This chapter explains these basic hypotheses in more detail and introduces a methodology for exploring them
based on the notion of a language game.
The Grounded Naming Game
Authors: Steels Luc , Loetzsch Martin
Published: March 2014

This chapter shows a concrete example of a language game experiment for studying the cultural
evolution of one of the most basic functions of language, namely to draw attention to an
object in the context by naming a characteristic feature of the
object. If the object is a specific recognizable individual, then the name is called a proper name,
and this is the case that is studied in this chapter. We investigate a concrete operational language strategy,
with a conceptual as well a linguistic component, and show that a population of
agents endowed with this strategy is able to self-organize a vocabulary of grounded proper names from scratch.
The example provides a clear example of the role of alignment in stimulating self-organization and how
expressive adequacy, cognitive effort, learnability, and social conformity act as selectionist forces,
driving the population towards an effective language system.
The evolution of case systems for marking event structure
Authors: van Trijp Remi
Published: March 2014

Case has fascinated linguists for centuries without however revealing its most important secrets. This paper offers
operational explanations for case through language game experiments in which autonomous
agents describe real-world events to each other. The experiments demonstrate (a) why a language may develop a case system,
(b) how a population can self-organize a case system, and (c) why and
how an existing case system may take on new functions in a language.
Emergent functional grammar for space
Authors: Spranger Michael , Steels Luc
Published: March 2014

This chapter explores a semantics-oriented approach to the origins of syntactic structure.
It reports on preliminary experiments whereby speakers introduce hierarchical constructions and
grammatical markers to express which
conceptualization strategy hearers are supposed to invoke. This grammatical information
helps hearers to avoid semantic ambiguity or errors in interpretation. A simulation study is performed
for spatial grammar using robotic agents that play language games about objects in their shared world.
The chapter uses a reconstruction of a fragment of German spatial language to identify the niche
of spatial grammar, and then reports
on acquisition and formation experiments in which agents seeded with a `pidgin German'
without grammar are made to interact until rudiments of hierarchical structure and grammatical marking emerge.
The emergence of internal agreement systems
Authors: Beuls Katrien , Steels Luc , Höfer Sebastian
Published: March 2014

Grammatical agreement means that two linguistic units share certain syntactic or semantic features such as gender, number or person. Agreement has a variety of grammatical functions. One of them, called internal agreement, is to signal which words
are grouped together as part of the same phrase. This chapter explores how a population might self-organize such
an agreement system. We argue that this happens when speakers attempt to reduce processing effort and avoid ambiguities.
A multidimensional activity based approach to communication
Authors: Allwood Jens
Published: March 2014

This paper describes a multidimensional activity approach to communication. One of the goals of the approach is to clarify some of the relations that exist between cognition and communication, in terms of the degrees of awareness, intentional control, speed and types of content that occur in communication. Another goal is to describe and clarify some of the relations between communication and joint activity. This is done through the notions of “coactivation” and “social activity”. The paper provides a definition of communication and includes a criticism of the “turn taking” model of communication, in favour of a view of communication as a multidirectional flow of information. There is also a sketch of communication as coactivation of meaning potentials, through the use of semantic-epistemic operations.
Automatic and strategic alignment of co-verbal gestures in dialogue
Authors: Kopp Stefan , Bergmann Kirsten
Published: March 2014

Spontaneous co-verbal gestures are one means for speakers to align with each other and coordinate their interaction. In this chapter we review current empirical findings of this phenomenon and propose two kinds of partner-specific adaptations of gesturing in dialogue: Automatic alignment that occurs through priming via sensorimotor resonances and direct perception-action-links, while strategic adaptations result from flexible production choices based on recipient design and grounding. Both mechanisms are suggested to work to some degree independently and simultaneously, possibly affecting different features of the same gesture. An integrated process models of speech-gesture production and understanding is proposed that explains these adaptation mechanisms and how they may work together.
Communication as moving target tracking
Authors: Zhang Byoung-Tak
Published: March 2014

We view communication partners as moving targets. Achieving the goal of communication, thus, requires tracking the conversational trajectory of the partner in real time. We formalize this as dynamic inference with an action-perception-learning cycle and use sequential Bayesian estimation to do that. Our information-theoretic, dynamic Bayesian formulation suggests to understand communication as a Markov decision process where one participant tries to simultaneously improve predictions about its partner’s future state, manipulate the partner into states that maximize predictive information and minimize decision costs. The dynamic inference cycle model offers an overarching framework in which the mathematical tools developed in different fields can be used for modelling communication. It also helps develop technologies for multimodal embodied interaction and human-like cognitive agents.
Language variation and mutual adaptation in interactive communication
Authors: Vorwerg Constanze
Published: March 2014

This contribution discusses the role of language variation in explaining mutual adaptation in interactive communication. Variability is one of the most fundamental and pervasive facets of language (and other communicative means) and lies at the heart of interactive adaptation – as the variety of linguistic means to express a particular idea that exists within and between communicators both allows for and necessitates adaptation. Examples from both sociolinguistic and psycholinguistic approaches to the study of linguistic variation are provided. I argue that the forming new theory of communication needs to combine both perspectives and to build onto empirical results from both lines of research, focusing both on socially meaningful variation and on the individual mechanisms and mental representations involved in linguistic choices.
What is the link between emotional  and communicative alignment in interaction?
Authors: Jaecks Petra , Damm Oliver , Hielscher-Fastabend Martina , Malchus Karoline , Stenneken Prisca , Wrede Britta
Published: March 2014

In accordance with accumulating evidence from research, we assume a strong but flexible relation between emotional and communicative alignment in interaction. The communicative function of emotional adaptation, the processing of emotions on all linguistic levels and the empirical evidence in studies with neurological patient groups support our approach. In this chapter, we will discuss the link, i.e. the differences and influences, between emotional and communicative processes of adaptation and extend on emotional communication in human-robot interaction. In the course of this, we propose a three-layered model of emotional alignment in order to explain how emotional alignment could be computationally modelled in a human-robot setting.
Hungarian external causatives: Monoclausal but bi-eventive
Authors: Bartos Huba
Published: March 2014

In two recent papers, Horváth & Siloni (H&S, 2010; to appear) argue for a lexical treatment of Hungarian external (-tAt) causatives, as well as against the viability of any non-lexical treatment in general. Here I take issue with them on their conclusion, as well as their argumentation, to show that (i) several of their arguments are empirically unfounded, therefore (ii) their general conclusion is unwarranted, and in fact, (iii) the data do allow for a radically non-lexical treatment, the essentials of which are spelt out in the last part of the paper, although the primary aim here is just to show that H&S's analysis of Hungarian causatives is not the only viable one, and not superior to a syntax-based account, either.
The syntax-prosody interface and sentential complementation in Hungarian
Authors: Ishihara Shinichiro , Ürögdi Barbara
Published: March 2014

This paper discusses the experimental results and theoretical implications of our investigations of syntax–prosody mapping in Hungarian sentential embedding constructions. In experiments controlled for potential effects of factivity, contextual givenness and contrastive focus, we tested the predictions of competing theories seeking to identify the property yielding diverging syntactic and semantic effects in object clauses. Our findings suggest that factivity does not have a direct syntactic and hence prosodic correlate, contra e.g. Kiparsky & Kiparsky (1970), and these findings are compatible with an alternative analysis proposed by de Cuba & Ürögdi (2009) claiming that factivity is irrelevant for syntax, and clauses are differentiated by ‘referentiality’. We found givenness effects with all embedded clauses (factive and non-factive, ‘referential’ and ‘non-referential’), evidence that givenness is independent of these factors.
Paradigmatic variation in Hungarian
Authors: Rebrus Péter , Törkenczy Miklós
Published: March 2014

The main claim of this paper is that the locus of variation within a paradigm is not accidental. It occurs at unstable points of the paradigm where morphophonological patterns are in conflict. The paper discusses in detail two areas of variation in the Hungarian verbal paradigm: variation in some forms of verb stems that display vowel-zero alternation and variation in the marking of definiteness. This is analysed in an analogical framework where paradigmatic uniformity and contrast constraints apply between surface forms and variation arises as a result of the differential optimisation of conflicting constraints.
An interface account of identificational focus movement
Authors: Surányi Balázs
Published: March 2014

This paper offers a purely interface-based account of the syntax of identificational focus in Hungarian, which eliminates all syntax-internal artifacts from the grammar of ‘focus movement.’ The analysis is based on two inescapable interface properties of id-focus: its prosodic prominence, and its interpretation as an identificational predicate. The overt or covert realization of any id-focus movement and the actual landing sites it may target are determined by the interaction of independent factors: (1) general properties of the grammar (economy, Stress–Focus Correspondence, and the general theory of syntactic movement), and (2) parametric properties of Hungarian that are independent of the grammar of focus, including syntactic and prosodic features (notably, the “EPP” property of T, and the left-headedness of intonational phrases).
Silent people
Authors: Brody Michael
Published: March 2014

I argue that cases of personal pronouns that appear to be interpretable as universal impersonals only in the presence of a (typically locative) adverbial phrase are in fact not impersonal pronouns at all. These “universal impersonal cum adverbial” constructions involve an ordinary anaphoric personal pronoun whose antecedent is a silent people hidden in the locative.
Pseudoclefts in Hungarian
Authors: Hartmann Jutta M. , Hegedűs Veronika , Surányi Balázs
Published: March 2014

Based on novel data from Hungarian, this paper makes the case that in at least some languages specificational pseudocleft sentences must receive a ‘what-you-see-is-what-you-get’ syntactic analysis. More specifically, it is argued that the clefted constituent is the subject of predication (underlyingly base-generated in Spec, Pr), whereas the cleft clause acts as a predicate in the structure. Alongside connectivity effects characteristic of specificational pseudoclefts, we also discuss a range of anti-connectivity effects, which we show to receive a straightforward explanation under the proposed analysis. It follows that attested connectivity effects, in turn, require a semantic, rather than a syntactic account, along the lines of Jacobson (1994) and Sharvit (1999).
Focus, exhaustivity and the syntax  of Wh-interrogatives
Authors: Horvath Julia
Published: March 2014

Hungarian wh-interrogatives are reexamined in light of Horvath’s (2007) Exhaustivity operator (EI-Op) analysis for movements earlier (mis)construed as triggered by a syntactically active [Focus] feature. Taking a fresh look at the EI-Op proposal, the paper reexamines what drives obligatory wh-preposing in interrogatives, its potential landing sites and relation to preposed non-­wh-phrases, and analyzes the role played by the syntactic EI-Op, a clausal EI0 head, and the head of CP (Force0) in wh-movement and interpretation. I motivate a variant of the cross-linguistically attested phrasal Q-particle, namely a [Q]-bearing EI-Op heading Hungarian “wh-phrases”, and show the EI0 clausal head to trigger overt “wh-movement”, and the [Q]-feature of the head of CP to only undergo ‘Agree’ with the [Q]-bearing EI-Op phrase (alias wh-phrase).
Remarks on a novel LFG approach to spatial particle verb constructions in Hungarian
Authors: Laczkó Tibor , Rákosi György
Published: March 2014

In the paper, first we present the essence of our recent analysis of Hungarian particle verb constructions. The main goal of the paper is to explore the nature, consequences and ramifications of this approach in a detailed comparison with certain salient previous accounts which are directly relevant to the assessment of our account from a general theoretical perspective. We claim that our approach, developed in the framework of Lexical-Functional Grammar, has the following two main advantages: (i) it systematically covers both the productive and the non-productive uses of these constructions by offering explicit, principled and implementationally tested analyses; (ii) it develops a treatment of the notoriously miscreant behaviour of particle verbs exhibiting a special mixture of strongly lexical and strongly syntactic properties which, in addition to its feasibility, requires the least dramatic modification in our general assumptions about the lexical and syntactic components of our grammar.
Resultative passives in Finnish
Authors: Manninen Satu
Published: March 2014

In this article, I argue that Finnish passive participles (e.g. avattu ‘opened’ and suljettu ‘closed’) can be multiply ambiguous: the “same” morphophonological forms exhibit different patterns of eventivity and agentivity, and are used to form “traditional” non-agreeing passives, agreeing resultative passives, and agreeing sentences that describe “pure” states and behave in most contexts like traditional copula-adjective constructions. I show that in Finnish, Participle Phrases that look similar on the outside can be formed in different ways, and that these Participle Phrases are selected by different superordinate heads, to form either a non-agreeing passive, an agreeing resultative, or a “pure” stative sentence.
Discourse new, focused, and given
Authors: Rochemont Michael
Published: March 2014

Mandatory phrasal prominence on a constituent in English is often attributed to the presence of a focus interpretation for that constituent, be it focus as discourse new or as selection among discourse relevant alternatives. It is argued here that these two functions of focus should be empirically distinguished and use of the notion “focus” restricted to the latter function alone. Phrasal prosodic prominence in discourse new constituents is attributed to default prosody, namely the focus-insensitive mapping between syntactic and prosodic structures. Evidence is garnered to support the notion of default prosodic prominence. This proposal is then briefly applied to Hungarian.
Is a holistic protolanguage a plausible precursor to language? A test case for a modern evolutionary linguistics
Authors: Smith Kenny
Published: March 2014

If protolanguage was a holistic system where complex meanings were conveyed using unanalysed forms, there must be some process (analysis) which delivered up the elements of modern language from this system. This paper draws on evidence from computational modelling, developmental and historical linguistics and comparative psychology to evaluate the plausibility of the analysis process. While some of the criticisms levelled at analysis can be refuted using such evidence, several areas are highlighted where further evidence is required to decide key issues. More generally, the debate over the nature of protolanguage offers a framework for developing and showcasing a modern, evidence-based evolutionary linguistics.
Proto-discourse and the emergence of compositionality
Authors: Bowie Jillian
Published: March 2014

Two opposing accounts of early language evolution, the compositional and the holistic, have become the subject of lively debate. It has been argued that an evolving compositional protolanguage would not be useful for communication until it reached a certain level of grammatical complexity. This paper offers a new, discourse-oriented perspective on the debate. It argues that discourse should be viewed, not as a level of language structure ‘beyond the sentence’, but as sequenced communicative behaviour, typically but not uniquely involving language. This provides for continuity from exchanges making use of simple communicative resources such as single words and gestures to those making use of complex grammatical conventions. Supporting evidence comes from child language and from original experiments with adults using constrained language systems. The paper shows that the utility of emerging compositional language is not dependent on some critical level of complexity, and so defends the compositional account.
Protolanguage in ontogeny and phylogeny: Combining deixis and representation
Authors: Greenfield Patricia M. , Lyn Heidi , Savage-Rumbaugh E. Sue
Published: March 2014

We approach the issue of holophrasis versus compositionality in the emergence of protolanguage by analyzing the earliest combinatorial constructions in child, bonobo, and chimpanzee: messages consisting of one symbol combined with one gesture. Based on evidence from apes learning an interspecies visual communication system and children acquiring a first language, we conclude that the potential to combine two different kinds of semiotic element — deictic and representational — was fundamental to the protolanguage forming the foundation for the earliest human language. This is a form of compositionality, in that each communicative element stands for a single semantic element. The conclusion that human protolanguage was exclusively holophrastic — containing a proposition in a single word — emerges only if one considers the symbol alone, without taking into account the gesture as a second element comprising the total message.
The "complex first" paradox: Why do semantically thick concepts so early lexicalize as nouns?
Authors: Werning Markus
Published: March 2014

The Complex-First Paradox regards the semantics of nouns and consists of a set of together incompatible, but individually well confirmed propositions about the evolution and development of language, the semantics of word classes and the cortical realization of word meaning. Theoretical and empirical considerations support the view that the concepts expressed by concrete nouns are more complex and their neural realizations more widely distributed in cortex than those expressed by other word classes. For a cortically implemented syntax–semantics interface, the more widely distributed a concept’s neural realization is, the more effort it takes to establish a link between the concept and its expression. If one assumes the principle that in ontogeny and phylogeny capabilities demanding more effort develop, respectively, evolve later than those demanding less effort, the empirical observation seems paradoxical that the meanings of concrete nouns, in ontogeny and phylogeny, are acquired earlier than those of other word classes.
Protolanguage reconstructed
Authors: Smith Andrew D.M.
Published: March 2014

One important difference between existing accounts of protolanguage lies in their assumptions on the semantic complexity of protolinguistic utterances. I bring evidence about the nature of linguistic communication to bear on the plausibility of these assumptions, and show that communication is fundamentally inferential and characterised by semantic uncertainty. This not only allows individuals to maintain variation in linguistic representation, but also imposes a selection pressure that meanings be reconstructible from context. I argue that protolanguage utterances had varying degrees of semantic complexity, and developed into complex language gradually, through the same processes of re-analysis and analogy which still underpin continual change in modern languages.
The roots of linguistic organization in a new language
Authors: Aronoff Mark , Meir Irit , Padden Carol A. , Sandler Wendy
Published: March 2014

It is possible for a language to emerge with no direct linguistic history or outside linguistic influence. Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language (ABSL) arose about 70 years ago in a small, insular community with a high incidence of profound prelingual neurosensory deafness. In ABSL, we have been able to identify the beginnings of phonology, morphology, syntax, and prosody. The linguistic elements we find in ABSL are not exclusively holistic, nor are they all compositional, but a combination of both. We do not, however, find in ABSL certain features that have been posited as essential even for a proto-language. ABSL has a highly regular syntax as well as word-internal compounding, also highly regular but quite distinct from syntax in its patterns. ABSL, however, has no discernable word-internal structure of the kind observed in more mature sign languages: no spatially organized morphology and no evident duality of phonological patterning.
The intersubjective function of modal adverbs
Authors: Celle Agnès
Published: March 2014

This paper presents a contrastive study of modal adverbs in English and French, with a focus on a few pairs such as évidemment vs. ‘obviously’, apparemment vs. ‘apparently’. The relation between inference and epistemic modality is discussed both semantically and syntactically. Modal adverbs license double modality in French, in contrast to their English counterparts. This different syntactic behaviour confirms that the distinction that is generally made between two modal functions — the identificative one and the restrictive one — is relevant to French modal adverbs, but not to English modal adverbs. However, this semantic difference needs to be revisited and backed up pragmatically. It is argued that the identificative function of modal adverbs should be redefined in terms of intersubjectivity. While ‘apparently’ and ‘obviously’ mark the speaker’s identification with the addressee’s point of view, apparemment and évidemment are shown to be able to express the speaker’s evaluation whatever the speaker and addressee’s common knowledge might be. This pragmatic difference in turn provides an explanation for the different constraints on the use of modal adverbs in English and French.
Intersubjective positioning in French and English
Authors: Defrancq Bart , De Clerck Bernard
Published: March 2014

Similar to the uses of default discourse markers such as ‘well’, ‘you know’ and ‘I mean’, instances of ‘it depends’ and ‘ça dépend’ can be attested in which the speaker’s intersubjective positioning seems to be the main motivation behind their use (Moissinac and Bamberg 2004). In this paper we explore the systematicity and frequency of such examples in both French and English based on extensive contextualised corpus-based analysis. In particular, we will focus on their functional and formal features and attest to what extent they can be diagnosed as representative of ongoing intersubjectification processes. In doing so, we will trace differences and similarities between the two languages. The study shows that there is indeed fertile ground for such expressions to develop in the direction of discourse markers and that they evolve at slightly different paces in both languages.
The nominative and infinitive in English and Dutch
Authors: Noël Dirk , Colleman Timothy
Published: March 2014

The nominative and infinitive (or NCI) is a syntactic pattern that has so far not been given its due in the linguistics of languages that possess structures that could go by that name. In English and Dutch these were probably introduced (or at the very least revived) into the grammar as loans from Latin. To the extent that they have received attention, the linguistics of these three languages traditionally treats them as mere passive alternates of accusative and infinitives, but in English and Dutch, and probably also in Latin, most NCI patterns can instantiate three distinct constructions: a passive NCI, a descriptive NCI and an evidential NCI. Though the latter one especially can be seen to be ‘more grammatical’ than the passive NCI, it is not the result of a grammaticalization change that has taken place inside English or Dutch. In English the evidential NCI did become a productive schematic construction that grew to be very useful in journalistic and academic discourses. In Dutch, on the other hand, the productivity of the NCI constructions has much decreased after a brief 18th-century peak. English and Dutch do have in common, however, that a couple of substantive evidential NCI patterns grammaticalized into deontic NCI constructions, which at present is the most frequent NCI construction in Dutch.
The contribution of relexification, grammaticalization, and reanalysis to creole genesis and development
Authors: Lefebvre Claire
Published: March 2014

The theory of creole genesis developed in Lefebvre (1998 and related work) is formulated within the framework of the processes otherwise known to play a role in language genesis and language change in general, that is, relexification, grammaticalization and reanalysis. This paper evaluates the respective contribution of these processes to creole genesis and development. The following issues are taken up. Can functional categories undergo relexification? Is the process at work in creole genesis best characterised as relexification or as transfer? Can there be cases of partial relexification? Are grammaticalization and reanalysis distinct processes? Is keeping them separate useful in studying creole genesis and development? How are these three processes articulated with respect to each other in creole genesis and development?
One in Singapore English
Authors: Bao Zhiming
Published: March 2014

This paper investigates the grammar and usage of one in Singapore English, which exhibits the influence of both Chinese and English, the two dominant languages in the multilingual ecology of Singapore English, as well as the influence of relevant linguistic universals. The grammar of one is essentially the grammar of Chinese de filtered through the morphosyntax of English one. The corpus data show that some one forms which are judged acceptable by native-speaker informants have nevertheless low frequency of use. I argue that usage plays an important role in the success of contact-induced grammatical innovation, and propose an exemplar-based model of relexification that provides a satisfactory explanation of the grammatical properties and usage patterns of one in Singapore English.
Contact-induced grammaticalization
Authors: Matthews Stephen , Yip Virginia
Published: March 2014

It is widely acknowledged that developments in bilingual individuals parallel, and ultimately underlie, those taking place in the course of contact-induced change. In this paper we address the poorly understood relationship between the individual and community-level processes, focusing on the process of grammaticalization in circumstances of language contact and the corresponding developmental processes in bilingual acquisition. The phenomena chosen for discussion are drawn from Singapore Colloquial English (SCE) and from the Hong Kong Bilingual Corpus (Yip & Matthews 2000, 2007). Parallel developments in SCE and bilingual acquisition are analysed as cases of contact-induced grammaticalization as defined by Heine and Kuteva (2003; 2005), with some modifications. The emergence of already as a marker of aspect presents a case of ‘ordinary’ contact-induced grammaticalization, while the development of grammatical functions of give represents a case of replica grammaticalization. One implication of these findings is that bilingual first language acquisition is a possible route for substrate influence, both in general and specifically in the development of contact languages such as pidgins and creoles.
Subsystem interface and tone typology in Papiamentu
Authors: Rivera-Castillo Yolanda
Published: March 2014

This paper looks at the relations between tone and features from other phonological subsystems in Papiamentu. It proposes that the interaction of tonal features with features from stress and intonational subsystems provides important clues about the typological classification of Papiamentu as a tone language. Moreover, the taxis of tones, or their organization in the string, also provides a better understanding of this language. Papiamentu fits the description of tone-restricted languages but also exhibits features of intonational systems.
Vestiges of etymological gender in Malacca Creole Portuguese
Authors: Baxter Alan N.
Published: March 2014

This paper is concerned with the nature of etymological gender inflection in Malacca Creole Portuguese and its place in the diachrony of the language. The discussion considers pairs of items with etymological gender inflection and human referents. Speaker intuitions of the word-pair vitality are assessed by word recognition and judgments of the acceptability of test words in specific syntactic contexts. The items surveyed are initially contemplated as a type of derivational morphology. Subsequently, the question is posed as to whether this etymological gender morphology could have a contextual dimension, and it is observed that some limited traces thereof may be found. The incorporation and retention of etymological gender inflection is attributed to second language input to the creole, involving early second language lexical and phrasal development, influenced by a combination of communication pragmatics, salience, and potential Indian substrate features. It is suggested that such input could be both an early diachronic occurrence or could have arisen through an ongoing diglossia involving a wider lectal grid that may have existed until the 19th century.
Unrealistic scenarios, metaphorical blends and rhetorical strategies across genres
Authors: Semino Elena
Published: March 2014

In this paper I discuss a form of metaphorical creativity that involves the introduction of ‘unrealistic’ scenarios for rhetorical purposes in expository and argumentative texts. I primarily account for the nature and function of this form of creativity in terms of Fauconnier and Turner’s (2002) notion of Blending, with some references to Conceptual Metaphor theory (Lakoff and Johnson 1980, 1999). I show that a proper account of the textual extracts I analyse needs to include the role of genre in the construction and interpretation of texts, and allow for differences in meaning construction between writers and readers, and between different groups of readers.
Two puzzle pieces
Authors: Moder Carol Lynn
Published: March 2014

This study examines metaphorical expressions in American radio news magazines appearing in two linguistic forms: NP is a NP and It’s like NP. It integrates Blending Theory (Fauconnier & Turner 2002) with a usage-based approach to grammatical constructions (Goldberg 1995, 2006;Tomasello 2003, and Croft 2001) and analyzes the forms within their dynamic discourse context in terms of noun phrase accessibility (Chafe 1980, 1994; Givón 1983; Ariel 1988) and grounding (Langacker 1999, Oakley & Coulson 2008). The findings indicate that the functions of the grammatical constructions used in the metaphorical expressions were directly related to the non-metaphorical uses of the constructions and that the analysis of the ongoing discourse was essential to understanding the form-meaning pairings inherent in the expressions.
‘Face’ across historical cultures
Authors: Ruhi Şükriye , Kádár Dániel Z.
Published: March 2014

This paper investigates the use of the word ‘face’ in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Turkish and Chinese so as to trace the meaning of the concept in the two languages and cultures. The study describes the occurrence of the lexeme in five semantic/pragmatic domains in novels dating from the turn of the twentieth century, a period that corresponds to an acceleration in modernisation movements. Two conclusions are drawn from the comparison of face in Turkish and Chinese, and noteworthy similarities and differences are shown. The interpersonal and the emotional domains cover a wide usage area but form mirror images of each other in terms of the frequency of the tokens. Yet, the Chinese novels reveal more metapragmatic discourse on talk. This is interpreted as face forming a profound emic notion in Chinese culture, which encompasses both relational management and the social worth of the person, while the Turkish novels suggest that it is an “idiom” primarily employed for describing relational management style.
From good manners to facework
Authors: Kerbrat-Orecchioni Catherine
Published: March 2014

Forms and conceptions of politeness vary noticeably from one society to another, and also, within a given society, from one age to another. However, it can be assumed that the treatment of politeness phenomena in terms of “facework” as advocated by Brown and Levinson (1978, 1987) might help us to shed some light on both cultural variations and diachronic variations in politeness behaviour. This assumption is tested by considering the question of “good manners” in the French classic age as they are recorded in some prescriptive and literary writings. The study reveals that the profound logic that politeness obeys is the same in all eras. I take a special interest in the “double binds” we are confronted with in the exercise of politeness, looking at, for example, compliments as a ritual activity.
“Tumbled into the dirt”
Authors: Withington Phil
Published: March 2014

This paper considers notions of “wit” in early modern England. It deploys quantitative methodologies to trace the term’s general discursive importance over time; it also looks at the use and conceptualisation of the term by canonical writers — Robert Greene and William Shakespeare in the 1590s, Thomas Hobbes in the 1650s, and the “libertines” of the Restoration era. The paper argues that whereas cultural and social historians have tended to regard impoliteness in the period as either the deliberate inversion or cultural absence of “civil” norms — “anti-civility”, in the words of Anna Bryson — wit provided a range of conventions and conversational repertoires outwith the normal bounds of civility. More to the point, in the hands of Thomas Hobbes wit demarcated a historicised theory of social practice.
Positive and negative face as descriptive categories in the history of English
Authors: Jucker Andreas H.
Published: March 2014

Studies in the history of politeness in English have generally relied on the notions of positive and negative face. While earlier work argued that a general trend from positive politeness to negative politeness can be observed, more recent work has shown that in Old English and in Middle English face concerns were not as important as in Modern English and that, in certain contexts, there are also opposing tendencies from negative to positive politeness. In this paper, I focus in more detail on the notions of positive and negative face and follow up earlier suggestions that for negative face a clear distinction must be made between deference politeness and non-imposition politeness. On this basis, I assess the usefulness of the notions of positive and negative face for the development of politeness in the history of English.