bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Spanish (s) aspiration as a prestige marker on the Uruguayan-Brazilian border
Authors: Carvalho Ana Maria
Published: September 2007

This study analyzes the sociolinguistic distribution of /s/-aspiration, one of the realizations of syllable-final /s/ in Uruguayan border Spanish. It discusses aspiration as a new variant which is entering the dialect through the speech of the upper classes, in a process opposite to what has been reported by studies of (s) aspiration elsewhere. Because border Spanish is highly stigmatized and stereotypically a variety that maintains syllable-final (s) as full sibilants, aspiration enters the dialect as a prestige marker owing to its identification with the linguistic model of the speech of Montevideo. Data analysis reveals social and linguistic factors that condition the variable, and explores the role of aspiration as an ultra-local marker that has been incorporated by social groups who, by converging their speech with that of Montevideo, cause it to diverge from the local norm.
Las madres de la Plaza de Mayo
Authors: Egan Georgia , Cordella Marisa
Published: September 2007

La prensa cumple un rol fundamental en las apreciaciones que el individuo obtiene de los eventos de actualidad e históricos por incluir interpretaciones ideológicas asociadas a una élite institucional. El objetivo de este estudio es comprender las construcciones y transformaciones lingüísticas que se llevaron a cabo en los encabezados del periódico argentino el Clarín durante 1981–1984, con el fin de entender las diferentes imágenes que asumen Las Madres de Plaza de Mayo.

Los resultados señalan un interesante patrón discursivo en el cual tanto los eventos nacionales como internacionales juegan un rol determinante en los agentes que se utilizan para cubrir las noticias de la Plaza de Mayo. Además el discurso que se emplea en estos cuatro años pone en manifiesto la represión del régimen militar y la transición a la democracia, mostrando el período de auge y declino de las Madres de Plaza de Mayo con respecto a su militancia y resistencia política.
Conflictos escolares y mediación intercultural
Authors: Alcalá Recuerda Esther
Published: September 2007

Este artículo analiza el desarrollo de las interacciones verbales en el aula, lugar privilegiado de construcción, reproducción, negociación o desafío del orden social. El análisis de la interacción verbal en el aula, como práctica social dentro de un ámbito institucional, permite observar la imbricación de las prácticas comunicativas y pedagógicas con las dimensiones psicosocial y social de una comunidad de práctica multicultural. Nos centramos en el estudio de interacciones conflictivas, que han sido recogidas y analizadas bajo la perspectiva de la etnografía sociolingüística crítica, con el fin de conocer los patrones interaccionales conformados por los distintos actos comunicativos del aula. De esta manera, se pretende cuestionar el orden social que imponen, construyen o reproducen algunas prácticas pedagógicas habituales y contrastarlas con las propuestas alternativas que ciertos actores sociales, como los mediadores sociales interculturales, ya están empleando.
Interacción y contexto(s) en el aprendizaje y enseñanza de español como L2
Authors: Lacorte Manel
Published: September 2007

At the present, the analysis of second language (L2) classroom interaction is one of the most productive areas in the field of L2 teaching and learning. This article describes current theoretical and methodological views of classroom interaction, with specific attention to Spanish as a L2. First, the article examines several theoretical positions that outline the role of interaction on L2 acquisition within certain social, cultural, and political contexts. Then, it focuses on some individual and collective factors involved in the interaction between instructors and students within the L2 classroom, and it discusses some of the social and institutional dimensions that may affect the interaction between the diverse participant agents in the teaching of a L2: instructors, students, administrators, family members, academic institutions, etc. Finally, the article suggests possible pedagogical applications derived from a principled knowledge of contextual and ‘local’ interactive processes in classrooms of Spanish as a L2.
The rise and fall of a rogue relative construction
Authors: Deutscher Guy
Published: September 2007

In the earliest attested stage of the Akkadian language, relative clauses were introduced by a pronoun which agreed in case with the head noun in the main clause, rather than with the relativized NP in the relative clause. Such a system is extremely rare across languages, is demonstrably dysfunctional, and has been termed ‘inherently disfavoured’. This article attempts to explain how Akkadian acquired this rogue relative construction, and how the language then managed to get rid of it. I argue that this construction was only an unstable way-station in the emergence of a new relative clause in the language. The final section of the article examines the few parallels from other languages to the Old Akkadian system.
Frames of spatial reference in Kilivila
Authors: Senft Gunter
Published: September 2007

Members of the MPI for Psycholinguistics are researching the interrelationship between language, cognition and the
conceptualization of space in various languages. Research results show that there are three frames of spatial reference, the
absolute, the relative, and the intrinsic frame of reference. This study first presents results of this research in general and then
discusses the results for Kilivila. Speakers of this Austronesian language prefer the intrinsic frame of reference for the location
of objects with respect to each other in a given spatial configuration. But they prefer an absolute frame of reference system in
referring to the spatial orientation of objects in a given spatial configuration. Moreover, the hypothesis is confirmed that
languages seem to influence the choice and the kind of conceptual parameters their speakers use to solve non-verbal problems
within the domain of space.
Pronominal possession in Faroese and the parameters of alienability/inalienability
Authors: Stolz Thomas , Gorsemann Sabine
Published: September 2007

The paper seeks to demonstrate that grammatically relevant distinctions of alienable vs. inalienable possession
are not completely uncommon in modern Indo-European languages of Europe. A detailed analysis of pronominal attributive
possession in presentday Faroese shows that there is a clearly defined system at work determined by semantic, syntactic, and
pragmatic factors. The interplay of these factors is described on the basis of a corpus analysis of modern Faroese prose. It is argued
that the presence or absence of the alienability-inalienability distinction in languages is not exclusively a structurally motivated
phenomenon as suggested by Nichols (1992). The authors claim that alienability/inalienability in grammar is, instead, semanti-
cally motivated.
Demonstratives
Authors: Dixon R.M.W.
Published: September 2007

A typology is presented of parameters of variation associated with three main types of demonstratives: nominal (corresponding to demonstrative pronouns and demonstrative adjectives in traditional terminology), local adverbial and verbal. The paper surveys their basis characteristics; forms (including relationship to articles and interrogatives); deictic, syntactic, anaphoric and other functions; and types of reference — spatial, height and stance, visibility, etc. There is a case study of demonstratives in Dyirbal, and an array of questions which can usefully be pursued when investigating demonstratives in a given language.
Present progressive vis-à-vis predication focus in Bantu
Authors: Güldemann Tom
Published: September 2007

Predication focus — a category where the predicate or a part thereof constitutes (or is part of) the sentence focus — is frequently encoded across the Bantu family by inflectional or morphosyntactic means. This phenomenon is associated with another observation which is rather unexpected at first glance. There often exists a formal parallel between marking devices of predication focus on the one hand and of present progressive on the other. This is valid across Bantu for a number of different morphological or syntactic forms. Some cases even suggest that this “isomorphism” can result from a directional grammaticalization change from predication focus toward progressive. As the formal and historical relation between the two categories cannot be viewed as accidental, an explanation is called for. Although progressivity and focus pertain to different functional domains, their relationship can indeed be motivated. The present proposal elaborates the previous hypothesis by Hyman and Watters (1984) that the progressive is an inherently focused verb category. Thus, the paper throws light in particular on the pragmatic import of progressives beyond their semantic aspect of time marking.
Between zero and nothing
Authors: Tosco Mauro
Published: September 2007

The article analyzes the expression of understood objects in Somali. There is no object pronoun of 3rd person in Somali; this gap is usually interpreted as a “full Ø”, which saturates the valency of a transitive verb and forces a reading with an anaphoric object. The article shows that this is empirically incorrect: in certain configurations, Somali transitive verbs admit either an anaphoric or a generic reading even in the absence of either an object NP or a non-null pronoun. In order to ensure a generic-object reading, Somali has further recourse to noun incorporation. The article explores the productivity of this strategy as a detopicalizing, backgrounding mechanism and argues that the overall generality of the anaphoric reading is the result of the obligatoriness of focus marking.
Specificity in Lusaamia infinitives
Authors: Botne Robert
Published: September 2007

Infinitives in Lusaamia (J.34, Kenya and Uganda) appear in two different forms, one having the reflex oxu- of the common Bantu class 15 verb prefix, and one having the prefix oo-. This paper describes and exemplifies the use of these two infinitival forms, proposing that the distinction represents a contrast in specificity and that the innovated oo- form developed via reinterpretation of grammatical distinctions borrowed from Dholuo.
Case assignment and image schemas
Authors: Nesset Tore
Published: September 2007

The notion of image schema has received a great deal of attention in cognitive linguistics. In this paper, image schemas are applied to an analysis of case assignment in Russian temporal adverbials. My focus will be on prepositional phrases headed by v ‘in’ followed by a noun phrase in the accusative or the second locative case. This approach, it is argued, facilitates the formulation of simple generalizations. While the paper focuses on data from a single language, the proposed analysis has wider ramifications for the study of case, since it is argued that that image schema-based analyses have quite general advantages over those couched in terms of distinctive features.
Typological evidence and Universal Grammar
Authors: Newmeyer Frederick J.
Published: September 2007

The paper discusses the relevance of typological evidence for the construction of a theory of Universal Grammar (UG). After introducing UG-based approaches to typology, it goes on to argue that most typological generalizations are in no sense ‘knowledge of language’. In fact, some of the best-established typological generalizations have explanations based on language use, and so it is either empirically unmotivated or redundant to attempt to encompass them within UG theory. This conclusion is reinforced by a look at the widely-accepted Lexical Parameterization Hypothesis and by the current shift of interest to ‘microparameters’. The paper goes on to take a critical look at Mark Baker’s Parameter Hierarchy.
A question of relevance
Authors: Weiß Helmut
Published: September 2007

Data from natural languages (in contrast to, say, the results of psycholinguistic experiments) are still a major source of evidence used in linguistics, whether they are elicited through grammatical judgments, as in generative linguistics, or by collecting samples, as preferred in typology. The underlying assumption is that data are alike in their value as evidence if they occur in natural languages. The present paper questions this assumption in showing that there is a difference in the naturalness of languages because languages like German or English have originally emerged as secondarily learned written languages, that is they once were languages without native speakers. Although they are nowadays acquired as first languages, their grammars still contain inconsistent properties which partly disqualify standard languages as a source of evidence.
Universals, innateness and explanation in second language acquisition
Authors: Eckman Fred
Published: September 2007

This paper considers the question of explanation in second language acquisition within the context of two approaches to universals, Universal Grammar and language typology. After briefly discussing the logic of explaining facts by including them under general laws (Hempel & Oppenheim 1948), the paper makes a case for the typological approach to explanation being the more fruitful, in that it allows more readily for the possibility of ‘explanatory ascent’, the ability to propose more general, higher order explanations by having lower-level generalizations follow from more general principles. The UG approach, on the other hand is less capable of such explanatory ascent because of the postulation that the innate, domain-specific principles of UG are not reducible in any interesting way to higher order principles of cognition (Chomsky 1982).
What counts as evidence in historical linguistics?
Authors: Fischer Olga
Published: September 2007

The main aim of this paper is to establish the position of historical linguistics in the wider field of linguistics. Section 1 centres on the immediate and long term goals of historical linguistics. Section 2 discusses the type of data that play a role and looks at tools to be used for the analysis of the data. It also addresses the question whether the explanation of the data should be in terms of grammar change (as advocated by formalist linguists) or language change. This latter point automatically leads to the question as to what type of grammatical model or theory the historical linguist should work with, and more particularly, in how far the innate, syntacto-centric generative model is adequate for studying grammar change (Section 3). This is followed by a brief conclusion in which a semi-independent position for the historical linguist is advocated.
Areal diffusion and the development of evidentiality
Authors: Epps Patience
Published: September 2007

Evidentiality is prone to diffusion and has been identified as a diagnostic feature of linguistic areas such as the Vaupés region of the Brazilian Amazon (e.g., Aikhenvald and Dixon 1998). This paper examines the processes by which a complex evidentiality system can develop in a particular language, catalyzed by language contact but fed by language-internal resources. The discussion considers data from Hup, a Vaupés language of the Vaupés-Japurá (Makú) family, and demonstrates that Hup has developed an evidentiality system parallel to those found in the two other unrelated language families of the region. Finally, a reconstruction of an evidentiality distinction for the Vaupés-Japurá family challenges Aikhenvald and Dixon’s (1998) claim that evidentiality had two independent points of innovation in northern Amazonia.
Typology of heavy and light again or the eternal return of the same
Authors: Wälchli Bernhard
Published: September 2007

This paper investigates the expression of preceded events in a sample of 100 languages from all continents in parallel texts. A distinction is made between heavy ‘again’ expressions (such as English again; emphatic, occurring in all languages) and light ‘again’ expressions (such as English re-; non-emphatic, occurring only in some languages). Light ‘again’ expressions develop at least partly from heavy ‘again’ expressions by means of rhetorical devaluation and are generally found to show lexical collocations with specific verbs, even if their degree of lexicalization strongly varies cross-linguistically.
Collective field work
Authors: Kibrik Aleksandr E.
Published: September 2007

For forty years, linguistic fieldwork on the minority languages of Soviet and post-Soviet States has been conducted by members of the Philological Faculty of Moscow State University. The present paper describes the “Moscow approach” to team-based fieldwork, including the history, problems, advantages and disadvantages of this unique venture. The conclusion is that the advantages of collective fieldwork outweigh the disadvantages, but that there are several requirements that must be in place in order for the method to be effective. These include a clear organizational scheme, several available language consultants, and supportive attitudes on the parts of all participants. In recent years, a combination of researcher specialization and cross-training in multiple sub-disciplines has become an increasingly important component of the collective field trips.
Marked nominative in Africa
Authors: König Christa
Published: September 2007

Africa is a continent where grammaticalized case systems are a rare phenomenon. But there is one exception: East Africa is a region where there is a relatively high occurrence of case languages (that is, languages with a grammaticalized case system). With regard to the type of case systems which occur in Africa, again, the picture is crosslinguistically unbalanced as there are hardly any ergative languages. In other words, of the two most common case types worldwide, accusative and ergative(/absolutive), essentially only one is represented in Africa, namely the accusative type. From a worldwide perspective, Africa seems to be a continent where case has nothing special to offer. However, in East Africa there are so called marked-nominative languages which seem to be quite unique worldwide. They are somehow a mixture: On the one hand they share features with prototypical accusative languages, on the other hand they share features with prototypical ergative languages.

 In the present paper I will, first, define the typical features of a marked-nominative language. Second, I will give an overview of the languages which have a marked-nominative system. Third, I will deal with the question of whether the distribution of marked-nominative languages is genetically or areally motivated. And fourth, I will speculate on how such unusual systems could have developed.
Morphological levels and diachronic change in Modern Hebrew plural formation
Authors: Meir Irit
Published: September 2007

Modern Hebrew (MH) is undergoing a change in its morphological structure. Unlike earlier periods of the language, in which all nominal suffixation processes resulted in stress shift to the suffix, MH has a few suffixes that exhibit variable behavior. When attached to canonical bases, they pattern with other suffixes in that they attract stress and may cause phonological changes to the base. When attached to non-canonical bases, they do not attract stress and cause no phonological changes to the base. Additionally, stress neutral suffixation is much more regular and productive than stress attracting suffixation in its morphology, distribution and semantics. I argue that these two different patterns can be accounted for in terms of morphological levels within the theoretical framework of Stratal Optimality Theory (Kiparsky 2000, 2002, to appear). The different phonological behavior is accounted for in terms of different ranking of two constraints, applying at stem level vs. word level. The morphological and semantic correlates are attributed to the different properties of stem vs. word-level morphology. The diachronic change, namely the activation of word level for nominal suffixation, triggered further changes in MH’s morphological system: the development of several default suffixes, and the emergence of two distinct subgrammars, which differ from each other in gender assignment and the correlation between gender and inflectional class (in the sense of Aronoff 1994).
Beyond Aristotle and gradience
Authors: Croft William A.
Published: September 2007

Aarts (2004) argues that the best way to model grammatical categories is a compromise preserving Aristotelian form classes with sharp boundaries on the one hand, and allowing gradience in terms of the number of syntactic properties that a category member possesses on the other. But the assumption of form classes causes serious theoretical and empirical problems. Constructions differ in their distributional patterns, but no a priori principles exist to decide which constructions should be used to define form classes. Grammatical categories must be defined relative to specific constructions; this is the position advocated in Radical Construction Grammar (Croft 2001). Constructionally defined categories may have sharp boundaries, but they do not divide words into form classes. Nevertheless, the most important traditional intuitions for parts of speech (Aarts’ chief examples) are reinterpretable in terms of crosslinguistic universals that constrain distributional variation but do not impose Aristotelian form classes, gradable or not, on the grammars of particular languages.
In defence of distributional analysis, pace Croft
Authors: Aarts Bas
Published: September 2007

In a number of publications (e.g. Croft 2001, 2004, 2006) Bill Croft has argued that distributional analysis as a methodology for setting up grammatical categories poses problems which can be avoided if constructions, not word classes, are grammatically primitive, and if categories are derived from constructions. He writes:

The Radical Construction Grammar analysis of parts of speech does not have Aristotelian grammatical categories of the sort envisioned by Aarts for particular language grammars. There are categories for each construction and each constructional role in a language. These construction-specific categories will have sharp boundaries to the extent that there are sharp acceptability judgements of what can and cannot occur in the relevant constructional role. In this sense, the categories are Aristotelian. But they do not lead to a small set of mutually exclusive word classes, which is what Aarts assumes we must posit. Instead, there are overlapping categories of formatives representing their diverse distributional behavior — which is what a speaker actually knows about her language. (Croft 2006: 10–11)

In this paper I will not be discussing the merits of Radical Construction Grammar, except to say that it is an interesting, challenging and exciting new approach to language. My aim here is more modest: I hope to show that distributional analysis is not as flawed as Croft suggests, and I will defend the distributional analyses discussed in Aarts (2004).
Linguistic aspects of metaphorical expressions of anger in ASL
Authors: Grushkin Donald A.
Published: September 2007

The question of whether the American Deaf community possesses a separate culture or is merely a subcultural unit of American society has been a thorny and controversial issue for some time. Language, being a frequent symbol of ethnic identity, as well as a window onto cultural group thought, offers a means for determining the cultural or subcultural status of a group. Following Lakoff & Kovecses’ (1987) framework, one particular aspect of language, that of metaphorical expressions of anger in American Sign Language (ASL) is examined. This analysis finds the American Deaf to possess a pattern of cultural thought in this domain distinct from that of mainstream American society, suggesting that the American Deaf are an independent cultural unit which is simultaneously situated within the larger American society.
The Medium and the Message
Authors: Sandler Wendy
Published: September 2007

In natural communication, the medium through which language is transmitted plays an important and systematic role. Sentences are broken up rhythmically into chunks; certain elements receive special stress; and, in spoken language, intonational tunes are superimposed onto these chunks in particular ways — all resulting in an intricate system of prosody. Investigations of prosody in Israeli Sign Language demonstrate that sign languages have comparable prosodic systems to those of spoken languages, although the phonetic medium is completely different. Evidence for the prosodic word and for the phonological phrase in ISL is examined here within the context of the relationship between the medium and the message. New evidence is offered to support the claim that facial expression in sign languages corresponds to intonation in spoken languages, and the term “superarticulation” is coined to describe this system in sign languages. Interesting formaldiffer ences between the intonationaltunes of spoken language and the “superarticulatory arrays” of sign language are shown to offer a new perspective on the relation between the phonetic basis of language, its phonological organization, and its communicative content.
Rhythmic structures in French Sign Language (LSF) nursery rhymes
Authors: Blondel Marion , Miller Christopher
Published: September 2007

Research over the past three decades has brought attention to various ways in which linguistic structures are exploited to build poetic form in sign languages. These include recurring patterns of phonological elements (similar to rhyme, alliteration or assonance) that play a role in the structure of verses and strophes, as well as uses of metaphor and modifications of the form of signs that contribute to an overall fluidity of movement distinct from non-poetic signed discourse. In this paper we concentrate our attention on the role of rhythmic structure and the ways in which it interacts with syntactic structure to build poetic form. Our data consist of nursery rhymes, either original LSF creations or adaptations from French nursery rhymes, which were composed by Deaf adults and children. This type of poetry, as a genre of oral literature, is essentially performance-related and is highly variable in form. Despite the difference in modality (oral vs. gestural), LSF and French nursery rhymes show similar characteristics (repetition of phonological units, non-significant gesture, similar subject matter etc.), and rhythmic structure is central to their overall structure. This paper isolates rhythmic templates in LSF nursery rhymes via the analysis of accentual prosody (speed, intensity and manner of movement) and compares the nursery rhymes with an equivalent corpus of non-poetic performances. This research is relevant to the question of the universality of infant rhythmic structure and the importance of nursery rhymes in first language acquisition.
A model of signed language classifier predicates as templated visual representation
Authors: Cogill-Koez Dorothea
Published: September 2007

A model of signed language classifier predicates is presented in which these forms are held to be a mode, not of linguistic, but of visual representation. This representation is largely schematic, combining discrete parts drawn from a finite set. Some of these parts or templates may be truly digital or undeformable in nature, but some are argued to contain elastic parameters, allowing for the conventional use of analogue or free-form representation. The model of classifier predicates as templated visual representation thus accommodates their discrete-combinatorial structure (previously interpreted as evidence of their linguistic nature), and also accounts for the mix of fixed and nonfinite elements in them, thus solving formal problems which arise in a strictly linguistic approach.
Some implications of this model include issues regarding multimodality in signed communication systems, the relationships between CPs, frozen sign and iconic gesture, the integration of visual and abstract modes of representation, and metaphor. It is concluded that the TVR model may provide a useful new perspective on the design of representational systems in the human mind.
GlossLexer
Authors: Hanke Thomas , Konrad Reiner , Schwarz Arvid
Published: September 2007

GlossLexer is a multi-user sign language lexical database integrating digital video that has been designed to support the compilation process for specialist dictionaries from data collection to production. Sign entries are identified by HamNoSys notations as well as glosses, but the user always has immediate access to video clips showing the signs as uttered by the informants.
Phonological parameters in Croatian Sign Language
Authors: Kuhn Ninoslava Šarac , Alibašić Ciciliani Tamara , Wilbur Ronnie B.
Published: September 2007

We present an initial description of the sign parameters in Croatian Sign Language. We show that HZJ has a comparable phonological structure to other known sign languages, including basic sign parts, such as location, handshape, movement, orientation, and nonmanual characteristics. Our discussion follows the Prosodic Model (Brentari 1998), in which sign structure is separated into those characteristics which do not change during sign formation (inherent features) and those that do (prosodic features). We present the model, along with discussion of the notion of constraints on sign formation, and apply it to HZJ to the extent that we are able to do so. We identify an inventory of the relevant handshapes, orientations, locations, and movements in HZJ, and a partial inventory of nonmanuals. One interesting feature of the HZJ environment is the existence of two fingerspelling alphabets, a one-handed and a two-handed system. We also provide additional analytical steps that can be taken after the initial inventory has been constructed. Both minimal pairs and constraints on sign formation are especially useful for demonstrating the linguistic systematicity of sign languages and separating them from gesture and mime.
Interrogative structures in Croatian Sign Language
Authors: Kuhn Ninoslava Šarac , Wilbur Ronnie B.
Published: September 2007

In this study, we investigate the interrogative structures in Croatian Sign Language (HZJ) with respect to the word order, manual question words, and nonmanual markers and their scope. Both polar and content questions mainly use specific nonmanual markers to indicate interrogative function. Polar questions use chin down and content questions use chin up as their prominent nonmanual markers. In addition to these markers, brows up occurs in both constructions leading to the suggestion that brows up may be a general question marker in HZJ. Brows down can also occur, particularly in content questions. Other nonmanual markers that appear in polar questions are head forward, and eyes wide open and those in content questions are head forward, headshake, shoulders up, and eyes closed.

Both interrogative constructions use manual question words. Polar questions can use an optional manual sign je-li that was probably introduced to HZJ through Signed Croatian. je-li is not connected to the peak intensity of the nonmanual markers and we consider it to be an adjunct to the question structure. Content words are used in most HZJ content interrogatives. Question words can be represented by specific signs or can be formed by the content sign ‘5’ (i.e. handshape 5 or b-th moving side-to-side). This ‘5’ sign is further specified by mouthing the particular question word from spoken Croatian. Content words can appear in sentence initial, sentence final or both positions. In content questions, question words bear the highest peak of nonmanual intensity, thus we consider them to be operating as operators.

Recent research shows that HZJ shares some features with Austrian Sign Language (ÖGS) because in the 19th century, Croatian deaf students attended Vienna’s Institute for the Deaf (Schalber this volume; Šarac 2003; Šarac et al in press). Upon finishing their education, they would return back to Croatia. Similarities between HZJ and ÖGS are found in their interrogative nonmanual markings but not in their syntactic structures. This can be seen by the fact that these two sign languages do not have the same canonical word order.
The adequate translation as a methodological tool
Authors: Crisafulli Edoardo
Published: September 2007

This paper argues that the question of theoretical translatability is crucial both to source-oriented and target-oriented approaches. Reflecting on translatability requires a discussion of Toury’s notion of ‘adequate translation’, which has two senses: the general or ideal approximation to source-text norms, and thetertium comparationisrepresented by a source-text-oriented translation (i.e. showing how the original ‘can’ be translated). It is argued that both senses have heuristic value in Translation Studies. The explanatory power of target-orientedness is demonstrated by discussing the various strategies pursued by seven Anglo-American translators of Dante who either re-create or avoid rewriting grotesque onomastic wordplay inInferno.Zero translation policy of Dante’s names is not considered to be evidence of their inherent ‘untranslatability’ since for an empiricist nothing is untranslatable. Evocative names may be translated in a creative way provided the rewriter is willing (or allowed) to be innovative.
Finnish comet in German skies
Authors: Kujamäki Pekka
Published: September 2007

The German comet’s tail of the FinnishSeitsemän veljestäby Aleksis Kivi—eight different translations by six translators—is spread out over the 20th century. As an exceptional case in Finnish-German translation history it provides attractive material for the translation historian interested in the historical dynamics of literary translation. This article sketches briefly the different profiles of these translations, points out the multiplicity of potential translation modes and goes on to explore the reasons for three translators’ actual choices by focusing on the socio-political situation of the translation event with its time-bound normative conditions.
The choice between subtitling and revoicing in Greece
Authors: Karamitroglou Fotios
Published: September 2007

Normative behaviour in situations of language transfer has been gaining ground in Translation Studies and research. The choice between subtitling and revoicing is such a situation, on a rather preliminary level. This article is a summary of an empirical study into why human agents decide to subtitle rather than revoice children’s TV programmes. Not surprisingly, the trend seems to arise from other audiovisual forms and media. Overall, however, the positive audience response towards certain dubbed products seems to depend more on the good promotion and quality of the specific programmes than on the individual merits of any language transfer method per se, as most language transfer commissioners seem indifferent to the implications of such a choice.
Multiple-entry visa to travelling theory
Authors: Susam-Sarajeva Şebnem
Published: September 2007

The article questions certain assumptions about retranslation which prevail rather unchallenged in Translation Studies, and discusses the terminological issues involved in retranslating theoretical texts. By presenting examples from two case studies, namely the reception of Roland Barthes’s work in Turkey and of Hélène Cixous’s work in Anglo-America, it examines the reasons underlying the abundance vs. rarity of retranslations in each case, respectively. Throughout the article, I contend that the factors of dominance, elasticity, tolerance, and power of the source and receiving systems involved determine whether travelling theory will be granted a multiple-entry visa to literary and cultural systems through retranslation.
Why change the subject?
Authors: Johansson Stig
Published: September 2007

This paper reports on a study of syntactic changes in alternative translations of a short story and a scientific article, each translated by a group of ten professional translators. The subject is kept in approximately nine cases out of ten, with a somewhat higher degree of change in the scientific article. Where changes occur, they can very often be traced to differences between the languages on the lexical or syntactic level, but absolute differences signalled by identical behaviour of a whole translator group are as good as non-existent. After more features have been studied, it may be possible to identify profiles for the individual translators—and the two translator groups—showing to what extent their choices are guided by adequacy in relation to the source text vs. acceptability in relation to the target language.
How to managepatientsin English–Spanish translation
Authors: Williams Ian A.
Published: September 2007

This paper describes the application of a target-oriented contrastive analysis model to an extensive corpus of medical research articles. The analysis focuses on the Methods section and a subset of lexical items representing persons viewed as the object of clinical study. Quantitative contrastive analysis revealed statistically significant differences between the translations from English and the independently created Spanish texts in all the thematic, syntactic and lexical variables analysed. Qualitative contextual analysis showed that four basic criteria for thematic position and a series of associated translation strategies are capable of correcting the excesses and deficits observed, thus producing a more natural and acceptable target language text.
Dialogue interpreting
Authors: Wadensjö Cecilia
Published: September 2007

This paper investigates dialogue interpreting as a monologising social practice, and demonstrates how this can be done within a general theoretical framework of dialogism. Drawing on earlier research on naturally occurring, interpreted face-to-face interaction, the paper argues for treating dialogue interpreting as a separate empirical field within the general field of Translation Studies. The constant overlap between target and source environment is identified as one of its characteristic features. Adding to the current discussion on ethics in Translation Studies, the paper finally highlights the point of distinguishing between interpreters’ professional ideology and lived professional practice.
La traduction dans la culture multilingue
Authors: Meylaerts Reine
Published: September 2007

Le présent article discute certains concepts clés des Etudes Descriptives de la Traduction (DTS) par le biais de la traduction dans les sociétés multilingues, i.c. des traductions de prose flamande en français dans l’entre-deux-guerres belge. Dans des contextes géopolitiques multilingues, les frontières géolinguistiques entre les cultures ‘source’ et ‘cible’ sont floues de sorte que les traductions, tant comme procès que comme produit, fonctionnent également dans la culture source. Celle-ci codétermine e.a. les stratégies textuelles de traduction et la réception des textes traduits. La notion d’ ‘interculture’ devient fondamentale et les rôles des agents interculturels (auteurs, traducteurs, critiques) sont interchangeables. Toutefois, ‘sources’ et ‘cibles’ survivent dans la perception de ces acteurs : leurs définitions respectives sont fonction de l’intériorisation des structures institutionnelles et discursives et des relations de pouvoir socio-culturelles par ces acteurs ainsi que de leurs (prises de) positions dans les cultures ‘source’ et ‘cible’. Une redéfinition nécessairement plus flexible de ces concepts clés s’impose donc ; elle nécessite une orientation plus sociologique des DTS, dans le sens d’une intégration et d’une élaboration du concept d’habitus dans le modèle.
Dialect and point of view
Authors: Määttä Simo K.
Published: September 2007

This article is an analysis of translations into French of non-standard literary dialect, in particular the speech of African Americans, in William Faulkner’sThe sound and the fury. It shows that the contingency of dialect variation upon narrative point of view (focalization) is not taken into account in translation, an omission that alters the ideological framework of the novel. In addition, it argues that the maintenance of this variation, when systematic, should be at least as important a concern as, for instance, the most accurate translation of single dialectal or non-standard words and utterances.
Australian specificity in titles and covers of translated children’s books
Authors: Frank Helen T.
Published: September 2007

In the process of translation for children, translators negotiate, adapt and manipulate the text in order to expand and explain the message for readers in the target culture. This study focuses specifically on the translation of titles of Australian children’s fiction to determine whether the same ‘readerly’ concerns are evident in the wording of titles featuring Australian animals. French translations of Australian titles are compared with the same titles in other languages to establish the degree of similarity in patterns of translation regarding generic prioritisation, explicitation and simplification. The influence of original titles and their covers on subsequent translated titles, the phenomenon of translated titles ‘copying’ each other, and the appeal of ‘exotic’ referents in titles are considered within a framework of the nature and behaviour of titles in translation. Consistent translation strategies across languages make a strong argument for the influence of commercial and translational imperatives over culture-specific appropriation of the text.
Who is ‘you’?
Authors: Angermeyer Philipp Sebastian
Published: September 2007

This paper investigates the use of forms of address by court interpreters, combining a participation framework approach to dialogue interpreting with a sociolinguistic analysis of intra-speaker variation. Based on transcripts from interpreter-mediated court proceedings in New York City, the paper explores how interpreters respond when the participant status of their target recipients changes from addressee to unaddressed overhearer. The interpreters are found to design their utterances primarily to conform to institutional norms and not to the expectations of target recipients, who rely on politeness features as cues for their participant status. Adding to recent research on discourse processes in dialogue interpreting, the paper explores how the interpreter’s task becomes more complex when more than two primary participants are present.
The importance of re-naming Ernest?
Authors: Pablé Adrian
Published: September 2007

The present descriptive study considers different translation strategies adopted by Italian translators of Oscar Wilde’s The importance of being Earnest (1895). The focus of attention is on the phenomenon of the pun involving the speaking name Ernest, whose homophony with earnest is exploited in the play’s title. Italian translators of The importance have thus been faced with the bind of having to decide on whether to render the said wordplay, even though only unsatisfactorily, by replacing the transparent name Ernest with a target language ‘equivalent’, or safeguard the cultural-onomastic ‘reality’ of the play, i.e. leave the Victorian given name Ernest in its source text form. It turns out that the latter policy is generally compensated for—as part of the metatextual/metalinguistic discourse—within prefaces, glosses and, more significantly, via intratextual additions. The translators opting for replacing Ernest with an Italian counterpart, in turn, have, as a direct consequence of their basic choice, been able to enrich their versions of The importance with unprecedented puns, which underlines the ‘creative’ dimension involved in producing literary translations. Besides the two core translation policies described above, the translators have also opted for introducing the nativized form Ernesto, thus showing little concern with the questions of ‘cultural purity’ or punning, respectively. The present paper suggests that translators make very different demands on themselves and have very different ideas of what constitutes the ‘optimal’ strategy with regard to punning and the representation of the source cultural world.
Translation as a writing process
Authors: Immonen Sini
Published: September 2007

This paper is an empirical study on pause patterns in fluent translation and monolingual text production. By comparing pauses recorded from both processes, two temporal features were discovered: Firstly, the mean length of pause at textual category boundaries grew the higher the category was in the linguistic hierarchy. Secondly, the length of pause at clause level and lower was on average longer in translation than in monolingual text production, whereas pauses above clause level tended to be shorter in translation. Besides the differences in pause duration, translation also affected the use of total production time. Translation requires on average a longer revision and monitoring phase while the drafting phase is completed more quickly. Both writing tasks used approximately the same proportion of time for the orientation phase.
Application-oriented terminography in financial forensics
Authors: Kerremans Koen , Desmeytere Isabelle , Temmerman Rita , Wille Patrick
Published: September 2007

This paper covers ongoing terminography work in the FF POIROT project, a European research project in which formal and shareable knowledge repositories (i.e. ontologies) and ontology-based applications are developed for the prevention of value added tax carousel fraud in the EU and the detection of securities fraud. We will emphasise that the knowledge requirements regarding users and applications determine what textual information should be structured at macro- and micro-levels of the FF POIROT multilingual terminology base. Furthermore, we will present our ideas concerning a multidisciplinary approach in terminography, called ‘Termontography’, for future application-oriented terminology development.
The first steps towards the automatic compilation of specialized collocation dictionaries
Authors: Wanner Leo , Bohnet Bernd , Giereth Mark , Vidal Vanesa
Published: September 2007

Collocation dictionaries are essential in specialized discourse for understanding, production, and translation. Especially translation, which is often undertaken by professionals who are not specialists of the field, is in need of dictionaries with detailed syntactic and semantic information on lexical and semantic links between terms. However, collocation dictionaries are hardly available for general, let alone specialized, discourse. The manual compilation of collocation dictionaries from large corpora is a time consuming and cost-intensive procedure. A (partial) automation of this procedure recently became a high-priority topic in computational lexicography. In this article, we discuss how collocations can be acquired from specialized corpora and labeled with semantic tags using machine-learning techniques. As semantic tags, we use lexical functions from the Explanatory Combinatorial Lexicology. We explore the performance of two different machine-learning techniques, Nearest Neighbor Classification and Tree Augmented Bayesian Classification, testing them on a Spanish law corpus.
Terminology project management
Authors: Fähndrich Ursula
Published: September 2007

This article deals systematically with the author’s practical experience of organising and carrying out terminology projects and attempts to relate them to project management theory. It is intended to serve as a guide of sorts for terminologists confronted with the task of managing a terminology project. The first section defines what terminology projects are, what sets them apart from other types of project, what forms they can take and how these forms are prioritised within the project portfolio, as well as proposing a possible model to describe the various phases of a project. Separate sections are then devoted to each of the phases, namely Acquisition, Needs Analysis and Offering, Planning, Implementation and Controlling, Handover and Completion, and Follow-up.