bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Deception and fraud
Authors: Eggington William
Published: March 2014

This chapter attempts to explore the following multipart research question: What, if anything, can linguistics and linguists offer: (1) in defining deception and fraud, (2) in detecting deception and fraud, and (3) in providing assistance to the various entities involved in legal systems with respect to the nature and detection of deception and fraud? After defining deception and fraud from lay, linguistics and legal perspectives, we explore the linguistic elements of the Nigerian Advanced Fee Fraud in order to see how linguistic knowledge can be used to detect deceptive language. We then critique research aimed at using linguistics to detect deception in real-time contexts. We conclude by offering ways linguistic science can be legitimately employed to uncover deceptive and fraudulent language.
Plagiarism
Authors: Turell M. Teresa
Published: March 2014

The negative connotations of plagiarism as an illegal appropriation of ideas are based on the concept of Intellectual Property. Although Intellectual Property Laws in most countries around the world are specific as to the characterisation of plagiarism as an offence, the extent of plagiarism litigation varies enormously and this variation has a lot to do with the way writers, whose texts are plagiarised, and plagiarists themselves, view the act of being plagiarised or the act of plagiarising somebody else’s text. In countries which fall within the Common Law tradition such as the United Sates, Australia, Canada, Great Britain, plagiarism litigation is extensive and there is a regular offer of linguistic expertise to solve plagiarism disputes. In countries within the Civil Law tradition, like Spain, for example, linguists are still rarely called upon as expert witnesses in plagiarism cases.

Plagiarism is multidimensional, as is proved in the number of areas of knowledge affected by it (including literature in all its forms: essay, novel, theatre, poetry), the settings and activities in which it occurs (education, translation), and the contexts in which it is produced (for example, the scope of plagiarism on the Internet is twofold since one can plagiarise directly from the web or use the web as a method to detect plagiarism). As expert witnesses, linguists are frequently asked to give evidence in court to help to decide cases of plagiarism of ideas, linguistic plagiarism, or both. In the first case, the distinction between author’s rights and copyright may be useful, because these two concepts and terms are used differently in different judicial systems. In the second case, it may be important for linguists to come up with theoretical and methodological proposals that help them as legal consultants to find linguistic markers and discourse strategies that will be decisive in plagiarism detection, as well as in establishing prima facie cases. As in any other forensic linguistics contexts, plagiarism is an area where the need to incorporate internal and external validity to the experts’ findings is strongly felt. When giving opinions in court, it has been proven that both qualitative and quantitative approaches to plagiarism detection are valid and complementary, and also that both semantically and statistically expressed opinions may be necessary.
Mind, Brain, and Chaos
Authors: Georgalis Nicholas
Published: March 2014

Most work in cognitive science, whether computationally or biologically based, relies on the idea of ‘unconscious representations.’ I argue that there are no such things. In contrast, conscious states do represent objects outside of the agent. My second main thesis concerns the ‘explanatory gap’ between brain states and mental states. I propose an analogy to enhance our understanding of just what is required to close the explanatory gap; I argue that a new science is needed. There is third main thesis, related to the second. Of all the currently available approaches to the study of brain activity, only nonlinear dynamics, chaos theory in particular, has a unique characteristic sufficient to close the explanatory gap. Every other approach to the study of the brain appears doomed to failure in this regard. Identification of an additional feature of chaotic systems provides the framework for the explanation of another conundrum, mental causation. Furthermore, given the chaotic model of the dynamics of perception arising from Walter J. Freeman’s work, it appears that emotion plays a central role in perception. The application of chaos theory to brain activity dovetails with my first thesis, as nonlinear dynamics does not require state transitions from representations to representations, yet it has the resources to account for the representational nature of conscious states.
Trochaic proper government, loose CV, and vowel ~ zero alternation in Hungarian
Authors: Polgárdi Krisztina
Published: March 2014

In this article, I analyze Hungarian vowel ~ zero alternation in a loose CV framework, employing left-to-right proper government, building on previous work (Polgárdi 1998, 2002, 2003), combining Government Phonology (GP) with Optimality Theory. I propose a syncope analysis, where alternating vowels are not empty underlyingly (as is customary in GP), but they are marked in the lexicon as properly governable. This approach is supported by an analysis of Turkish, where high vowels alternate with zero, which are traditionally regarded as segmentally empty. Yet they need to be marked lexically, because only some of them alternate, within a closed class of stems.
Contextualizing a grammar
Authors: Bright William
Published: March 2014

The grammar of a language is not only un système ou tout se tient; it also lies within a nexus involving time, space, and social relationships. On the dimension of time, descriptive and historical linguistics are not totally separate: native speakers’ knowledge of their language may include recognition of archaic forms and foreign borrowings. As for space, native speakers’ knowledge also includes awareness of geographical dialect variation. On the social dimension, the relevance of sociolinguistic variation is now widely recognized. Linguists who undertake to write grammars should consider all these factors, particularly as regards the interrelatedness between the grammar, the lexicon, and text collections.
Thoughts on growing a grammar
Authors: Weber David J.
Published: March 2014

Grammars take time; they require data development; they must be planned; and their writing may span many years. Linguists should “grow” a grammar through the course of their involvement with the language. This paper gives practical advice about this process, such as the creation and management of a data corpus, the acquisition of useful intellectual tools, the choice of an effective authoring environment, the formation of habits and disciplines that contribute to successful grammar writing.
Robotics, philosophy and the problems of autonomy
Authors: Haselager Willem F.G.
Published: March 2014

Robotics can be seen as a cognitive technology, assisting us in understanding various aspects of autonomy. In this paper I will investigate a difference between the interpretations of autonomy that exist within robotics and philosophy. Based on a brief review of some historical developments I suggest that within robotics a technical interpretation of autonomy arose, related to the independent performance of tasks. This interpretation is far removed from philosophical analyses of autonomy focusing on the capacity to choose goals for oneself. This difference in interpretation precludes a straightforward debate between philosophers and roboticists about the autonomy of artificial and organic creatures. In order to narrow the gap I will identify a third problem of autonomy, related to the issue of what makes one’s goals genuinely one’s own. I will suggest that it is the body, and the ongoing attempt to maintain its stability, that makes goals belong to the system. This issue could function as a suitable focal point for a debate in which work in robotics can be related to issues in philosophy. Such a debate could contribute to a growing awareness of the way in which our bodies matter to our autonomy.
Some observations on the use of HamNoSys in the context of the phonetic transcription of children's signing
Authors: Takkinen Ritva
Published: March 2014

This paper discusses the use of the HamNoSys notation (Hamburg Notation System for Sign Languages) for the transcription of children’s signing. The notation system will be briefly described and some former descriptions of the acquisition of sign language phonology presented. The project in which HamNoSys was used is then described briefly, followed by a description of the problems encountered while using the notation. Some proposals as to how to further develop the notation will be made. In conclusion the instrument can be said to be useful and, especially if revised, will be invaluable in further research.
Code mixing in mother-child interaction in deaf families
Authors: van den Bogaerde Beppie , Baker Anne E.
Published: March 2014

In this paper we discuss the mixed language input of four deaf mothers and the mixed output of their three deaf and three hearing children. Taking a strict definition of code-mixing (as defined by Muysken 2000) we find that the deaf mothers mainly use a form of code-mixing, or mixed code-blending, called congruent lexicalization, which results in a mixed form between NGT (Sign Language of the Netherlands) and Dutch in a structure which is compatible with both NGT and Dutch. The deaf children (up to 3 years), who are only just beginning to become bilingual, hardly produce any code-mixed utterances. The hearing children, however, are clearly bilingual in NGT and Dutch, and use code-blending of the mixed type in more or less the same form as their mothers do.
Distributed cognition: Domains and dimensions
Authors: Sutton John
Published: March 2014

Synthesizing the domains of investigation highlighted in current research in distributed cognition and related fields, this paper offers an initial taxonomy of the overlapping types of resources which typically contribute to distributed or extended cognitive systems. It then outlines a number of key dimensions on which to analyse both the resulting integrated systems and the components which coalesce into more or less tightly coupled interaction over the course of their formation and renegotiation.
Radical changes in cognitive process due to technology: A jaundiced view
Authors: Glenberg Arthur M.
Published: March 2014

A strong case can be made that the cognitive system is designed for guiding action, not, for example, symbol manipulation. I review empirical work demonstrating the link between action and cognition with special attention to the processes of language comprehension. Next, I sketch an embodied cognition framework for integrating work on language understanding with a more general approach to cognition and action. This general approach considers contributions to action of bodily states, emotions, social and cultural processes, and learning within a framework that generates a dynamic system. This framework is used to consider the notion of distributed cognition and the prospects that technology might induce substantial changes in cognition. My assessment is that such changes are unlikely.
Cohesive chains and speakers’ choice of prominence
Authors: Warren Martin
Published: March 2014

This paper describes lexical cohesion across participants in a discourse, and across discourse events, and the additional contribution made by speakers’ choices of prominence in the cohesive chains. The choice of prominence is made to communicate what is perceived to be situationally informative in the local context of interaction (Brazil 1985 and 1997). This study describes a connection between a speaker’s choice of a lexical or non-lexical word in a cohesive chain and the speaker’s choice of prominence and, in doing so, offers a partial answer to the question Hoey (1991:17) asks of Winter (1974 and 1979): ‘under what circumstances do we use one (cohesive device) rather than the other?’. It also describes how the selection of prominence across speakers in a discourse can signal divergence and convergence between them. Lastly, the paper discusses the pedagogical implications of the study with regard to English language learning and teaching.
Variations and application-oriented terminology engineering
Authors: Daille Béatrice
Published: March 2014

Terminology variation in texts is now a well-known phenomenon, whose amount is estimated to be between 15% to 35%, depending on the domain, text type and kind of variants identified. In this paper, we present different typologies of variants elaborated for application-oriented terminology engineering and synthesise them in order to derive a core of variations. We shall show that the semantic interpretation of the variation depends on the application. Even if terminology variation remains a problem in various applications, it also provides clues that could be exploited in these same applications. We illustrate what benefit they bring and conclude by highlighting future trends of variation studies.
The Iraq war as curricular knowledge
Authors: Mitsikopoulou Bessie , Koutsogiannis Dimitris
Published: March 2014

The chapter deals with educational discourse concerning the recent Iraq war in an attempt to explore how broader political issues, such as the Iraq war, are materialised in everyday classroom practices. It analyses lesson plans, aimed to be used by US educators of primary and secondary schools, from two Internet sites: one supporting the official position of US to go to war and the other taking a position against the war. The paper suggests that the lesson plans in the two sites constitute materialisations of two general approaches to education, the dominant and the critical, which do not simply adopt opposing views concerning the war but which, most importantly, contribute to the construction of different pedagogic subjects: in one case, there is an attempt towards ‘compulsory patriotism’, whereas in the other an attempt towards a ‘compulsory’ challenging of the war. The ideals which are in fact recontextualised here are that of nation and justice, the pedagogisation of which seems to raise much more questions than to provide answers.
Spectacular ethics
Authors: Chouliaraki Lilie
Published: March 2014

This article argues that the BBC World footage of the bombardment of Baghdad, March–April 2003, manages to take sides in the controversy over the Iraq war, without violating the principle of objectivity — a principle necessary for the credibility of public service broadcasting. Making use of the ‘analytics of mediation’, I show that the semiotic choices of this footage construe the bombardment of Baghdad in a regime of pity, whereby the aesthetic quality of the spectacle effaces the presence of Iraqi people as human beings and sidelines the question of the coalition troops identity either as benefactors or bombers. This combination is instrumental in aestheticising the horror of war at the expense of raising issues around the legitimacy and effects of the war.

The taking of sides in the BBC ‘update’ occurs precisely through this aestheticised representation of warfare that denies the sufferer her humanity and relieves the bomber of his responsibility in inflicting the suffering. By rendering these identities irrelevant to the spectacle of the suffering, the footage ultimately suppresses the emotional, ethical and political issues that lie behind the bombardment of Baghdad.
Social reality makes the social mind
Authors: Jussim Lee , Harber Kent D. , Crawford Jarret T. , Cain Thomas R. , Cohen Florette
Published: March 2014

This paper contests social psychology’s emphasis on the biased, erroneous, and constructed nature of social cognition by: (1) showing how the extent of bias and error in classic research is overstated; (2) summarizing research regarding the accuracy of social beliefs; and (3) describing how social stereotypes sometimes improve person perception accuracy. A Goodness of Judgment Index is also presented to extract evidence regarding accuracy from research focusing on bias. We conclude that accuracy is necessary for understanding social cognition.
The shaping of individuals’ mental structures and dispositions by others
Authors: Hahlweg Kurt
Published: March 2014

Expressed emotion (EE) is a measure of the family environment that has been demonstrated to be a reliable, cross-culturally valid psychosocial predictor of relapse in patients with schizophrenia, mood disorders, and other — also somatic — illnesses. Assessed during the Camberwell Family Interview CFI, relatives are classified as being high in EE if they make more than a specified threshold number of critical comments or show any signs of hostility or marked emotional overinvolvement. In schizophrenia, the median relapse rate for patients returning after hospital discharge to a high EE environment is 48%, compared with 21% in a low EE-environment. In this article, the history of EE research will be outlined, and the evidence for the association between family EE and the course of schizophrenia and mood disorders will be presented. Conclusions about the treatment of major mental disorders are discussed as well as the directions of future studies.
The understanding of own and others’ actions during infancy
Authors: Hauf Petra , Prinz Wolfgang
Published: March 2014

Developmental psychologists assume that infants understand other persons’ actions after and because they understand their own (“Like-me” perspective). However, there is another possibility as well, namely that infants come to understand their own actions after and because they understand other persons’ actions (“Like-you” perspective). We reviewed infant research on the influence of perceived actions on self-performed actions as well as the reverse. Furthermore, we investigated the interplay between both aspects of action understanding by means of a sequence variation. The results show the impact of agentive experience for action understanding, but not the reverse. The question whether infants’ perceived and to-be-produced actions share common representations of the perceptual and the motor system is discussed in relation to its implications for the social making of minds.
South African Novelists and the Grand Narrative of Apartheid
Authors: Gagiano Annie
Published: March 2014

The apartheid policies and practices by means of which South Africa was formerly governed also had an ideological or mythological dimension, which functioned as its justificatory narrative. The process of replacing that narrative which needs to be undertaken in South Africa can make use, among other processes, of the re-presentations of this society by our novelists. This paper sketches something of the complex interplay between fiction, social reality, and moral-political understanding at the hand of six novels. It focuses on depictions of acts and experiences of violation as the signature of the ruthless force and after-effects of the apartheid system. It draws attention to the various, but socially meaningful workings of novelistic discourse in these texts, functioning as they do within a situation requiring profound psychic and social readjustment.
The promise (and challenge) of an innovative narrative psychology
Authors: Schiff Brian
Published: March 2014

In this article, I outline what are, in my view, the major conceptual and institutional weaknesses of narrative psychology. However, because my objective is to legitimatize narrative as an alternative vision of psychology, I frame these criticisms as challenges for narrative psychologists to overcome. I argue that narrative psychology has not clearly defined the meaning, scope and basic principles of a narrative approach. I ask: What does narrative mean? Is narrative ethnocentric? Is narrative a science? Can narrative reconcile with the mainstream without losing its critical spirit? Can narrative survive in the academy? Although the challenges are significant, I argue that narrative psychology offers the promise of a systematic form of inquiry that explores meaning and intention in human lives. Narrative research promises to bring us closer to the real subject matter of psychological investigation, that of human intention and meaning, in its appropriate interpretive context.
Continuity and change in narrative study
Authors: Hogan Patrick Colm
Published: March 2014

Since its ancient origins, narrative theory has involved two broad types of analysis — componential and functional. Componential analysis seeks to isolate the elements and operations that make up narrative. Functional analysis explores the purposes of narrative. Commonly, writers isolate two functions — one emotive, the other ethical and/or political. The broad framework of narrative theory has remained largely the same since its inception. Changes have primarily been a matter of expanding the scope or detail of componential or functional analyses. In the twentieth century, there was a particular expansion of the ethico-political part of functional analysis. One distinctive feature of very recent narrative theory is its use of cognitive neuroscience to expand our componential analyses treating narrative causality and plot organization and our functional analyses treating emotion. Unfortunately, the work on emotional functional analysis has not been integrated with its ethico-political counterpart. This lack of integration may be due to the political economy in which cognitive literary study arose. Moreover, the future of such integration may be less a matter of the analyses themselves and more a matter of the political economy in which these analyses are embedded.
Rhetorical aesthetics and other issues in the study of literary narrative
Authors: Phelan James
Published: March 2014

The current study of literary narrative is a vibrant and various activity, marked not by a single orthodoxy but by multiple approaches. Within that variety there are five especially salient issues currently being investigated: nonmimetic narrative; digital narrative; the fact/fiction distinction; narrative space; and rhetorical aesthetics. Rhetorical aesthetics moves not toward a universal standards of literary quality but toward an understanding of how narratives work on their own terms and of appropriate general criteria for judging those terms. These criteria, as a comparison of the endings of Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep and Howard Hawks’s adaptation of the novel to film suggests, typically are not purely aesthetic but involve the interrelation of form, ethics, and aesthetics.
The performance turn in narrative studies
Authors: Peterson Eric E. , Langellier Kristin M.
Published: March 2014

The turn to performance re-situates narrative as an object of study: narrative is both a making and a doing. The performance turn emphasizes narrative embodied in communication practices, constrained by situational and material conditions, embedded in fields of discourse, and strategically distributed to reproduce and critique existing relations of power and knowledge.
Distance between languages as measured by the minimal-entropy model
Authors: Jakopin Primoz
Published: March 2014

In this paper, a language model, based on probabilities of text n-grams, is used as a measure of distance between Slovenian and 15 other European languages. During the construction of the model, a Huffman tree is generated from all the n-grams (n=1 to 32, frequency 2 or more) in the training corpus of Slovenian literary texts (2.7 million words), and appropriate Huffman codes are computed for every leaf in the tree. To apply the model to a new text sample, it is cut into n-grams (1–32) in such a way that the sum of model Huffman code lengths for all the obtained n-grams of new text is minimal.

The above model, applied to all (16) translations of Plato's Republic from the TELRI CD ROM, produced the following language order (average coding length in bits per character): Slovenian (2,37), Serbocroatian (3,77), Croatian (3,84), Bulgarian (3,96), Czech (4,10), Polish (4,32), Russian (4,46), Slovak (4,46), Latvian (4,74), Lithuanian (4,94), English (5,40), French (5,67), German (5,69), Romanian (5,76), Finnish (6,11), and Hungarian (6,47).
Equivalence and non-equivalence in parallel corpora*
Authors: Váradi Tamás , Kiss Gábor
Published: March 2014

The present paper shows how an aligned parallel corpus can be used to investigate the consistency of translation equivalence across the two languages in a parallel corpus. The particular issues addressed are the bidirectionality of translation equivalence, the coverage of multiword units, and the amount of implicit knowledge presupposed on the part of the user in interpreting the data. Three lexical items belonging to different word classes were chosen for analysis: the noun head, the verb give, and the preposition with. George Orwell's novel 1984 was used as source material as it available in English-Hungarian sentence-aligned form. It is argued that the analysis of translation equivalents displayed in sets of concordances with aligned sentences in the target language holds important implications for bilingual lexicography and automatic word alignment methodology.
Roles of community interpreters in pediatrics as seen by interpreters, physicians and researchers
Authors: Leanza Yvan
Published: March 2014

This paper is an attempt at defining more clearly the various roles of community interpreters and the processes implicitly connected with each of them. While the role of the interpreter is a subject that has been widely discussed in the social science literature, it is less present in the biomedical one, which tends to emphasize the importance of interpreting in overcoming language barriers, rather than as a means of building bridges between patients and physicians. Hence, studies looking at interpreted medical interactions suggest that the presence of an interpreter is more beneficial to the healthcare providers than to the patient. This statement is illustrated by the results of a recent study in a pediatric outpatient clinic in Switzerland. It is suggested that, in the consultations, interpreters act mainly as linguistic agents and health system agents and rarely as community agents. This is consistent with the pediatricians’ view of the interpreter as mainly a translating machine. A new typology of the varying roles of the interpreter is proposed, outlining the relation to cultural differences maintained therein. Some recommendations for the training of interpreters and healthcare providers are suggested.
Exploring untrained interpreters’ use of direct versus indirect speech
Authors: Dubslaff Friedel , Martinsen Bodil
Published: March 2014

This study examines the interrelations between the use of direct vs. indirect speech by primary participants and by dialogue interpreters by focusing on pronoun shifts and their interactional functions. The data consist of four simulated interpreter-mediated medical interviews based on the same scripted role play. The subjects were untrained Arabic interpreters working for a Danish agency. Two of the four interpreters favoured the direct style of interpreting. The other two favoured the indirect style. The findings show that all four interpreters tended to identify with the patient by personalizing the indefinite pronoun one when relaying from doctor to patient. All other pronoun shifts occurred in connection with interactional problems caused almost exclusively by the interpreters’ lack of knowledge about medical terminology — even though the terms used were in fact non-specialized ones. The study also indicates that primary parties’ shifts from direct to indirect address are closely related either to the form or to the content of the interpreter’s prior utterance. Finally, it emerges that repeated one-language talk, triggered by the interpreter’s problems with medical terminology, can override the quasi-directness of communication between primary participants, which is connected with interpreting in the first person.
The status of interpretive hypotheses
Authors: Chesterman Andrew
Published: March 2014

In the natural sciences, the task of the researcher is usually seen as the generation and testing of hypotheses. These hypotheses are taken to be possible answers to questions concerning the description, prediction, and explanation of natural phenomena. But there is also another kind of hypothesis, an interpretive hypothesis. The status of interpretive hypotheses is not as clear as that of descriptive, predictive or explanatory ones. This paper aims to clarify this status, showing the respects in which interpretive hypotheses are like other kinds, and the respects in which they are different. Hermeneutic research methods based on the generation and testing of interpretive hypotheses do not seem fundamentally different from those of traditional empirical sciences. Interpretive hypotheses simply apply to different kinds of data. They can be particularly relevant to the research goal of explanation.
On omission in simultaneous interpreting: Risk analysis of a hidden effort
Authors: Pym Anthony
Published: March 2014

One of the long-standing debates in studies on simultaneous interpreting would pit “contextualists”, who see interpreters’ performances as being conditioned by contextual determinants, against “cognitivists”, who analyze performances in terms of cognitive constraints that would be the same for all professionals, regardless of context. Gile’s Effort Models would seem to be very much in the cognitive camp. However, modeling of the resources used when interpreters make omissions suggests that cognitive management may actively respond to contextual factors such as the aims of the discourse, the strategies of the speakers, and the variable risks of the text items. Analysis of the data from one of Gile’s experiments indicates that the cognitive management of omissions is indeed highly variable. Omissions that are low-risk for the aims of the discourse occur in a constant background mode, almost without sourcetext stimuli, such that in repeat performances they are found with similar frequency but in different places. On the other hand, omissions that incur high levels of risk tend to be repaired in repeat performance. This suggests that simultaneous interpreters strive for non-omission only in the case of high-risk contextualization. Further, since their management skills must incorporate enough contextualization for the necessary risk analysis to take place, the cognitive strategies of interpreters should be modeled in the same terms as those of all other linguistic mediators.
Safeguarding the lexicogrammatical environment: Translating semantic prosody
Authors: Stewart Dominic
Published: March 2014

This paper discusses a module taught to final year students at the School for Interpreters and Translators at Forlì, University of Bologna, examining the role of semantic prosody in translation from English to Italian and the way in which we as corpus analysts use our intuitions about language to seek insights into semantic prosody and to convert corpus data into evidence of semantic prosody. These issues are considered primarily from the point of view of a teacher of translation wishing to sensitise students to the opportunities afforded by corpora for translators.
11. Toward more reliable assessment of interpreting performance
Authors: Lee Jieun
Published: March 2014

This pilot study examines the use of rating scales in the assessment of interpreting performance quality. The three criteria and descriptors in the band scale were developed a priori based on intuitive understanding of different levels of interpreting quality and the rating scale models used in second language assessment. Nine professional Korean interpreters rated five English Korean consecutive interpreting performances using the scales, and provided feedback on the use of rating scales. The results indicate that rating scales may enhance the reliability of assessment of interpreting performance.
3. Spanish (de)queisimo: Part/whole alternation and viewing arrangement
Authors: Delbecque Nicole
Published: March 2014

The introduction situates the approach taken and presents the structure of the paper (Section 1). The classical definition of (de)queísmo serves as starting point (Section 2). The analysis is done in terms of viewing arrangement (Section 3) and of part/whole alternation (Section 4). By considering the head elements one by one, i.e., adjectives and nouns as well as verbs, it is possible to arrive at a global view on the variation (Section 5). The distribution of the verbs in frequency classes according to the Ø/de alternation confirms the predominance of the internal perspective (Ø) and suggests that the minority choice (de) of the external perspective is also systematic and structurally motivated (Section 6). The conceptual difference is further corroborated in the translation (Section 7). Finally, the semantic import of the Ø/de alternation should not be confounded with the inferences it contributes to canalize regarding the attitude of the speaker (Section 8).
11. Relating participants across asymmetric events: Conceptual constraints on obligatory control
Authors: Panther Klaus-Uwe
Published: March 2014

This chapter discusses a specific type of asymmetric events, namely a configuration where a non-expressed participant in a subordinate event must be identical with a participant in the superordinate event of which it is a part. The phenomenon is known as “obligatory control” in generative grammar and illustrated by sentences such as John begged Mary to play computer games with him, in which the main clause argument Mary determines (“controls”) the reference of the understood subject in the infinitive clause. Traditionally, obligatory control has often been regarded as a purely formal relation, describable in terms of a Minimal Distance Principle or some other syntactic constraint. Approaches that rely on the notion of thematic role have also been proposed. In contrast, the present contribution, following work by Köpcke and Panther, develops a conceptual-pragmatic account of obligatory control. It is claimed that control involves a matching process between conceptual-pragmatic roles of a participant in the superordinate clause and the understood subject of the embedded non-finite clause. Two Pragmatic Role Identity Principles account for the basic facts of obligatory control into non-finite complement clauses in English and German. These principles provide a unified account of a large class of cases of obligatory control phenomena involving syntactic subject control, object control, and control shift.
New Tendencies in Geographical Dialectology
Authors: Clua Esteve , Lloret Maria-Rosa
Published: March 2014

The goal of this paper is to show that there is a principled way of capturing structural (i.e., qualitative) differences between dialects within a quantitative approach and that the result of applying such methodology to dialect grouping is more accurate than the one obtained on purely qualitative or quantitative grounds. We base our work on data compiled in a corpus of contemporary Catalan, the Corpus Oral Dialectal (COD), gathered with computerization in mind. We first present the characteristics of the COD as well as the main tenets of the quantitative dialectometrical methodology. We then show the kind of linguistic analysis we pursue to distinguish regular phonetic facts from underlying differences, and evaluate the consequences of such distinction for dialectometrics. Finally, we illustrate the results of our research by reviewing the dialectal classification of Valencian Catalan.
Mapping French Pronunciation
Authors: Durand Jacques
Published: March 2014

Ever since the birth of phonology, French has been a favorite testing ground for theoretical claims concerning phonological structure. Sadly, far too many theoretical claims have just been reinterpretations of idealized data borrowed from the literature or observations taken from normative work teaching foreigners to pronounce French correctly. The PFC project (‘Phonologie du français contemporain: usages, variétés et structure’) aims at redressing the imbalance between observation and theorization. PFC involves over thirty researchers and aims at the recording, partial transcription and analysis of over 500 speakers from the francophone world on the basis of a common Labovian protocol. The aims of the paper will be to present the project, its goals, its actors, the methodology and the research tools used. Some preliminary results are presented concerning vocalic systems, the treatment of liaison and of schwa.
Spatial axes in language and conceptualisation
Authors: Ojutkangas Krista
Published: March 2014

Krista Ojutkangas’ paper, “Spatial axes in language and conceptualization: the case of bidirectional constructions,” is a usage-based study of the basic axes in the conceptual partition of space. The focus is on bidirectional constructions in Finnish: on descriptions of spatial relations where both opposing poles of a spatial axis are explicitly mentioned in a single sentence, instances such as ‘the bride and the groom were sitting behind the table and the guests were sitting in front of the table’. Ojutkangas shows that the inherent bipolarity of the basic spatial axes can be utilized as a relatively systematic strategy in spatial conceptualization. It also shows that a conceptualization strategy primarily used in spatial language can have further functions in discourse, in building the narrative, and in reference tracking. The analysis of bidirectional and similar constructions contributes to our knowledge of spatial conceptualization and language generally.
Passive — personal or impersonal?
Authors: Helasvuo Marja-Liisa
Published: March 2014

Marja-Liisa Helasvuo’s paper discusses passive constructions in Finnish. Based on a large database of spoken Finnish, she argues that contrary to the received view in Finnish linguistics, there are actually two types of passive in Finnish, namely the so-called simple passive (formed by the verb stem + passive suffix + personal marker) and a periphrastic passive; the latter is the so-called be-passive, formed with the verb ‘to be’ in its 3rd person singu­lar form (on) and a passive participle of the main verb. In the be-passive, the finite verb is in the 3rd person form, but in the simple passive, there is a special passive “personal” marker on the verb. The passive personal marker creates personal reference, but the reference is not explicit, but rather has to be con­strued from the context. Helasvuo investigates the role of these two types of passives in the Fin­nish person system and the discourse functions that they serve. She shows that the two passives have quite distinct discourse profiles.

In the linguistic literature, the Finnish passive has been described as impersonal based on the fact that argument relations do not change (see e.g. Comrie 1977). In contrast, in a personal passive, the object of the active clause takes the role of subject in a corresponding passive clause. Helasvuo shows, however, that this use of the term “personal” vs. “impersonal” is mis­leading: it equates the function of person marking with the coding of the sub­ject role. Instead, she suggests that the function of person marking on verbs is to provide a grammatical means for expressing person, either by explicit refer­ence to per­son or open reference that has to construed in the context (e.g. the passive). From this perspective, the Finnish passive is by no means impersonal, but instead, is an integral part of the person system for verbs.
The phonetics and phonology of intonational phrasing in Romance
Authors: Frota Sónia , D’Imperio Mariapaola , Elordieta Gorka , Prieto Pilar , Vigário Marina
Published: March 2014

This paper examines the phonetics and phonology of intonational boundaries in five Romance languages/varieties. A typology of the boundary cues used is given, as well as their relative frequency. The phonology of the tonal boundary gesture is described by means of the inventory of nuclear accents used plus their possible combinations with the two dominant end contours: continuation rise (H) and sustained pitch (!H). A detailed analysis of the phonetics of the H boundary tone, which is the main boundary cue observed across these languages, is provided. This involved assessing the impact on H scaling of nuclear accent choice, phrase length and first peak height. Overall, it is shown that the variation found consistently groups these languages in two sets: the Catalan-Spanish group and the Italian-European Portuguese group.
Syntactic change from within and from without syntax: A usage-based analysis
Authors: Waltereit Richard , Detges Ulrich
Published: March 2014

This article presents a critical discussion of Inertia Theory (Longobardi 2001; 2003), according to which syntactic change never originates in syntax itself. We argue that syntactic change originates in language usage, which includes the possibility that it may be triggered by genuinely syntactic factors. In order to substantiate this claim, two syntactic changes are studied in detail, namely the rise of French est-ce que as an interrogative particle and the reanalysis of presentational hay + noun “there is + noun” in Spanish. We show that the reanalysis of est-ce que as a marker of ‘strong’ interrogation is pragmatically motivated and brought about by frequent usage. By contrast, the reanalysis of impersonal presentative hay + noun in certain varieties of Spanish is shown to be triggered by conflicting linking strategies, and must therefore be considered an instance of syntactically motivated syntactic change.
Grammaticalisation within the IP-domain
Authors: Fischer Susann
Published: March 2014

This paper will argue that grammaticalisation within the IP domain is responsible for the change in word order from Old to Modern Romance. Stylistic fronting, postverbal clitics, and other verb-third orders do not seem to be related at first sight. However, on closer investigation it seems as if all these phenomena can be brought together by the availability of an additional functional category in the IP domain that was involved in information structure. This paper will argue that stylistically fronted elements and the verb in postverbal clitic constructions target this additional functional category and thus change the meaning of the sentence. In the course of time, grammaticalisation (in the view of Roberts & Roussou 2003) reduced the availability of this functional category and therefore stylistic fronting and postverbal clitics are not an option in Modern Romance anymore.
The balance between syntax and discourse in Old English
Authors: van Kemenade Ans M.C. , Milicev Tanja , Baayen Harald
Published: March 2014

Old English morpho-syntax allows a degree of word order flexibility that is exploited by discourse strategies. Key elements here are: adverbs functioning as discourse partitioners, and a wider range of pronominal elements, extending the number of strategies for anaphoric reference. The syntactic effect is an extended range of subject and object positions, which are exploited for discourse flexibility. In particular, a class of high adverbs, including primarily þa “then” and þonne “then”, define on their left an area in which discourse-(linked) elements occur, including a range of pronouns, but also definite nominal subjects. The latter occur here because the Old English weak demonstrative pronouns that serve to mark definiteness also allow specific anaphoric reference to a discourse antecedent. We also develop a model of quantitative analysis that brings out the relationship between the narrowly circumscribed syntactic system and the relative diffuseness of the discourse referential facts.
Gender assignment in Old English
Authors: Vezzosi Letizia
Published: March 2014

Old English has a three-gender formal assignment system, there are more than scanty instances where the same noun shows more than one gender. The phenomenon has been so far generally neglected both in textbooks and linguistic literature. In the present paper, the author classifies the Old English data, selected through a corpus analysis of electronic corpora and complete literary works on the base of a comparison with relevant data from typological investigations and historical linguistic studies, and shows that Old English gender variance depends on semantic and pragmatic factors that interfere with grammatical gender assignment, a linguistic fact that is cross-linguistically common. More precisely, besides the cross-linguistically frequent semantic traits such as [± animate] [± human], gender assignment in Old English seems to be sensitive to semantic roles. This parameter does not conflict with the previous semantic ones, since all of them can be derived from the more general feature [± individuated]
On the Post-Finite Misagreement phenomenon in Late Middle English
Authors: Ingham Richard P. , Grohmann Kleanthes K.
Published: March 2014

Early Modern English shows some incidence of misagreement between a singular verb and a plural subject. A corpus of 15th century London chronicles was searched in order to investigate the origins of this phenomenon, and whether it should be handled in structural terms. It was found that misagreement almost always arose with a postfinite subject, and co-occurred in texts allowing null impersonal subjects. It is analysed as agreement with a singular expletive subject, overt or null, existing as an option alongside the option of regular number agreement. A preverbal subject contained no expletive element, hence number agreement was regular. The structural position of the postverbal subject was found to be irrelevant: three postfinite subject configurations were identified, in all of which agreement was optional. It is further noted that an increase in the phenomenon occurred during the 15th century for which a dialect contact explanation is proposed.
Adverb-marking patterns in Earlier Modern English coordinate constructions
Authors: Pounder Amanda V.
Published: March 2014

In addition to the common pattern of X-ly and Y-ly in the coordination of adverbs, minority patterns such as X and Y-ly have also been observed in Early Modern and Modern English texts. While the pattern is thought typical of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century texts, examples can be found in current English as well. This paper explores the question of whether the choice between the patterns is due to aesthetic criteria such as eurythmy, the maintenance of symmetry, or a desire to avoid repetition. It concludes that all three may play a role. After considering the theoretical alternatives of paradigmatic selection and morphological ellipsis in the analysis of the choice of the non-suffixed adverb in coordinate constructions, it seems that both strategies are available to English speakers. The morphological ellipsis strategy aligns English with a variety of other languages which use zero morphology in similar constructions.
Emotion verbs with to-infinitive complements: From specific to general predication
Authors: Egan Thomas
Published: March 2014

This paper traces the evolution of to-infinitive complement constructions with the emotion matrix verbs like, love, hate and prefer over the past two hundred years. It proposes that when the matrix verb is not preceded by a modal auxiliary these constructions should be analysed in Present-day English as encoding general rather than specific predications. In Late Modern English, on the other hand, these same constructions were widely used to encode specific predications. Using data from the BNC and the Corpus of Late Modern English Texts, the chapter demonstrates how these constructions have become increasingly restricted to encoding general predications over the past two hundred years. This development is related to the parallel expansion of -ing complement constructions and of toinfinitive complement constructions with modalised matrix verbs.