bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Deriving “wh-in-situ” through movement in Brazilian Portuguese
Authors: Kato Mary Aizawa
Published: March 2014

While languages like English have both dislocated and in-situ wh-phrases, but assign different status to the two types of question – ordinary questions or echo questions -, others, like French, take them as possible syntactic variants for ordinary questions. Moreover, the in-situ wh-question in French, in both ordinary question and echo question interpretations, has the same rising intonation, similar to that of a yes/no question. Brazilian Portuguese (BP) is another optional wh-in-situ language, but despite its similarities to French, a crucial difference can be found between the two: (a) French has rising intonation in both ordinary and echo questions, but (b) BP displays falling intonation if the wh-in-situ question is an ordinary question, and rising intonation if the wh-in-situ construction is an echo question.The aim of this article is to propose an analysis for BP wh-in-situ constructions, trying to answer the following questions: (a) how can we account for the differences between French and BP, two languages that have “optional” wh-movement? (b) why does BP have distinct intonation patterns for the two types of wh-in-situ constructions: the echo and the ordinary question?The following are the hypotheses and assumptions that will underlie our analysis:(a) the echo-question in BP, with rising intonation, is the real in-situ case, and the intonation is given by the interrogative silent operator Q ; (b) the ordinary wh-question is a fake in-situ case, with the wh- moving to a sentence internal, or vP-peripheral, FocusP position, in the sense of Belletti’s (2004). The occupation of this internal position by the wh-element assigns falling intonation to the sentence. The nature of the wh-movement explains why wh-in-situ is less restricted in BP than in French.
Clause-typing by [2] – the loss of the 2nd person pronoun du 'you' in Dutch, Frisian and Limburgian dialects
Authors: Postma Gertjan
Published: March 2014

The 2nd person singular pronoun du ‘you’ has been replaced by new pronouns gij/jij/jii in many Dutch dialects. The standard explanation attributes du’s decline to the emerging honorific plural pronouns such as gij ‘you’ in singular use. In this study we trace a purely syntactic trigger for this change, thus replacing sociolinguistic and paradigmatic explanations (deflection). Using dialect geographic tools of the GTRP dialect database, we found a significant correlation between the loss of du and the rise of double present tense paradigms (direct and inverse). By defining two types of Verb Second, C-type V2 (Den Besten) and C/T-type V2 (Zwart), we show that a transition between those types predicts the loss of position-dependent spelled out pronouns such as du. The factor that blocks Den Besten-type V2 structures in clauses with [2] in Dutch dialects is the clause-typing property of the feature [2], which generate a violation that is similar to the that-trace violations with the [WH] feature. Keywords:﻿﻿ verb second; that-trace effect; clause-typing; position-dependent spell out; pronouns; inflection; person
Three “competing” auxiliaries of a non-canonical passive
Authors: Lenz Alexandra N.
Published: March 2014

This paper focuses on the German GET passive and its auxiliaries kriegen ‘to get/receive’, bekommen ‘to get/receive’ and erhalten ‘to receive’. Although the co-existence of three auxiliaries is unique for Germanic GET passives, research to date has provided very limited information with respect to the relevant linguistic and socio-pragmatic factors which contribute to the German GET passive auxiliary selection. The main aim of the paper is to identify the crucial parameters of auxiliary selection that account for the distribution of German kriegen, bekommen and erhalten. Among the selection parameters discussed, the emphasis will be on the factor “language space” and its correlation to the quantitative and qualitative occurrences of the German GET passive in present day German.
On the syntax-semantics of passives  in Persian
Authors: Nemati Fatemeh
Published: March 2014

This paper investigates passive constructions in Persian, ranging from basic morphological passives to impersonal passives, in comparison with similar constructions with šodæn ‘to become’. The basic passive constructions (Past Participle + šodæn) coexist with a body of Noun/Adjective + šodæn sequences with passive meaning as well as copular sentences in which šodæn appears after the noun or adjective. The different uses and interpretations of šodæn are accounted for based on the assumption that the interaction of the lexical semantic specification of šodæn and the other elements in the sequence determines the final interpretation of šodæn as a passive auxiliary or a copula. If the element preceding šodæn has a [+passive] feature, the construction will be calculated syntactically as passive. Otherwise, šodæn is treated as the copula in the syntactic computation.
Clefts in Durban Zulu
Authors: Cheng Lisa Lai-Shen , Downing Laura J.
Published: March 2014

In this paper, we argue that clefts in Zulu have a bipartite structure: a copular sentence with an adjoined DP/clause. This structure accounts for the prosody of clefts. Each constituent is parsed into a separate Intonation Phrase by the independently motivated phrasing algorithm of Zulu. It also accounts for the syntactic properties of Zulu clefts. We further argue that the nature of agreement in Zulu copular sentences support a pronominal predicate analysis. Keywords: Prosody of clefts; copular sentences; pronominal predicate
Chapter 2. Learning to write
Authors: Hyland Ken
Published: March 2014

This chapter explores the main theories for understanding learning to write in adult contexts, briefly discussing their research underpinnings and showing how they translate into pedagogic practice. Making a broad distinction between theories concerned with texts, with writers and with readers, I will show briefly what each approach offers and neglects and what each means for teachers. The categorisation implies no rigid divisions, and, in fact the approaches respond to, critique, and draw on each other in a variety of ways so that classroom practice often involves a combination of them. I believe, however, this offers a useful way of comparing and evaluating the research each approach has produced and the pedagogic practices they have generated.
Chapter 3. Writing to learn in content areas
Authors: Hirvela Alan
Published: March 2014

This chapter discusses several studies of second language (L2) writers’ experiences using writing as a means of learning about content areas. Though some research of this kind has demonstrated success with writing to learn, collectively these studies suggest that using writing in this way is often difficult for L2 writers and that a key component in the process of learning to use writing for this purpose is the kind of support provided by both writing instructors and content area teachers. The examination of these studies also points out complexities in the linkage between theories of writing to learn and implementation of them. The analysis of these studies also lends support to a recent call from some L2 writing researchers for an increased emphasis on longitudinal studies of L2 writing, including writing to learn, in light of the complex nature of learning how to write, and how to use writing to mediate or enrich learning, in another language.
In good company?
Authors: Turkle Sherry
Published: March 2014

Most contributors to this volume believe that only technical matters stand between where we are now and a time when robots will be our Companions and teachers. Robots need to expand their domains of understanding, and if those domains should be emotional, well, that will be a technical matter as well. So while this volume expresses designers’ enthusiasm about robots as technical objects, it challenges us to see robots as something more, as evocative objects. What are we thinking about when we are thinking about robots? We are thinking about aliveness and authenticity, love and spirituality. We are thinking about what it means to build a psychology. We are thinking about what makes people special. Or perhaps that they are not so special after all.
The use of affective and attentive cues in an empathic computer-based Companions
Authors: Bee Nikolaus , Andre Elisabeth , Vogt Thurid , Gebhard Patrick
Published: March 2014

Recently, a number of research projects have been started to create virtual agents that do not just serve as assistants to which tasks may be delegated, but that may even take on the role of a Companion. Such agents require a great deal of social intelligence, such as the ability to detect the user’s affective state and to respond to it in an empathic manner. The objective of our work is to create an empathetic listener that is capable to react on affective and attentive input cues of the user. In particular, we discuss various forms of empathy and how they may be realized based on these cues.
Requirements for Artificial Companions
Authors: Sloman Aaron
Published: March 2014

Producing a system that meets plausible requirements for Artificial Companions (AC’s), without arbitrary restrictions, will involve solving a great many problems that are currently beyond the state of the art in Artificial Intelligence (AI); including problems that would arise in the design of robotic Companions helping an owner by performing practical tasks in the physical environment. In other words, even if the AC is not itself a robot and interacts with the user only via input devices such as camera, microphone, keyboard, mouse, touch-pad, and touch-screen, and output devices such as screen and audio output devices, nevertheless it will, in some circumstances, need the visual competences, the ontology, the representational resources, the reasoning competences, the planning competences, and the problem-solving competences that a helpful domestic robot would need. This is because some of the intended beneficiaries of ACs will need to be given advice about what physical actions to perform, what physical devices to acquire, and how to use such devices. I shall give examples illustrating the need for such competences.
The Maryland virtual patient as a task-oriented conversational Companion
Authors: Nirenburg Sergei
Published: March 2014

This chapter describes a conversational agent environment, the Maryland Virtual Patient (MVP). MVP models the process of disease progression, diagnosis and treatment in virtual patients endowed with a “body,” a simulation of their physiological and pathological processes, and a “mind,” a set of capabilities of perception, reasoning and action. that allows the virtual patient to exhibit independent behavior, participate in a natural language dialog, remember events, hold beliefs about other agents and about specific object and event instances, make decisions and learn.
Living with robots
Authors: Sharkey Noel , Sharkey Amanda
Published: March 2014

We discuss some of the research and ideas for developing robot carers and Companions for people with aging brains. We speculate a little about a near-future when it may be possible to keep people at home for longer in the almost exclusive care of robots and smart homes. We examine the benefits of robot care and Companionship and at the same time raise key ethical questions and concerns. We point to a series of trade-offs between the unethical and the beneficial that must be considered before robot care/Companionship becomes commonplace.
Japanese as a second language
Authors: Kawaguchi Satomi
Published: March 2014

One of the key assumptions inherent in PT is its universal nature. The design of PT is based on the architecture of the language processor; therefore, the theory needs to apply to all human languages. In this chapter, the focus will be on two grammatical structures in Japanese which look rather similar on the surface, canonical word order and passive constructions. It will be shown how these structures can be accounted for by PT and which predictions can be derived from PT for their order of acquisition. The key empirical evidence relating to these predictions will then be summarized. The chapter ends with a brief overview of research on Japanese as a second language within the PT framework.
Communicative activity types as organisations in discourses and discourses in organisations
Authors: Linell Per
Published: March 2014

This paper outlines a ‘dialogical’ perspective on discourse, more precisely on spoken, interactional discourse . Its focus is on interaction and contexts. Central notions in a dialogical account of talk-in-interaction are those of ‘communicative project’ and ‘communicative activity type’. This implies a dynamic interpretation of what ‘organisation(s) in discourse’ are about.
Pronominal choice in French conversational interaction
Authors: Waugh Linda R.
Published: March 2014

This paper examines how national identities are co-constructed and can be the site for struggle in interaction: in particular, how they are affected by general socio-cultural patterns and ideologies, the topics under consideration, and the positioning of the interactants. Through a fine-grained analysis of a conversation in French between three monolingual French speakers and one bilingual speaker of French and (American) English, shifts in the bilingual speaker’s national identities are examined in relation to the topics discussed, the speaker’s own ambivalence about his identities, and the cultural and symbolic capital of one of the monolingual speakers, who has negative prejudices and stereotypes about the U.S. and who seizes power in the interaction. The shifts are shown through identity acts (a sub-type of speech acts) and the use of indefinite/non-specific pronouns in making generic statements. In particular, the shifts go through three stages and create an organization for the conversation.
Constructing interpersonal relations in the discourse of Russian media
Authors: Vanhala-Aniszewski Marjatta
Published: March 2014

In this paper the relations between participants in the interaction actualized in the Russian media discourse are investigated. Attention will be paid, firstly, to the role and identity of the writer and the reader and, secondly, to the force of the writer’s statements meant to influence the audience, i.e. his personal attitude to the truth of propositions of the text. The empirical data consist of newspaper articles representing ordinary news reports. Concrete analysis of the realization of the interpersonal relations is provided by applying the theory of critical discourse analysis. This investigation of Russian media texts showed that the news texts include quite a few markers indicating the explicit presence of interpersonal relations between the participants of the communication act.
States and temporal interpretation in Capeverdean
Authors: Pratas Fernanda
Published: March 2014

One known puzzle in Creole systems is that temporal interpretation seems to be constrained by stativity (Bickerton 1974). For decades, the relevant division has been, roughly: bare stative verbs mean present, bare nonstatives mean past. In Capeverdean, a Portuguese-based Creole, we do indeed have: N sabe risposta “I know the answer”, N kume pexe “I ate fish”. The above generalization, however, is inaccurate: most Capeverdean statives pattern with nonstatives in this respect. Crucially, also sabe “know” may pattern with nonstatives, challenging further this traditional view. In this paper I argue that the distinct temporal readings above can only be explained via the internal structure of events. A Become subevent (Dowty 1979) accounts for N sabe risposta – “I got to know the answer”, with its consequent state (Moens & Steedman 1988) being “[now] I know.” In contrast, there is no consequent state as “I eat fish” for “I ate fish” (cf. “I’ve eaten.”).
Topic prominence is not a factor of variation between Brazilian and European Portuguese
Authors: Costa João
Published: March 2014

The existing syntactic differences between European and Brazilian Portuguese have received much attention in recent literature on generative syntax. According to several authors, Brazilian Portuguese became a discourse-oriented language with topic-prominence. This article shows that many constructions used to illustrate the specificity of Brazilian Portuguese as topic-prominent can also be found in European Portuguese. Accordingly, it is argued that the main difference between the two varieties of the language is not in discourse, but in the abstract syntactic properties associated with Inflection. This argument contributes to dispensing with discourse primitives in the syntactic component.
Epistemic modals in the past
Authors: Martin Fabienne
Published: March 2014

The aim of this paper is to provide additional arguments against the view that on the epistemic reading of modal verbs, the time of the modal is always the utterance time. The hypothesis defended, also adopted by Eide (2002, 2003) and von Fintel and Gillies (2008) is that epistemic modals can be in the scope of Tense/Aspect. Three possible translations of might have been in French (with a passé composé or an imparfait on the modal and a simple infinitival, or with a present on the modal and a perfect infinitival) are semantically differentiated. The analysis describes the distribution of past tenses on epistemic modality and explains the differences in their interpretation.
Possibilities are the sort of thing that comes into and goes out of existence, that can be ‘dated’ (Mondadori 1978, p. 246)
It is obvious that we don’t have a good understanding of what happens when a modal is combined with temporal operators. (Portner 2009, p. 230)
Sentential coordination and ellipsis
Authors: Pérez-Jiménez Isabel , Moreno-Quibén Norberto
Published: March 2014

In this paper we provide a syntactic analysis of free exceptive constructions headed by excepto and salvo (‘except’) in Spanish: Todos los estudiantes cantaron, {excepto/salvo} Juan (‘Every student sang, except John’). Our claim is that free exceptives are coordinated elliptical sentences attached to the CP level of a host clause that expresses a generalization statement. We frame our analysis in the Boolean Phrase Hypothesis (Munn 1993), and defend that exceptive markers head a Boolean Phrase, as other coordinating conjunctions do. We also argue that exceptive markers select for a full-fledged CP as complement, whose null C head triggers movement of an XP constituent to its Specifier position (Juan, in the example above) and also triggers a process of ellipsis in which all the syntactic material inside the TP selected by C is marked for PF-deletion, along the lines of Merchant (2003).
Stylistic Fronting and Remnant movement in Old French
Authors: Meklenborg Salvesen Christine
Published: March 2014

In Old and Middle French it is possible to find Stylistic Fronting where both a head and a phrase have been fronted. I have examined SF constructions where the infinitive dire ‘say’ or faire ‘do’ are fronted, in particular the cases where they are preceded by their complement. In order to account for this construction, I propose that the elements are moved together by Remnant Movement.
I also examine the structure of the vP, where the object or an adverb may precede the non-finite verb. This intermediary step of scrambling in the vP is necessary in order for these elements to be moved to the left periphery of the clause.
Chapter 2. Written discourse genres
Authors: Parodi Giovanni
Published: March 2014

The concept of discourse genre has been a focus of analysis and discussion in recent literature. Multiple alternative conceptions and classifications have been advanced, from both theoretical and empirical perspectives. During the last ten to fifteen years an important debate has taken place in linguistics. However, the elusive and divergent conceptions underlying this concept sometimes encounter extreme opposite viewpoints. This chapter offers an interdisciplinary theoretical approach in order to reach an integral conception. Thus, accepting the social and semiotic factors involved, we propose a theoretical framework and a definition with an emphasis on a cognitive perspective and on a subject’s active role in its construction. At the same time, a proposition for academic and professional genres construction in disciplinary domains is advanced.
Chapter 5. University academic genres
Authors: Parodi Giovanni
Published: March 2014

The issue of disciplinarity is increasingly salient in language studies. Questions as to how undergraduate students construct disciplinary knowledge from the texts included in the university curricula and how the knowledge structure involved in these texts helps to shape educational experiences and outcomes are the focus of studies across a variety of disciplines, using a wide range of approaches. One way to access the specialised written genres employed by academia is to begin from the tenet that all materials read by students during their university training reveal relevant data about disciplinary genres. This chapter presents an in-depth description of the collection and construction of the PUCV-2006 Academic Corpus, which comprises almost 59 million words, in four disciplines: Industrial Chemistry, Construction Engineering, Social Work, and Psychology. In addition, a genre typology emerged from the 491 texts that comprise this corpus.
Chapter 10. The Disciplinary Text genre as a means
for accessing disciplinary knowledge
Authors: Ibáñez O. Romualdo
Published: March 2014

This chapter describes and illustrates the Disciplinary Text, an academic genre that has emerged as one of the most frequent means of written communication in the PUCV-2006 Academic Corpus of Spanish, in three different disciplinary domains (Social Work, Psychology, and Construction Engineering). In order to do so, we carried out an ascendant/descendent analysis of the rhetorical organisation of 270 texts. The results revealed the communicative purpose of the genre, as well as its particular rhetorical organisation, which is realized by three rhetorical macro-moves, eight moves and eighteen steps. Besides, quantitative results showed relevant variation between Social Sciences and Humanities and Basic Sciences and Engineering in terms of the rhetorical steps and moves that realize the communicative purpose of the genre. These results allow us to say that, although the main characteristics of the genre under study are the same across disciplines, some others are affected by disciplinary variation. One of the main implications of this analysis is the empirical evidence that the ways of negotiating knowledge through discourse varies depending on the discipline and knowledge domain.
Three concepts of keywords
Authors: Stubbs Michael
Published: March 2014

The term “keywords” is widely used to refer to words which are important in some way, either in individual texts or in a given culture. The general idea is perhaps clear enough, but there are two problems. First, there are several different concepts of “keywords”. This paper discusses three loosely related uses of the term, which derive from quite different academic traditions, and which are therefore only marginally compatible. Second, there is a very large gap between individual words, texts and culture. The paper argues that this gap can only be bridged by a theory which relates words, phrases and texts to the social institutions which are characterized by texts and text-types.
Keywords and phrases in political speeches
Authors: Milizia Denise
Published: March 2014

This paper analyses n-grams and concgrams in the speeches of Tony Blair and George W. Bush delivered from the beginning of 2005 till June 2007. The focus of the study is first on the single word climate, which is found to figure high in the now former Prime Minister’s keywords, and then on the cluster climate change, in that change was also picked up as key and was always found in company with climate. This work is an attempt to corroborate the assumption that phraseological combinations, in the form of n-grams and concgrams, i,e. in contiguous and non-contiguous sequences, are usually much better at revealing the “aboutness” of the text than individual words.
History v. marketing
Authors: Malavasi Donatella , Mazzi Davide
Published: March 2014

We present the findings of an introductory study of keywords across two disciplines, i.e. history and marketing, focusing on terms that bring insights into disciplinary epistemology. The study relies on two comparable corpora (2.5 million words each) comprised of history and marketing research articles respectively. We comparatively investigate the collocational patterns of keywords, focussing in particular on one of their most frequent collocates i.e. reporting verbs. Our quantitative and qualitative keyword analysis points to differing collocations for history and marketing, but it validates the assumption that keywords may serve as effective clues to the epistemology of a discipline with a view to its agentive subjects, objects and research procedures defining the construction of knowledge in specific contexts.
Keywords in Korean national consciousness
Authors: Fraysse-Kim Soon Hee
Published: March 2014

This study identified keywords that trigger national consciousness (here termed “Weness”) of Koreans through an analysis of school textbooks using corpus-based techniques. The corpus is taken from Korean language textbooks compiled by the authorities and used in elementary schools in four Korean communities: in South Korea, North Korea, Korean Residents in Japan, and Korean Residents in China. Although the members of these four Korean communities come from the same ethnic stock, the current socio-political characteristics of each group are clearly different. Nevertheless, “Weness” in Korean mind-set, often expressed by the word wuli (we, our), suggests an immediate sense of homogeneity common across politico-social borders. Assuming that school textbooks are a linguistic reflection of a prevailing ideology, I show how this feeling is crystallized in a few special keywords frequently used in textbooks, and point out how Korean national identity is internalized and reproduced by school education.
Formulaic sequences in spoken ENL, ESL and EFL
Authors: Götz Sandra , Schilk Marco
Published: March 2014

In this pilot study we set out to compare formulaic sequences of the type of 3-grams in ENL (spoken British English), EFL (English spoken by advanced German learners of English) and ESL (spoken Indian English). The study shows that, for the overall number of types and tokens, there are no significant differences between ENL and ESL, but there are significantly fewer 3-grams in EFL vs. ENL. A comparison of the common core (i.e. the 3-grams all three variants have in common) reveals that these common-core 3-grams are significantly more frequently used in ESL and EFL-variants compared to ENL. A functional analysis shows differences in the distribution of the 3-grams across the variants. A study of the variant-specific 3-grams reveals less variability in EFL vs. ENL but a higher number and variability of both types and tokens in ESL.
Studying structural innovations in New English varieties
Authors: Gut Ulrike
Published: March 2014

This chapter, which is of a theoretical-conceptual rather than an empirical nature, is concerned with the characterization of structural innovations in New English varieties and the question of whether they can be described as transfer phenomena and learner errors. It first gives a review of relevant empirical studies and presents the state of the art in research in second language acquisition on the nature of cross-linguistic influence and the factors that constrain it. Based on this, it subsequently proposes a model of how structural innovations in New English varieties might have emerged. In addition, previous methods of studying these innovations are discussed, and a best-practice methodology for future research is proposed. It is argued that the classification of a structure as either an error or as an innovation depends crucially on the speakers’ and speaker communities’ norm-orientation and attitudes.
Typological profiling
Authors: Szmrecsanyi Benedikt , Kortmann Bernd
Published: March 2014

Drawing on naturalistic corpus data, this study is an exercise in establishing typological profiles of learner varieties (as sampled in the International Corpus of Learner English) vis-à-vis indigenized L2 varieties of English (as represented in the International Corpus of English), though we also include in our dataset, for benchmarking purposes, a number of European languages as well as three stylistic varieties drawn from the British National Corpus. Our research is informed by two typological parameters widely used in the crosslinguistic classification of languages: overt grammatical analyticity, which we operationalize as the text frequency of free grammatical markers, and overt grammatical syntheticity, which we define as the text frequency of bound grammatical markers. The principal insight afforded by this study is that learner Englishes and indigenized L2 varieties of English have strikingly different typological profiles, a finding which we trace back to a number of grammatical markers whose function and frequency differs between the two groups. We also present a methodology to explore if learner Englishes are sensitive to typological properties of their substrate languages, and find that this is not generally the case.
A principled distinction between error and conventionalized innovation in African Englishes
Authors: van Rooy Bertus
Published: March 2014

A distinction between error and conventionalized innovation is essential to understanding if and how New Varieties of English develop new conventions. This chapter proposes two criteria, grammatical stability and acceptability, to identify conventionalized innovations. It draws on the distinction drawn by Croft (2000) between the narrow process of creating new forms (innovation in the narrow sense) and the subsequent diffusion thereof, which are characterized as individual/psycholinguistic and social respectively. Three features from African Englishes are examined: the so-called extension of the progressive aspect to stative verbs and the use of “can be able to” in Black South African English, as well as the complementation of “enable” with bare infinitive clauses in East African English. The analyses indicate that while these features may have originated as errors due to analogy or overextension of existing patterns, which may also happen in the process of acquiring English as a foreign Language, the context of New Varieties of English is such that stabilization and conventionalization of these innovations may occur. Genuine new linguistic conventions emerge from forms that may have started out as errors.
Discussion forum
Authors: Hundt Marianne , Mukherjee Joybrato
Published: March 2014

During the workshop at the ISLE conference in Freiburg, the participants agreed to engage in an online discussion on how to bridge the paradigm gap in researching ESL varieties and EFL variants of English. The most productive strand of this discussion concerned the modelling of different Englishes, but some participants also took up the threads initiated by the editors who had selected quotations from the articles in this volume as a possible starting point for discussion. The following is a summary of the main points of the discussion. Some of the threads initiated by the editors are woven into the discussion of the Kachruvian three-circles model in Section 1. Section 2 focuses on the terminological problem of categorizing and labelling features found in New Englishes and Learner Englishes. In Section 3, different developmental trajectories are discussed as the main reason for the ESL-EFL dichotomy. Section 4 addresses issues of corpus methodology and the role of frequency in the description of ESL varieties and EFL variants. The summary of the discussion brings the different contributions together but does not aim at providing answers to questions that can be addressed from different angles. These parallel (and maybe sometimes contradictory?) strands in the discussion might inspire future directions of research.
Summarizing findings
Authors: Jaime-Sisó Mercedes
Published: March 2014

This study shows how the interdisciplinary nature of scientific research, the tremendous growth in the number of journals and the easy access to information via online publications have influenced the way biomedical scientists tackle their professional reading and writing. Research articles online incorporate new presentational components - blurbs, authors’ summaries, synopses - sharing with traditional sections the need to attract the busy reader’s attention to the main results. Findings are anticipated in the title and reformulated in all article sections, using different linguistic structures to avoid semantic and syntactic repetitions. From interviews with scientists and the analysis of 20 articles from two prestigious journals, I conclude that this rephrasing phenomenon, which mainly affects open access publications, complicates RA writing for NNSs and may be announcing a new form of scientific information presented in well-defined cognitive textual modules.
Using natural language patterns for the development of ontologies
Authors: Montiel-Ponsoda Elena , Aguado-de-Cea Guadalupe
Published: March 2014

The combination of certain linguistic units that recurrently appear in text genres has attracted the attention of many researchers in several domains, as they can provide valuable information about different types of relations. In this paper, the focus is on some of these combinatory units, referred to as Lexico-Syntactic Patterns (LSPs) that provide information about conceptual structures present in ontologies, also called Ontology Design Patterns (ODPs). The final end is to create a repository of LSPs associated to the ontological structures they convey to help novice users in the development of ontologies. In this paper we present the different strategies we have followed to identify LSPs, as well as an excerpt of the repository of LSPs-ODPs that is currently being built.
Building a large corpus based on newspapers from the web
Authors: Andersen Gisle , Hofland Knut
Published: March 2014

The Norwegian Newspaper Corpus (NNC) is an initiative to create a large monitor corpus representing contemporary Norwegian language in both its written varieties, Bokmål and Nynorsk. The corpus is compiled through daily harvesting and processing of published texts from the web edition of Norwegian newspapers. This introductory chapter gives a survey of work on corpus building, tool development and research in connection with the NNC project. It provides an overview of the corpus and its system architecture, describing the work flow, tools and methods used in the data processing. The chapter also gives a presentation of the individual research contributions to this volume.
Corpuscle – a new corpus management platform for annotated corpora
Authors: Meurer Paul
Published: March 2014

Corpuscle is a new corpus query engine and Web-based corpus management system. The main design goals were the ability to handle very large corpora, support for structured data (XML), and seamless integration of manual corpus annotation and editing. New algorithms have been developed, among them a technique for running finite state automata from edges with lowest corpus counts, and an implementation of regular expressions on suffix arrays for fast reverse index lookup. These algorithms allow for a clean and elegant implementation of multi-valued and set-valued attributes. The web interface offers rich functionality for concordancing, collocations, distribution statistics, and more. Queries can be input in a graphical, menu-driven way, freeing the user from dealing with the complexities of the query language.
SciE-Lex
Authors: Verdaguer Isabel , Laso Natalia Judith , Guzmán-González Trinidad , Salazar Danica , Comelles Elisabet , Castaño Castaño Emilia , Hilferty Joseph
Published: March 2014

This chapter deals with the main methodological issues underlying the building of the SciE-Lex lexical database and discusses and justifies the information included. SciE-Lex was initially conceived as a response to the lack of reference tools that can help scientists write scientific papers in phraseologically competent and native-like English. While there are a number of specialised dictionaries that include specific terminological information, there is a shortage of writing aids that provide information about the use of non-technical terms in scientific genres. SciE-Lex aims at filling this gap by focusing on the description of general terms in scientific English. This article describes the two stages in the building of the database, the first one including morphosyntactic and collocational information, and the second one focusing on phraseological information.
A corpus-based analysis of the collocational patterning of adjectives with abstract nouns in medical English
Authors: Laso Natalia Judith , John Suganthi
Published: March 2014

This chapter reports on a study that aimed at analysing native speakers’ use of abstract nouns in medical English. More precisely, the study intended to explore native speakers’ prototypical combinatorial patterns of abstract nouns as seen in a self-compiled corpus, the Health Science Corpus. The aim of this chapter is to describe one pattern commonly found in medical English; i.e. abstract nouns in combination with adjectives, and exemplify how this pattern functions within this discourse. The findings reveal interesting points with regard to the positions and typology of adjectives in this pattern. It is hoped that the study will contribute to the linguistic characterisation of medical English and bring to the forefront the usefulness of corpus-based analyses.
Gender assignment in present-day scientific English
Authors: Guzmán-González Trinidad
Published: March 2014

The article aims at exploring an aspect of the category of gender in English – namely what I have called “assigned gender” (Guzmán-González 1989, 1999, 2002, 2012, forthcoming and Guzmán-González & González 2005): the use of covert marks – third person singular and relative pronouns, and sex-sensitive collocations (of the type “moon, mother of dreams”) in a way deviant from the classification most currently assumed for English in modern times; that is to say, he for human males, she for human females and it for everything else (where he, she, it stand for the relevant complete set of pronouns and collocations). In particular, this chapter is based on textual evidence retrieved from a sub-corpus composed of zoology journals and addresses how the category is employed in reference to a particular group of nouns (animals) in a particular register (scientific English) in a particular medium (writing).
The metaphorical basis of discourse structure
Authors: Castaño Castaño Emilia , Hilferty Joseph , Verdaguer Isabel
Published: March 2014

The present chapter provides an alternative approach to discourse analysis based on the Cognitive Theory of Metaphor (Lakoff & Johnson 1980, 1999; Johnson 1987; Lakoff 1993, inter alia). Unlike other studies on text structure, this paper argues that our metaphorical conceptualization of discourse as a form of motion through space and time is one of the basic structuring devices that shape the internal architecture of a text. To explore how this conceptualization of discourse affects the organizational patterns of texts and how it manifests in linguistic terms, a collection of journal abstracts from the field of biology is analyzed qualitatively. Our results seem to indicate that the configuration of this type of text is stable and tends to reproduce the topological structure of the metaphor discourse is a form of motion along a path influenced by force dynamics.
Using learner corpora for automatic error detection and correction
Authors: Gamon Michael , Chodorow Martin , Leacock Claudia , Tetreault Joel
Published: March 2014

In this chapter we discuss the use and importance of learner corpora for the development and evaluation of automatic systems for learner error detection and correction. We argue that learner corpora are crucial in three main areas in this process. First, these corpora play an important role in identifying and quantifying common error types, in order to prioritize development of error-specific algorithms. Second, learner corpora provide valuable training data for machine-learned approaches which are dominant in the field of natural language processing today. Finally, the evaluation of error detection and correction systems is most reliable and realistic when performed on real learner data.
Analysing coherence in upper-intermediate learner writing
Authors: Schiftner Barbara
Published: March 2014

Previous studies on coherence and cohesion in learner writing indicate that the relationship between the two is not as straightforward as teaching practice seems to suggest. To allow for a meaning-focused analysis of coherence in learner writing, this paper presents a multi-perspective approach which incorporates (1) holistic coherence ratings, (2) logical relations which exist between parts of a text, and (3) cohesive elements. The focus of this paper is on the use of Rhetorical Structure Theory (RST) for the analysis of logical relations in learner writing. A corpus of 20 learner essays is analysed to examine the applicability of RST for the description of coherence structures in learner writing.
Chapter 2. Language learning and teaching in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
Authors: Graham C. Ray
Published: March 2014

This chapter provides an historical account of language learning and teaching in the LDS church from its earliest days to the present. By examining primary and secondary sources, it recounts the emphasis placed on language learning by church leaders and the ways in which their instructions were instantiated in the lives of individuals and groups of members. In particular, it examines the ways in which missionaries of the church have learned language and with what results. By so doing, it sets the stage for other chapters of the book which examine the loss of language by missionaries who return to an English-speaking environment where they have varying degrees of access to the use of their mission languages.
Chapter 3. The development of speaking proficiency of LDS missionaries
Authors: Dewey Dan , Clifford Ray T.
Published: March 2014

In this study we explore the levels of speaking proficiency attained by returned missionaries after spending sixteen to twenty-two months abroad, where they had daily opportunities to speak the languages of the countries to which they were assigned. The missionaries tested for this report speak a total of seven different languages learned primarily during their missionary service. We first seek to describe the level of proficiency achieved by these missionaries as measured by standardized Oral Proficiency Interviews, and then to describe in broader terms what kinds of real-world communication tasks these returned missionaries are prepared to accomplish. We also compare the abilities of these returned missionaries with the abilities of non-returned-missionary undergraduate language majors.
Chapter 6. The lost word
Authors: Hansen Lynne , Colver Andrew , Chong Wonhye , Pereira Helama , Robinson Jeremy , Sawada Akihiro , Miller Ronald M.
Published: March 2014

This study replicates the investigation of missionary vocabulary acquisition reported in the previous chapter in an examination of vocabulary attrition in the same population following the mission. Time since the period spent overseas is found to be the strongest predictor of returnee vocabulary retention, with words in the European languages retained longer than in the Asian languages. A male advantage in vocabulary maintenance is confounded by the gender inequality in L2 exposure time, suggesting a possible threshold effect experienced by the men in their longer time abroad. Affect is found to have an overall weaker role in lexical retention than in lexical learning.
Where is syntactic variation?
Authors: Barbiers Sjef
Published: March 2014

This paper discusses the consequences of some major recent developments in syntactic variation research: (i) the shift from a macro-comparative to a micro-comparative approach; (ii) the use of dialectological, sociolinguistic and theoretical methods to collect dialect syntax data; (iii) the rapidly increasing on-line availability of large amounts of data on large amounts of dialects; (iv) the hypothesis in minimalist generative grammar that there is no cross-linguistic variation in the syntactic module of the mental grammar and that all syntactic variation is reducible to other linguistic and non-linguistic levels. A brief overview is provided of the micro-comparative syntactic research infrastructure that has been built up in recent years. To demonstrate the usability of the available data and the minimalist hypothesis, the paper concentrates on the highly pervasive but little studied phenomenon of syntactic doubling. It is argued that syntactic doubling is necessary to express semantic relations and that there is much hidden doubling because locally recoverable doubles can and in certain cases must be left silent at the level of phonological spell out. In this way, syntactic doubling is an important source of syntactic variation. Using a model of linguistic variation that includes syntax, other levels of the mental grammar (phonology, semantics, pragmatics), cognition (e.g. memory, thinking), body (e.g. oral tract) and society, the paper then shows which piece of syntactic variation can be reduced to which level of linguistic variation model, thus answering the question of the title.
Late language acquisition and identity construction
Authors: Cornips Leonie , Hulk Aafke
Published: March 2014

Aacquisition of the grammatical gender of the Dutch definite common determiner de and neuter het is a long-lasting process since monolingual children do not acquire a target grammar with respect to the use of het until the age of six. Before that age, they overuse de. Bilingual child acquirers from ethnic minority communities show an overuse of de to a much higher extent than their monolingual controls. We will explore the relation between language acquisition and language variation. It is argued that when the acquisition process of a grammatical phenomenon takes too long, it will become vulnerable in the sense that language external and internal factors start to interfere with this process and the emerging variation will remain for some acquirers. The hypothesis is put forward that in that case a grammatical phenomenon is very eligible to be used in identity construction.
The variation of gender agreement on numerals in the Alpine space
Authors: Dal Negro Silvia
Published: March 2014

The study of dialects and of closely-related systems can be very interesting under the perspective of language typology since they give insights into different forms of linguistic patterning, setting off from very similar linguistic substance. The topic of this paper is gender agreement on cardinal numbers, a good example in which dialects exhibit a higher degree of complexity than their nearest standard languages, in this case German and Italian, as well as most European standard languages. Cardinal numerals are a special kind of linguistic object. From the point of view of agreement, lower numerals may share adjective-like properties and agree (usually in gender) with their head nouns, whereas higher numerals tend to have more noun-like properties and behave more as agreement controllers than as targets. Focusing on the Romance-Germanic contact area encompassing the alpine space, patterns of variation on numerals will be considered. On the basis of linguistic atlases, local grammars and dictionaries, and field-work research a typology of diffusion and evolution of the phenomenon of gender agreement on lower numerals both in Romance varieties (Gallo-Romance, Italo-Romance, Ladin) and German (Upper German dialects) can be outlined.