bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Electrically tunable hole tunnelling from a single self-assembled quantum dot embedded in an n-i-Schottky photovoltaic cell
Authors: Mar J. D. , Xu X. L. , Baumberg J. J. , Irvine A. C. , Stanley C. , Williams D. A.
Published: July 2011

We perform excitation-intensity-dependent measurements of the neutral exciton (X0) photocurrent (PC) peak amplitude from a single InAs/GaAs self-assembled quantum dot (QD) embedded in the intrinsic region of an n-i-Schottky photodiode. Since resonant laser-excitation of the X0 transition cannot occur until the comparatively slow hole tunnels out of the QD, we observe a saturation of the PC peak amplitude towards high excitation-intensities, allowing us to determine the hole tunnelling time by fitting with an appropriate theoretical model. By repeating this measurement for a range of bias voltages, we obtain the hole tunnelling time as a function of vertical electric field, showing that it can be tuned by nearly two orders of magnitude. Finally, we find that the hole tunnelling rate can be described accurately by a theoretical model based on a Wentzel-Kramers-Brillouin approximation to yield precise values for the QD height and hole confinement potential.
Phase extraction from optical interferograms in presence of intensity nonlinearity and arbitrary phase shifts
Authors: Hoang Thang , Wang Zhaoyang , Vo Minh , Ma Jun , Luu Long , Pan Bing
Published: July 2011

We present an advanced technique to retrieve phase from multiple optical interferograms containing intensity nonlinearity and random phase shifts, which are common in practice. The proposed algorithm employs a least-squares iteration scheme to detect harmonics up to the pth order and arbitrary phase shifts simultaneously, and the phase distribution can be accurately extracted from (2p + 1) interferograms. The technique is validated by both computer simulation and real experimental results.
Electroanalytical Determination of Some Sulfonamides on Overoxidized Polypyrrole Electrodes
Authors: Ozkorucuklu Sabriye Percin , Ozcan Levent , Sahin Yucel , Alsancak Guleren
Published: July 2011

The electrochemical behaviours of five sulfonamides (sulfanilamide, sulfadiazine, sulfamerazine, sulfamonomethoxine, sulfamethoxazole) were investigated with overoxidized polypyrrole (OPPy) modified pencil graphite electrodes. The performance of the OPPy electrode was evaluated by differential pulse voltammetry in Britton–Robinson buffer solutions prepared in different ratio of acetonitrile-water binary mixture, between pH 1.5 and 7.0. The highest anodic signals of sulfonamides were obtained in Britton–Robinson buffer solution prepared in 50% (v/v) acetonitrile-water at pH 2.5 and 3.0. The OPPy electrodes exhibited good performance for sulfonamides with wide linear ranges (≈10–5–10–3 M), highly reproducible responses (RSD% ≤0.92) and correlation coefficients (≥0.9990). The calculated limits of detection were ~10–6 or 10–7 M at 3σ. In order to verify the reliability of the OPPy electrode as a sensor, it is used for determination of sulfamethoxazole in a pharmaceutical tablet. The recovery was found as 95.96% with the RSD% of 0.68. The overoxidized polypyrrole modified pencil graphite electrode showed a stable and reproducible response without any influence of interferent commonly existing in pharmaceutical containing sulfamethoxazole.
From syntactic coordination to conceptual modification
Authors: Panther Klaus-Uwe , Thornburg Linda L.
Published: July 2011

The present article investigates a construction that displays a “mismatch” between form and content/function, instantiated by expressions like nice and comfy/clean/warm. This nice and Adj pattern has a “literal” transparent meaning, which corresponds to its coordinative syntax, but it is on its way to becoming a full-fledged construction with unpredictable formal and conceptual attributes, where nice (and) functions as a conceptual-pragmatic modifier. This pattern is thus an emergent construction. We argue that an adequate treatment of the nice and Adj construction requires the integration of inferential mechanisms, such as implicature and invited inference, into the descriptive apparatus of construction grammar.
Lexical patterning in a construction grammar
Authors: Speelman Dirk , Tummers José , Geeraerts Dirk
Published: July 2011

This paper compares two measures that quantify lexical preference patterns in the area of Construction Grammar, namely, collostructions and (construction-internal) collocations (as conceived by Stefan Th. Gries and Anatol Stefanowitsch). Starting from a case study, inflectional variation in Dutch attributive adjectives, two diagnostic calculations will be set up to analyse to what extent both association measures identify lexical preferences in this construction. In particular, the lexical patterns yielded by the collostructional and the collocational association measures will be evaluated as a factor which determines the selection of the inflectional alternatives of the Dutch attributive adjective. We will argue that, at least in some cases, constructions are more strongly characterised by the (construction-internal) collocations that instantiate them than by the single items that instantiate them (as defined in collostructions). Consequently, the syntagmatic axis should become a constitutive dimension in a comprehensive Construction Grammar model.
The conception of constructions as complex signs
Authors: Verhagen Arie
Published: July 2011

Generally, construction based approaches to grammar consider constructions to be pairings of form and meaning and thus as a kind of signs, not essentially distinct from words and other lexical items. Granting this commonality, Langacker (2005) criticizes other varieties of constructional approaches for using the notion ‘grammatical form’, and for not reducing the properties of grammar to the more fundamental and minimal notions of sound, meaning, and symbolic links between these two. While such a reduction is definitely worth pursuing, if only for reasons of general scientific interest, the abstract forms postulated in Cognitive Grammar (schematic sound patterns) are so general that they represent ‘any sound’, which threatens the very basis for the assumption that constructions are a kind of signs. I will argue that a usage-based view of sign-formation (Keller 1998), allows us to understand how the recognition of an element as belonging to a particular class of elementary signs can come to function as a signal for a specific linguistic environment (a construction), and produce a level of structure (categories of more elementary signs and relations between them) intermediate between sound and meaning that has its own (emergent) properties, which can still be reduced to more basic phenomena of processing and language use.
Towards a comprehensive Construction Grammar account of control
Authors: Lyngfelt Benjamin
Published: July 2011

Based on an extensive corpus study, this paper presents an overview of control patterns in Swedish infinitives and sketches a CxG account of the data. To capture the variety of control relations encountered, the approach combines elements of traditional CxG, Frame Semantics, and Sign-Based Construction Grammar. Three basic mechanisms are distinguished: control by selection, where the controlled element is coinstantiated with an argument of the selecting head; control by feature percolation, where the interpretation is determined by the syntactic and pragmatic context; and arbitrary “control”, which is treated as non-control, where the understood subject argument is specified for generic or arbitrary reference and, hence, needs no controller. More specific control patterns, including such issues as control shift and pragmatic control, are treated as specific variants of these three basic types.
Variably future-marked conditionals in Greek
Authors: Nikiforidou Kiki , Torres Cacoullos Rena
Published: July 2011

It has been proposed that future-marked conditionals have discourse-pragmatic functions other than future temporal reference (Comrie 1982, Fillmore 1990, Dancygier & Sweetser 2005). Through a corpus-based multivariate analysis we show that future-marked conditionals in Greek are associated with speech-act conditional uses and correlate systematically with formal contextual features of polarity and subject-person and form. We argue that some of these associations are entrenched enough to warrant constructional status and that the data support the emergence of specific conditional constructions, on a continuum between fixed formulas and schematic or more productive constructions, defined by particular tense-aspect combinations, preferred lexical fillers, and specialized functions, which are really of a discoursal nature. We suggest that construction grammar provides an appropriate framework for integrating discourse-pragmatic conventions, not merely semantics, into grammatical theory; we further propose some attributes and values that may be used for this purpose.
Insertion as a self-repair device and its interactional motivations in Chinese conversation
Authors: Luke K.K. , Zhang Wei
Published: July 2011

Conversational repair has been studied for its organizational features, relationship with syntax, and interactional functions. This paper focuses on one particular type of same-turn self-repair, namely, insertions. Examining in detail a collection of insertions culled from a corpus of naturally occurring conversational data in Mandarin Chinese, an investigation has been carried out on the forms and functions of insertions in their sequential contexts. In terms of form and organization, two kinds of insertion are identified: local and global. ‘Local’ insertions operate on trouble-sources located within NPs, VPs, and sentences, achieving in most cases the modification of a reference or a predication. ‘Global’ insertions tend to be used to supplement a narrative with background information designed to make the point of the narrative more readily understood or better appreciated by the recipient. An in-depth analysis of insertions in their situational and sequential contexts reveals a variety of interactional motivations, including facilitating the recognizability of references, doing alignment and identity work, contributing to the construction of accounts, and providing backgrounding information in the delivery of narratives.
Is the core-peripheral distinction for unaccusative verbs cross-linguistically consistent?
Authors: Laws Jacqueline , Yuan Boping
Published: July 2011

This paper presents the results of an empirical investigation into the characteristics of unaccusativity in Mandarin by building on the gradient approach to split intransitivity (Sorace, 2000) and previous analyses of Mandarin within that framework (Liu, 2007). The study explores the acceptability of unaccusative verbs in the verb-subject construction with respect to their core-peripheral features. The results clearly demonstrate support for the gradient approach; however, some important departures from the patterns observed in Western European languages are noted. The analysis of variability between and within semantic categories reveals that verbs in certain peripheral categories exhibit behaviour more characteristic of core unaccusative verbs; conversely, some members of the core category Change of Location display characteristics more typical of peripheral verbs. A refined definition of peripheral verbs (true and pseudo) is proposed which has relevance for the cross-linguistic study of split intransitivity, and the unaccusative gradient for Mandarin is reformulated on the basis of stativity.
Apology strategies between social unequals in The Dream of the Red Chamber
Authors: Lan Chun  , Yun Zhao
Published: July 2011

This is a study of apology strategies deployed by social unequals in The Dream of the Red Chamber. It is found that, among the eleven instances of apologies collected from the novel, four variables together determine one’s choices of apology strategies, i.e. the social distance between the apologizer and the apologizee, their power relationship, the seriousness of the offence which leads to the apology, and the degree of the right the apologizer is assumed to have in apologizing. The lower-status apologizers typically adopted the self-degeneration and other-elevation strategies and spoke up to the higher-status victims, while the higher-status apologizers typically gave priority to protecting their own faces and spoke down to the lower-status victims in combining different strategies. The apologies from the lower-status servant apologizers were rarely accepted while those from the higher-status apologizers were often accepted on the spot. On the whole, the higher-status participants enjoyed more freedom in choosing which apology strategy to adopt than the lower-status participants.
The role of repair in modulating modal stances in Chinese discourse
Authors: He Agnes Weiyun
Published: July 2011

This study explores the intersubjective and dynamic construction of modal meanings in Chinese discourse. Specifically, it examines the role conversational repair plays in ascertaining the entailments of modal meanings such as obligation, possibility and permissibility, specifying the range of modal strengths, and assigning an emergent and negotiated quality to these meanings. It argues that repair shapes and sharpens speakers’ modal stances, especially when the modal expression is polysemous. Illustrative data are drawn from 30 hours of audio/video recorded interaction in weekend Chinese language schools.
‘Perfective paradox’
Authors: Li David C.S.
Published: July 2011

The toneless aspect mark -guo is generally viewed as a perfective marker with experiential function. It appears to be subject to a number of semantic constraints, such as discontinuity, repeatability or recurrence, reversibility, and indefinite reference. This article demonstrates that ‘experiential’ is only one of the three main local functions of -guo. Crucial to the determination of the local function of a -guo clause is the boundedness of the verb constellation: ‘experiential’ (atelic situation, typically Activity verbs), ‘deresultative’ (telic situation, typically Accomplishment and Achievement verbs), and ‘ex-habitual’ (stative verbs). We will first elucidate these three local functions and clarify various semantic constraints of -guo before examining a small corpus of 300 -guo sentences to ascertain the distribution of its local functions in authentic texts. Then we will analyze how these functions are manifested in other languages. The evidence suggests that -guo is untypical as a perfective marker; rather, cross-linguistically the lexico-grammatical exponents of the experiential, deresultative, and ex-habitual functions suggest that -guo behaves more like a perfect marker, hence the ‘perfective paradox’. This paper is intended to be a contribution to general and contrastive aspectology.
Recent developments in the use of the plural marker men in Modern Standard Chinese in Taiwan
Authors: Cook Angela
Published: July 2011

Like any other living language, Mandarin Chinese is continually evolving and being modified in response to both internal and external pressures. These changes have been studied by numerous scholars, who have concentrated mainly on the written language. This paper chooses to explore whether the changes observed, as in the use of the plural marker men, can also be traced in spoken Chinese. For the purposes of studying language change in progress, archived recordings of television broadcasts were used as a source of spoken language samples. This study focuses on the variety of Modern Standard Chinese spoken in Taiwan, as exemplified in a popular Taiwanese variety show over the period 1996 to 2002. The analysis of the data reveals a number of changes in the use of the plural marker men, with some intriguing gender differences and pragmatic nuances.
Tess’s silent cry
Authors: Ramel Annie
Published: July 2011

How far can the lacanian concept of the vocal object help us read a novel by Thomas Hardy and bring to light its modernity? In Tess of the d’Urbervilles, the motif of the stain (or spot) has a vocal quality: the vermilion words painted on the wall “shout themselves out”, something is shown in the field of the gaze in lieu of the voice. Thus Tess’s voice is hardly ever heard, her lament is never vocalized, it seems to be stuck in her throat. By making reference to Slavoj Zizek’s analysis of Munch’s painting, The Scream, I intend to show how the concepts of ‘voice qua object’ and ‘gaze qua object’ throw a light on the enigmatic question of voice in Tess of the d’Urbervilles, and thus appear relevant to literary studies. In normal life, the consistency of our experience of reality depends on the exclusion of the objet petit a from it. What happens in Tess’s tragic world is that the ‘object small a’ has somehow got stuck in her reality, it has not been fully repressed and excluded. Tess occupies a borderline position in which the horror of the object is very nearly encountered. Tess will have to be hanged so that her voice may no longer be a threat, for the question involved is that of feminine jouissance, the dangerous enjoyment ‘beyond the phallus’ which has to be suppressed if phallic order is to prevail.
Voices from nowhere
Authors: Tollance Pascale
Published: July 2011

Graham Swift’s oeuvre reflects a fascination with voice which appears most clearly in two of his novels, Waterland and Last Orders, but in seemingly diametrically opposed ways. Whilst Waterland foregrounds the act of narration through a voluble and chatty narrator, Last Orders is deprived of any central narrating agency and consists of a collage of different voices. In spite of this, in both novels, voice is a factor of instability as it no longer speaks with authority but proceeds erratically and repetitively, constantly echoing other voices. Voice unsettles the narrative by imposing multiplicity and fragmentation against the fantasy of a stable origin and a single meaning. But more importantly, our perception of the novel is transformed once we start ‘hearing voices’ instead of (or as well as) characters: by its ability to detach words from any clear origin, place or time, Swift turns those who speak into ghosts whose ‘presence’ is a mere illusion. Beyond similarities, the two novels also help us reflect on a diverging use of voice: in Waterland the narrator’s multiple voices reflect a sense of loss and alienation coupled with the impression that there is no getting away from oneself; by contrast, in Last Orders, the echoes which form themselves through the various voices have a liberating effect, allowing the characters to exist in a realm where they can be more than themselves.
Activity-oriented and characteristic-oriented constructions
Authors: Van linden An
Published: July 2011

This paper is a diachronic study of post-adjectival infinitive constructions with adjectives denoting goodness, fitness, or necessity. Traditionally these constructions are analysed as tough-constructions. They can be divided into two semantically and syntactically distinct types, viz. activity-oriented and characteristic-oriented constructions. This distinction can be used to explain the variation in clausal voice type that is found with the post-adjectival constructions from the Late Middle English period onwards. In addition, a distinction needs to be made between adjectives expressing necessity, which only occur in activity-oriented constructions, and those expressing goodness or fitness, which may occur in the two construction types. Voice variation is only meaningful for the latter type of adjectives: in characteristic-oriented constructions they tend to be construed with an active infinitive, whereas in activity-oriented constructions they appear with a passive infinitive. As such, the distinction between these construction types helps to explain formal properties of the post-adjectival infinitive construction.
Spatio-geographical abstraction in Samuel Beckett’s Not I/Pas moi
Authors: Verhulst Pim
Published: July 2011

Samuel Beckett’s drafts often depart from a concrete depiction, which is then gradually compacted. A peculiar example is the textual development of Beckett’s play Not I/Pas moi. The recognisable Irish setting of the early ‘Kilcool’ manuscripts is cut back as the writing process evolves. The French translation removes all Irish references, yielding a spatially self-enclosed text. Besides a linguistic motivation, another important reason for the omission seems to reside in the more impersonal and archetypal approach Beckett adopted towards his protagonist (Mouth/Bouche). The purpose of this paper is to show that Pas moi offers a continuation of the writing process rather than a repetition of the written product and that the spatio-geographical aspect of the text is used to implement changes in Beckett’s artistic conception.
Meaning differences in the use of the null vs. the definite articles
Authors: Frazier Stefan , Llosa Lorena
Published: July 2011

In this paper we present the results of a comparison analysis (quantitative and qualitative) of the rates of occurrence of the null article Ø2 against the definite article the referring specifically to the five names of the seasons. Instances of Ø2 in authentic contexts have previously only been minimally described; Chesterman (1991) places Ø2 at a higher level of definiteness than the while Master (1997) describes the choice between Ø2 and the as different degrees of familiarity. A revision of the latter, this paper’s findings — derived from corpus-linguistic analysis using MICASE (spoken) and the Brown corpus (written) — demonstrate that, very generally, when preceding the name of a season, Ø2 indicates a specific point in time or the start of a season while the indicates a period of time. The findings also reaffirm the strength of postmodification in determining the need for the definite article. One implication for English language teaching is discussed.
Ideology in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus (2003)
Authors: Tunca Daria
Published: July 2011

This article focuses on the first novel by Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Purple Hibiscus (2003). It examines how religious prejudice is encoded in the account of the book’s autodiegetic narrator, a fifteen-year-old girl whose father is a violent, extremist Igbo Catholic. Based on a close reading of the text, the essay argues that an analysis of the novel’s use of speech and thought presentation may contribute to the assessment of the main character’s evolving ideological stance. It is suggested that the resulting appraisal of the narrator’s development provides key insights into the interpretation of the book.
“I” and the “Other”
Authors: Van Ewijk Petrus
Published: July 2011

In David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest, the presence of Alcoholics Anonymous can be considered as an attempt to come up with a solution for both the addiction and the solipsism of the characters. AA tries to accomplish this by reconnecting the addict with the “Other”. The assimilation of the “Other” by the totalizing tendency of the self is dropped in favor of an earnest connection. This article focuses on the similarities between AA’s methods, Ludwig Wittgenstein’s philosophy of the language-game, Emmanuel Levinas’ ethics of the “Other” and Martin Buber’s I and Thou. It illustrates how, in light of this knowledge, a reader might be able to uncover moments of earnestness in Infinite Jest, as well as pick up on the rules necessary to counter contemporary American solitude.
On the Nabokovian Resonance of “The Proustian Theme in a Letter from Keats to Benjamin Bailey”
Authors: Slote Sam
Published: July 2011

In this paper I examine the ramifications of doubling and repetition in Nabokov’s Lolita, with reference to Proustian notions of recollection, which are adumbrated in the novel at various occasions, such as Humbert’s claim to have written an academic paper titled “The Proustian theme in a letter from Keats to Benjamin Bailey.” I begin by tracing out the contours of what such an article might have been like and then I apply these points to a reading of Lolita.
The grammaticalization of you know
Authors: Vincent Sophie , Darbaky Sarah , Mettouchi Amina
Published: July 2011

Most accounts of you know as a discourse marker underline shared knowledge as its core value. This study focuses on less standard values of you know where it functions as an introducer of new viewpoints or pieces of information, as a marker of the speakers’ will to impose their viewpoint, or as an emphasizing marker.  We show that the loss of the spatio-temporal anchoring of the sequence and the evolution of its prosodic features are characteristics of those particular uses of you know. This leads us to propose a grammaticalization cline with clearcut stages, where the more argumentative uses of you know correspond to the rightmost stage of the cline  (Traugott and Dasher 2002).
Critical and corpus approaches to English academic text revision
Authors: McKenny John , Bennett Karen
Published: July 2011

Portuguese academic discourse of the humanities is notoriously difficult to render into English, given the prevalence of rhetorical and discourse features that are largely alien to English academic style. The aim of this study was to test the hypothesis that some of those features might find their way into the English texts produced by Portuguese scholars through a process of pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic transfer. If so, this would have important practical and ideological implications, not only for the academics concerned, but also for editors, revisers, teachers of EAP, translators, writers of academic style manuals and all the other gatekeepers of the globalized culture.  The study involved a corpus of some 113,000 running words of English academic prose written by established Portuguese academics in the Humanities, which had been presented to a native speaker of English (professional translator and specialist in academic discourse) for revision prior to submission for publication. After correction of superficial grammatical and spelling errors, the texts were made into a corpus, which was tagged for Part of Speech (CLAWS7) and discourse markers (USAS) using WMatrix2 (Rayson 2003). The annotated corpus was then interrogated for the presence of certain discourse features using Wmatrix2 and Wordsmith 5 (Scott 1999), and the findings compared with those of a control corpus, Controlit, of published articles written by L1 academics in the same or comparable journals.  The results reveal significant overuse of certain features by Portuguese academics, and a corresponding underuse of others, suggesting marked differences in the value attributed to those features by the two cultures.
“My people seem to be falling to bits”
Authors: Xhonneux Lies
Published: July 2011

Samuel Beckett is often counted among Rebecca Brown’s literary forebears, yet critics have done little to explain exactly how this inspiration works. The present article attempts to fill part of this gap through a focus on two elements that are prominent in the writings of Brown and Beckett: representations of the mind and the body. Both authors use decaying bodies to represent a loss of identity, but Brown adds creatively to Beckett’s literary heritage by putting non-heteronormative sexuality center stage. Lesbianism causes the identity crises of Brown’s protagonists, while it also shifts the existential ignorance of Beckettian heroes to more of a social ignorance for Brown. Obviously, not all minds and bodies are confused and broken for the same reasons.
Illusions of simplicity
Authors: Borkent Mike
Published: July 2011

Visual poems employ the materiality of language (such as letter- and word-forms and page layouts), to help develop their meanings, thereby synthesizing visual and verbal cues. To discuss this multimodal genre, I posit a framework based on cognitive research of fictive motion, frames, simulation, and blending. I apply this framework to two works by Canadian poet bpNichol to illustrate some of the central cognitive processes and connections required to synthesize and understand them, something previous theoretical positions have struggled with. My analysis illustrates that these apparently simplistic poems are far more complex than we realize. The posited framework can easily extend beyond visual poetry to other multimodal genres, such as comics and advertising, and can also contribute to discussions of genre, style, and other issues of form in literature.
Two puzzle pieces
Authors: Moder Carol Lynn
Published: July 2011

This study examines metaphorical expressions in American radio news magazines appearing in two linguistic forms: NP is a NP and It’s like NP. It integrates Blending Theory (Fauconnier & Turner 2002) with a usage-based approach to grammatical constructions (Goldberg 1995, 2006;Tomasello 2003, and Croft 2001) and analyzes the forms within their dynamic discourse context in terms of noun phrase accessibility (Chafe 1980, 1994; Givón 1983; Ariel 1988) and grounding (Langacker 1999, Oakley & Coulson 2008). The findings indicate that the functions of the grammatical constructions used in the metaphorical expressions were directly related to the non-metaphorical uses of the constructions and that the analysis of the ongoing discourse was essential to understanding the form-meaning pairings inherent in the expressions.
The language of fictional television
Authors: Bednarek Monika
Published: July 2011

This article describes differences in the frequency of words/n-grams in television dialogue as compared with a variety of other corpora. It explores frequent lexico-grammatical patterns in the television series Gilmore Girls, in other fictional programmes, and in unscripted spoken and written English. Using ranked frequency lists, the ‘dramedy’ Gilmore Girls is compared both to unscripted language and to a corpus containing dialogue from ten other television series. The results allow us to describe both the specifics of the dialogue of this particular dramedy and the general characteristics of scripted television dialogue as compared to unscripted spoken and written language. The findings also confirm previous assumptions made on the basis of different data that television dialogue is more emotional, but less narrative and vague than naturally occurring conversation.
On predicting contact-induced grammatical change
Authors: Nomachi Motoki , Heine Bernd
Published: July 2011

For good reasons, linguists are highly skeptical when it comes to predicting linguistic change. As has been argued in Heine (2003: 598–599), based on observations on some regularities of grammatical change made within the framework of grammaticalization theory, however, it seems possible to propose at least some probabilistic predictions on what is a possible grammatical change and what is not. In the present article it is argued that this also applies to grammatical change that takes place in situations of language contact. As more recent research has demonstrated (Heine & Kuteva 2003, 2005, 2006, 2008, 2010, Heine forthcoming), contact-induced grammatical change is essentially subject to the same principles of grammaticalization as grammatical change not induced by contact. The data analyzed in this article concern case marking in Slavic languages, more specifically expressions for comitative and instrumental participants.
Subject/object asymmetries in the grammar of bilingual and monolingual Spanish speakers
Authors: de Garavito Joyce Bruhn
Published: July 2011

This paper argues against connectionist models of language acquisition. It examines knowledge of the properties of subjects and objects in Spanish, particularly in impersonal passives and inchoatives. In both of these structures, the reflexive clitic se is obligatorily present and the linear order of elements is the same, namely [se V NP], with agreement between the verb and the noun phrase. In other words, the input is identical in both cases (se quemaron los libros ‘the books burned/were burned’ is ambiguous between both structures). However, the NP in the impersonal passive exhibits some of the properties of objects while the NP in the inchoatives behaves exclusively like a subject. An empirical study shows that three groups of speakers of Spanish, a monolingual Spanish group, an early English/Spanish bilingual group and a group of late learners of Spanish, are aware of these differences. As the input is ambiguous, it is argued that a model such as that provided by connectionist theories, which argues that the input is sufficient for acquisition, cannot account for the data.
Why is dialogical solving of a logical problem more effective than individual solving?
Authors: Trognon Alain , Batt Martine , Laux Jennifer
Published: July 2011

We study the accomplishment of the abstract version of Wason’s selection task in a cooperative dialogue context that has been neglected in the research devoted to this task. 123 psychology students, 75 in their third year and 48 in their first year of studies participated in the experiment. 59 students performed the task individually (control group) and 32 in dyads (experimental group) while we recorded their dialogues. In accordance with the literature, the dyads outperform significantly the students working alone. To discover the strategies implemented in the four dyads which succeeded, we analyzed their respective dialogues with a theory (‘Interlocutory Logic’) of the logical form of conversational events as they are manifested phenomenally in natural language. We show that these strategies are situated and emergent products of the dialogue, since no member of the dyads knew them before the interaction. So, it is surely by supporting the emergence of such joint cognition that the interaction is a factor of cognitive progress. We conclude this research by some remarks on the Wason’s task and moreover on the methodological solipsism in the psychology of reasoning.
Sonority, gender and the impact of suffix predictability on the acquisition of German noun plurals
Authors: Laaha Sabine
Published: July 2011

The acquisition of German noun plurals has been the topic of many studies and of much controversy. This study presents a new method of assessing distributional properties of plural suffix application in German in which the predictability of a given suffix (-s, -(e)n, -e, -er or zero) is calculated according to sonority/gender distributions in actual language use, in our case, in child-directed speech. The relevance of suffix predictability is tested in 140 Viennese children from the age of three to nine years by means of a plural elicitation task. Results show that suffix predictability has an impact on children’s correct and erroneous production of plural suffixes. The results are compatible with a usage-based variant of the single-route view which emphasizes speakers’ preference for local generalizations and the role of neighbourhood density in generalization.
Developmental perspectives on the expression of motion in speech and gesture
Authors: Hickmann Maya , Hendriks Henriette , Gullberg Marianne
Published: July 2011

Recent research shows that adult speakers of verb- vs. satellite-framed languages (Talmy, 2000) express motion events in language-specific ways in speech (Slobin 1996, 2004) and co-verbal gestures (Duncan 2005; Kita & Özyurek 2003; McNeill 1992). Although such findings suggest cross-linguistic differences in the expression of events, little is still known about their implications for first language acquisition. This paper examines how French and English adults and children (ages four and six) express Path and Manner in speech and gesture when describing voluntary motion presented in animated cartoons. The results show that English adults conflate Manner+Path in speech more often than French adults who frequently talk about Path only. Both groups gesture mainly about Path only, but English adults also conflate Manner+Path into single gestures, whereas French adults never do so. Children in both languages are predominantly adult-like in speech and gesture from age four on, but also display developmental progressions with increasing age. Finally, speech and gestures are predominantly co-expressive in both language groups and at all ages. When modalities differ, English adults typically provide less information in gesture (Path) than in speech (Manner+Path; ‘Manner modulation’ phenomenon), whereas French adults express complementary information in speech (Manner) and gesture (Path). The discussion highlights theoretical implications of such bi-modal analyses for acquisition and gesture studies
Language-specificity of motion event expressions in young Korean children
Authors: Choi Soonja
Published: July 2011

This paper examines the development of motion expressions in two Korean children. The database consists of bi-weekly to monthly recordings of spontaneous mother–child interaction in their home between ages 1:11 and 4;2. All expressions of motion, both spontaneous and caused, were analyzed following the coding system developed by Hickmann, Hendriks & Champaud 2009). Analyses include form–function relationships between the types of linguistic devices used and the components of Motion expressed (e.g. Path, Manner, Cause), as well as the semantic density of motion-relevant information within the clause. The results were then compared to those of French and English learners reported in Hickmann et al. (2009).

verb-framed
Stability and variability in linguistic pragmatics
Authors: Gibbs Raymond W.
Published: July 2011

The study of linguistic pragmatics is always caught in the wonderful tension between seeking broad human pragmatic abilities and showing the subtle ways that communication is dependent on specific people and social situations. These different foci on areas of stability and variability in linguistic and nonlinguistic behavior are often accompanied by very different theoretical accounts of how and why people act, speak, and understand in the ways they do. Within contemporary research in experimental pragmatics, there are always instances of some people behaving in regular patterns and other people failing to adhere to putative pragmatic principles. My aim in this article is to broadly describe a way of thinking about stability and instability in linguistic pragmatics as emerging from people’s self-organizing tendencies. This view claims that both broad regularities and specific variations in human behavior, like all natural systems, can be accounted for by self-organizational processes that operate without explicit internal rules, blueprints, or mental representations. A major implication of this perspective is that pragmatics and society are seen as dynamically interacting constraints operating on multiple time-scales of experience.
The activity type as interface between langue and parole, and between individual and society
Authors: Gu Yueguo
Published: July 2011

This paper first re-examines Levinson’s notion of activity type, followed by a review of ethnographic, sociopsychological and ecological studies of the same phenomenon under varied names. The activity type is generally treated as a context in pragmatics. This paper departs from this thinking by proposing that it be treated as the primary object and unit of investigation per se. The role the activity type plays should be that of an interface bridging the langue-parole dichotomy, and the individual-society dichotomy. It is further proposed that the activity type be studied as embodied activities at the token level. It is thus re-conceptualized in term of land-borne situated discourse (LBSD).
The pragmatics of learning by doing
Authors: Schank Roger C.
Published: July 2011

Based on his experience as an educator, the author criticizes current methods and philosophies of learning and teaching. Learning should be geared towards practice (‘learning by doing’); teaching should be about exciting students and helping them perform meaningful tasks, rather than having them passively absorb knowledge that they cannot see the use of. Feedback from former students allows the author to posit a few simple rules for teaching and learning, and identify some of the major (though universally accepted) misconceptions about the role of the teacher and the nature of the learning process. A pragmatics of learning starts from naturally occurring learning situations and emphasizes teaching that is based on the learner’s own experiences, where mistakes are seen as a major source of insight into what is needed in order to achieve success in education and to remake the broken educational system that we are trying to cope with in today’s schools.
Anime and intertextualities
Authors: Hiramoto Mie
Published: July 2011

Cowboy Bebop, a popular anime series set in the year 2071 onboard the spaceship Bebop, chronicles the bohemian adventures of a group of bounty hunters. This paper presents how the imaginary characters and their voices are conventionalized to fit hegemonic norms. The social semiotic of desire depicted in Cowboy Bebop caters to a general heterosexual market in which hero and babe characters represent the anime archetypes of heterosexual normativity. Scripted speech used in the anime functions as a role language which indexes common ideological attributes associated with a character’s demeanor. This study focuses on how ideas, including heterosexual normativity and culture-specific practices, are reproduced in media texts in order to negotiate the intertextual distances that link the characters and audience.
Intertextuality, mediation, and members’ categories in focus groups on humor
Authors: Furukawa Toshiaki
Published: July 2011

This paper extends studies on intertextuality into a more explicitly interactional context. I examine the actual process of intertextuality where comedy audiences construct recombinant selves through making sense of various membership categories as well as through making sense of a certain kind of comedy. The examination of this process requires receptive research; however, most studies leave the interpretive process unanalyzed. Conducting both a sequential analysis and a membership categorization analysis will reveal that categories are not “pre-formed” but “per-formed” in situ. To illustrate these points, I report on a receptive study of Local comedy in Hawai‘i.
Performing the ‘lifeworld’ in public education campaigns
Authors: Lazar Michelle M.
Published: July 2011

In Singapore, top down public education campaigns have long been a mode of governance by which the conduct of citizens is constantly regulated. This article examines how in two fairly recent campaigns, a new approach to campaign communication is used that involves media interdiscursivity, viz., the mixing of discourses and genres in which the media constitute a significant element. The present approach involves the appropriation of a popular local television character, ‘Phua Chu Kang’, in order to address the public through educational rap music videos.
Media interdiscursivity is based on an attempt to engage the public via a discourse of the ‘lifeworld’. The present article analyzes the ‘lifeworld’ discourse in terms of a combination of two processes, ‘informalization’ (the use of informal and conversational modes of address) and ‘communitization’ (the semiotic construction of a community of people). The dual processes are examined and discussed in relation to the choice of Phua Chu Kang as an ‘ordinary’ and almost ‘real’ person, including his informal register and speech style; his use of Singlish; and his construction of ‘community.’ The presence of Singlish, in particular, is interesting because (despite the official disdain for the language) it is included as part of PCK’s public performance of the lifeworld. The article concludes by considering this form of media interdiscursivity as the government’s shrewd way of achieving its social governance goals.
Interaction in pathological contexts
Authors: Guaïtella Isabelle
Published: July 2011

In this paper we investigate the behavior patterns (both vocal and gestural) of Alzheimer patients and multihandicapped persons communicating with peers and therapists in an interaction situation. Communicative items were analyzed automatically and sorted into patterns. The results showed that despite their reported ‘linguistic’ disabilities, the patients not only played their role in the interaction, but were also able to lead the conversation and take initiatives. In spite of their vulnerability, both types of patients, particularly those with Alzheimer’s disease, exhibited the ability to integrate new information and to get involved in the dialogue.
The contemporary theory of metaphor — now new and improved!
Authors: Steen Gerard J.
Published: July 2011

This paper outlines a multi-dimensional/multi-disciplinary framework for the study of metaphor. It expands on the cognitive linguistic approach to metaphor in language and thought by adding the dimension of communication, and it expands on the predominantly linguistic and psychological approaches by adding the discipline of social science. This creates a map of the field in which nine main areas of research can be distinguished and connected to each other in precise ways. It allows for renewed attention to the deliberate use of metaphor in communication, in contrast with non-deliberate use, and asks the question whether the interaction between deliberate and non-deliberate use of metaphor in specific social domains can contribute to an explanation of the discourse career of metaphor. The suggestion is made that metaphorical models in language, thought, and communication can be classified as official, contested, implicit, and emerging, which may offer new perspectives on the interaction between social, psychological, and linguistic properties and functions of metaphor in discourse.
Awareness in metaphor understanding
Authors: Stöver Hanna
Published: July 2011

This paper argues that a cognitive account of metaphor comprehension needs to include awareness of metaphoricity in order to fully explain the processes involved. In Relevance Theory as well as in other cognitively oriented approaches, much can be gained by making explicit the difference between conscious and subconscious processing: whether a communicator is aware of an expression’s metaphoricity or not may have an impact on the type of cognitive processing involved. A theoretical investigation is offered which explores the potential role of reflective reasoning in metaphor understanding. The discussion is based on the relevance-theoretic account, which explains the subconscious inferential processes involved. However, it leaves open the question of the potential impact of conscious availability of the tension between literal and figurative meaning, which is reminiscent of domain mappings in Cognitive Linguistics. Within metaphor research, a focus on awareness offers valuable findings for cognitively oriented schools of thought.
Motion metaphors in discourse construction
Authors: Garrido Joaquín
Published: July 2011

Motion metaphors occur at different levels, from prepositional phrases to discourse, including theoretical metaphors. After reviewing Relevance Theory as a bottom-up approach, and Cognitive Linguistics and Segmented Discourse Representation Theory as top-down ones, an integrated approach to metaphor in discourse construction is developed, based on a cognitive operation of connection of lower units into higher ones, similar to subsumption in the Lexical Constructional Model and to chunking in the Usage-Based Approach.

In discourse construction, as the analysis of press and poetry examples show, either a motion metaphor may contribute to the discourse structure, or it may result from it. Discourses are packed into text structures; live discourse metaphors develop into text-type metaphors on their way to conventionalization. Metaphor and discourse construction are bottom-up processes, since they result from connection of lower units, but they are also top-down, based on properties of higher units, domains in metaphor and relations in discourse.