bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The social context of scientific knowledge production and the problem of demarcation
Authors: Volonté Paolo
Published: September 2007

In this paper, I wish to face the old problem of demarcation from a new point of view. I aim at pointing out that there are distinction criteria between scientific and non-scientific knowledge. I intend to investigate whether it is possible to define demarcation criteria by studying the social dimension of science. There are social necessities, which force the scientific production of knowledge to distinguish itself from non-scientific production. Science is not what scientists freely decide it should be, but what they are compelled to acknowledge it is. The paper discusses the nature of this constraint, which has a social origin but is also capable to be reflected on the cognitive contents of science. Through a discussion of the theories of Bruno Latour and Pierre Bourdieu, attention is drawn on the cycle of credibility as the crucial social mechanism determining scientific knowledge.
Geometrical concepts at the interface of formal and cognitive models
Authors: Chilton Paul
Published: September 2007

The paper has two related aims. One is to outline a proposal for a spatially motivated model of discourse, called Discourse Space Theory. The other is to use this framework to explore, in a relatively formalised way, the spatial basis of the conceptual complexities arising in the uses of the English progressive verb form (be+-ing). The theory utilises an abstract space in three dimensions (time, space and modality). Verb stems are associated with Aktionsart schemas; aspectual forms like the progressive are viewed as operations on these schemas. The proposal is that geometric concepts, specifically coordinate systems and vectors, can provide a motivated formalism for investigating conceptual structures generated by a human discourse processor.
Procedural pragmatics and the study of discourse
Authors: de Saussure Louis
Published: September 2007

The term discourse is generally used either as a technical equivalent for ‘verbal communication’ or as referring to a particular scientific notion, where discourses are spans of texts or of utterances obeying specific principles of organisation. The aim of this paper is to suggest that an account of discourse is possible, in both cases, only through a theory of utterance-meaning construction. If discourse stands for verbal communication, then it can be explained only with regard to speaker’s intended meaning. If discourse stands for organised spans of texts or utterances, then they must be meaningful spans of texts or meaningful utterances. Yet it is argued that a pragmatic explanation of meaning provides all the elements that discourse analysis describes. In the end, the paper claims that a theory of context combined with a theory on the semantic-pragmatic interface should prove sufficient to explain discourse, in whichever sense, along the idea that discourse should be viewed as a process, not as a whole, following the claims of a number of scholars in the field. A possibility to tackle this process is proposed in terms of procedures through the approach of procedural pragmatics.
Pragmatics and Critical Discourse Analysis
Authors: Wodak Ruth
Published: September 2007

This paper discusses important and fruitful links between (Critical) Discourse Analysis and Pragmatics. In a detailed analysis of three utterances of an election speech by the Austrian rightwing politician Jörg Haider, it is illustrated in which ways a discourse-analytical and pragmatic approach grasps the intricacy of anti-Semitic meanings, directed towards the President of the Viennese Jewish Community. The necessity of in-depth context-analysis in multiple layers (from the socio-political context up to the co-text of each utterance) moreover emphasizes the importance of interdisciplinary approaches when investigating such complex issues as racism and anti-Semitism as produced and reproduced in discourse. More specifically, the relevance of pragmatic devices such as insinuations, presuppositions and implicatures, is discussed when analyzing instances of ‘coded language’, i.e., utterances with indirect and latent racist and anti-Semitic meanings as common in official discourses in Western Europe.
Does the Gricean distinction between natural and non-natural meaning exhaustively account for all instances of communication?
Authors: Reboul Anne
Published: September 2007

The Gricean distinction between natural meaning and non-natural meaning has generally been taken to apply to communication in general. However, there is some doubts that the distinction exhaustively accounts for all instances of communication. Notably, some animal communication seems to be voluntary, though not implying double-barrelled intentions, i.e., falling neither under natural nor under non-natural meaning. Another worry is how the audience can distinguish between that kind of 1st order voluntary communication and non-natural meaning. The paper shows that the Gricean distinction is not exhaustive and that the second intention characteristic of non-natural meaning is presupposed on the basis of the cost of interpretation in linguistic communication given its semantic underdetermination.
A theory of presumption for everyday argumentation
Authors: Godden David M. , Walton Douglas N.
Published: September 2007

The paper considers contemporary models of presumption in terms of their ability to contribute to a working theory of presumption for argumentation. Beginning with the Whatelian model, we consider its contemporary developments and alternatives, as proposed by Sidgwick, Kauffeld, Cronkhite, Rescher, Walton, Freeman, Ullmann-Margalit, and Hansen. Based on these accounts, we present a picture of presumptions characterized by their nature, function, foundation and force. On our account, presumption is a modal status that is attached to a claim and has the effect of shifting, in a dialogue, a burden of proof set at a local level. Presumptions can be analysed and evaluated inferentially as components of rule-based structures. Presumptions are defeasible, and the force of a presumption is a function of its normative foundation. This picture seeks to provide a framework to guide the development of specific theories of presumption.
La influencia de la lengua por los medios de comunicación y la difusión de regionalismos en castellano
Authors: Sinner Carsten
Published: September 2007

Generally, there are no doubts felt that the media influence the language and contribute to the expansion of individual linguistic creations, of group-specific linguistic devices or regionalisms. Yet, proof is lacking that the apparently ‘obvious’ influence of the media does really exist or that it is as strong as commonly maintained, and it is widely admitted that it is almost impossible to gather statistically significant proof of any influence of the media on the language. This contribution gives evidence from Spanish, showing that the regional Spanish words chafardear and chafardero, from the Catalan xafardejar, entered the Spanish language via a popular comic strip published in Spain since the 1940s, and that its knowledge and expansion can definitely be related to the success of the comic strip created by a Catalan artist. The study is based upon a total of 60 interviews done both in the bilingual Catalan-Spanish regions and in non-Catalan regions.
Una frontera sociolingüística en el Uruguay del siglo \sc xix\endsc
Authors: Asencio Pilar
Published: September 2007

El trazado de fronteras entre Uruguay y España se analiza a partir de la lengua como uno de los lugares desde los que se construye la nación. Las principales representaciones de la lengua en ese período, clave para la conformación del estándar nacional, permiten postular que la norma lingüística se define en torno a ciertas dicotomías, que se infieren en los discursos de algunos intelectuales uruguayos reconocidos de ese período y que operan como principios de división, trazando fronteras entre lo legítimo y lo ilegítimo en el terreno de la lengua.

La dicotomía civilización/barbarie parece actuar, en los mencionados discursos, como fundamento de una decidida opción por la norma española, dividiendo a la sociedad en descendientes de españoles, por un lado y gauchos e inmigrantes por el otro. Esto es refrendado, a fines del período, por la oficialización de representaciones de nuestros orígenes como “etnológicamente uniformes”.
La traducción del humor audiovisual de los Hermanos Marx en Sopa de ganso
Authors: Bartolomé Ana Isabel Hernández , Cabrera Gustavo Mendiluce
Published: September 2007

Nuestro artículo gira en torno a un tema tan controvertido e inexplorado como es la traducción del humor. Más concretamente, nos centraremos en los problemas que causan al traductor los juegos de palabras en el texto cinematográfico. Dada su enorme dependencia del contexto, nos limitaremos a analizar un fragmento de genuino humor verbal en un medio audiovisual, como es la escena del juicio en la película Duck Soup de los Hermanos Marx.

Tras presentar brevemente los fundamentos que constituyen el marco teórico de nuestro análisis, expondremos la metodología adoptada, que se estructura en dos fases: (1) identificación y caracterización lingüística del juego de palabras original, y (2) propuesta razonada de posibles alternativas del trasvase humorístico para una versión española doblada. Finalmente, extrapolaremos una serie de sugerencias que puedan servir de orientación para traductores audiovisuales en contextos semejantes.
Overt nonspecific Ellos in Spanish in New York
Authors: Lapidus Shin Naomi , Otheguy Ricardo
Published: September 2007

In general Spanish, references to nonspecific third-person plurals are usually made by means of a verb occurring with the null form of the subject pronoun, as in llamaron del banco, rather than by means of a verb occurring with the overt form of the subject pronoun. In contrast to the position in this discussion, the literature presents null pronouns in these nonspecific 3pl contexts as resulting from a categorical syntactic rule, when in fact we consider that they are the result of a strong pragmatic constraint: overt ellos for nonspecific references are rare, not ungrammatical. That is, one occasionally does find in the Spanish of Latin America nonspecific 3pl NPs with overt subject pronouns, as in the disfavored but grammatical ellos llamaron del banco. This study, based on a large corpus of sociolinguistic interviews from the CUNY Project on the Spanish of New York, reveals that, among bilinguals in New York City whose exposure to English is intensive, such nonspecific ellos are even more frequent.

Three degrees of nonspecificity are recognized in the literature on 3pl nonspecific NPs. Among both contact and non-contact speakers, the use of overt nonspecific ellos increases as nonspecificity decreases, though the absolute numbers are much larger in New York. In this way, the contact dialect is a quantitatively enhanced copy of the qualitatively identical pre-contact variety. Since, as the evidence presented here shows, examples of overt nonspecific ellos are found in Spanish in Latin America, their appearance in Spanish in New York does not represent a radical change in the syntax of contact Spanish; instead, these usages are an example of the familiar situation where contact varieties expand usages that were already incipient in the pre-contact community. Thus, the study would appear to indicate that the use of overt nonspecific ellos in New York represents a quantitative change in the strength of a pragmatic constraint that guides the use of subject pronouns, not a qualitative change in a syntactic rule that governs their use.
Pilar y Sonia
Authors: Poveda David
Published: September 2007

En este artículo se utiliza una adaptación del análisis de posicionamientos para examinar la historia educativa de Pilar y su hija Sonia. Pilar es una mujer de 50 años que tuvo que dejar la escuela a una edad temprana y Sonia, de 24 años, es la segunda de tres hermanas que han completado estudios superiores. El análisis se desarrolla en tres niveles: la estructura interna del relato, el contexto interactivo de la conversación original y el orden ideológico de la narración, para examinar como las participantes cuestionan los sistemas de género y socio-económicos que han configurado sus experiencias educativas. La discusión se centra en el modo en que puede concebirse la agencia social y la conciencia de género en etapas tardías del desarrollo humano.
Copula choice in the Spanish of Galicia
Authors: Guijarro-Fuentes Pedro , Geeslin Kimberly L.
Published: September 2007

Although ser and estar have been studied extensively (Luján 1981; Clements 1988; Leonetti 1994; Fernández Leborans 1999; Geeslin 2005), less is known about how the use of these copulas varies from one Spanish-speaking region to another. To date, sociolinguistic research has been conducted on Spanish in the United States (Kirschner and Stephens 1988; Silva-Corvalán 1994), in Mexico (Gutiérrez 1992), and in Venezuela (de Jonge 1993), showing that some features (i.e. adjective class, frame of reference and susceptibility to change) can affect copula choice in Spanish. The current study extends this body of research to the Spanish spoken in Galicia, where both Spanish and Galician co-exist. Our statistical analysis of a group of 56 intergenerational participants examines both social and linguistic variables as indicators of trends in language variation in relation to copula choice. Our findings support previous studies and contribute new knowledge of copula use in Galicia and of language change in a contact situation.
Funciones pragmáticas de Eso es y Efectivamente en español peninsular
Authors: García Vizcaíno María José
Published: September 2007

El objetivo del presente trabajo consiste en analizar las funciones pragmáticas de los marcadores Eso es y Efectivamente en español peninsular distinguiendo las funciones relacionadas con los fenómenos de cortesía verbal de otras funciones conectadas con otros ámbitos de la interacción social. El marco teórico que se utiliza es el modelo de manejo de las relaciones sociales de Spencer-Oatey (2000) que aúna tanto los aspectos personales relacionados con el concepto de imagen como las perspectivas sociales de los participantes. El corpus de datos utilizado es el Corpus Oral de Referencia del Español Contemporáneo que recoge una amplia variedad de tipologías textuales orales. Los resultados obtenidos indican que estos marcadores funcionan en tres dominios distintos de la interacción social: el ilocutivo, relacionado con los fenómenos de cortesía verbal, el de estructura del discurso y el de participación de los hablantes en el intercambio comunicativo.
Language shift and maintenance among the children of immigrants in the U.S.
Authors: Mora Marie T. , Villa Daniel J. , Dávila Alberto
Published: September 2007

For over thirty years, research on Spanish in the U.S. has demonstrated an inexorable loss of the language among Spanish speaking populations. This study shows, however, that analyses of 1980, 1990, and 2000 U.S. Census data, using an innovative approach known as a synthetic cohort analysis, reveal a high degree of transmission of Spanish from first generation to second generation speakers. For the purpose of tracking reported language use of individuals starting at ages 5–7 and ending at ages 15–17, data from the Integrated Public Microdata Series are used here to create two simulated longitudinal samples of Spanish speakers over a ten-year period. English language acquisition is also examined, and the results indicate that second generation speakers are bilingual, with a high degree of control of both Spanish and English.
Japanese intonation units and syntactic structure
Authors: Matsumoto Kazuko
Published: September 2007

This paper examines the preferred syntactic structure of the idea-conveying substantive “intonation unit” (IU) in conversational Japanese. It was found that (a) the clause is the syntactic exponent of the Japanese substantive IU; (b) the clauses are overwhelmingly single-IU clauses rather than multi-IU clauses; and (c) the multi-IU clauses exhibit a higher proportion of multiple new NPs than the single-IU counterparts. The results show that despite claims to the contrary, conversational Japanese cannot be regarded as “highly fragmented”, but basically conforms to the “one IU, one clause” strategy. It is argued that the One New NP per IU Constraint is an information-flow factor motivating toward the “marked” production of multi-IU clauses, that is, the breakup of a clause into phrasal IUs.
Syntax in interaction
Authors: Mosegaard Hansen Maj-Britt
Published: September 2007

This paper investigates the correlation between the form and function of yes/no interrogatives in spoken French. The
standard language possesses three ways of constructing such interrogatives: verb-clitic inversion; prefixation of a declarative
sentence with the interrogative particle est-ce que; and a rising intonation pattern superposed on a declarative structure.
The choice between the three has traditionally been described in terms of register differences. This paper argues, however, that
the three constructions differ not only on the pragmatic level, but also on the semantic level, and that the choice between them
can be explained, and largely predicted, in terms of three interactional parameters, namely the accessibility of the information
contained in the interrogative; participation structure; and considerations of ‘face’.
Is the correlation between grounding and transitivity universal?
Authors: Chui Kawai
Published: September 2007

This paper studies the correlation between grounding and transitivity in Chinese narratives and conversations based on the ten Transitivity features proposed by Hopper and Thompson (1980), to examine the universality of the correlation across different spoken discourse and different languages. According to the percentages of high-transitivity features vis-à-vis grounding, highly transitive clauses in Chinese narratives, just like English written narratives, tend to be foregrounded. However, such correlation is not borne out in conversational discourse, in that highly transitive clauses are almost equally distributed in foreground and background. As conversations are more pervasive and reflect people’s habitual use of language, it is concluded that grounding is independent of the morphosyntactic and semantic manifestations of transitivity.
Japanese Wa in conversational discourse
Authors: Maruyama Akiyo
Published: September 2007

This study provides evidence to support the claim that a primary function of the postpositional particle wa in Japanese conversational discourse is to mark a contrast. Wa has been widely studied in research on sentence grammar, which has suggested two separate functions of the particle, thematic and contrastive (Kuno 1973a; 1973b; Shibatani 1990). However, no study seems to have been done on conversation. In my study, analysis of 80 tokens of np-wa in conversation has revealed that wa marks a contrast. Furthermore, this study claims that it is the prior discourse that serves to establish the contrastive function of wa.
Dynamic ter - in Malay (Bahasa Melayu)
Authors: Goddard Cliff
Published: September 2007

This paper undertakes a fine-grained semantic analysis of some of the multiple uses of the polyfunctional verbal prefix ter- in Malay (Bahasa Melayu), the national language of Malaysia. The analysis is conducted within the natural semantic metalanguage (NSM) framework originated by Anna Wierzbicka, supported by examples drawn from a large corpus of naturally occuring Malay texts. The main goals are to accurately describe the full range of meanings, and to decide to what extent apparent differences are contextually-induced as opposed to being semantically encoded. In the end, seven distinct but interrelated lexico-semantic schemas are identified, constituting a network of grammatical polysemy.
Nouns, verbs and syntactic backsliding in Khmer
Authors: Haiman John , Ourn Noeurng
Published: September 2007

One of the difficulties in parsing Khmer is that morphosyntactic clues about the category membership of words are either lacking or misleading. In particular, words which seem to have the status of deverbal nominalizations because of a derivational infix -Vm(n)- are in fact “still”functioning as verbs. It may be that this phenomenon of “syntactic backsliding” provides novel evidence for the hypothesis that this infix was originally meaningless, and that infixation arose in Khmer via the process of “secretion”.
Transitivity of ergative case-marking predicates in Japanese
Authors: Kishimoto Hideki
Published: September 2007

In this article, I argue that ergative case-marking predicates in Japanese, which take two non-canonically case-marked arguments, are best described as transitive predicates having subjects and direct objects, rather than as intransitive predicates without any direct objects — contrary to Shibatani’s recent proposal (Shibatani 1999, 2001a, b, Shibatani and Pardeshi 2001). More specifically, ergative case-marking predicates are argued to be transitive, as originally conceived by Kuno (1973) and others, on the basis that outer dative/nominative phrases display subject properties, while inner nominative phrases exhibit positive object properties. Furthermore, it is argued that ergative case-marking constructions do not constitute a sub-type of double subject construction by showing that they are licensed in a different way.
Inevitable reanalysis
Authors: Plank Frans
Published: September 2007

When local adpositions, whatever their own sources, are metaphorically extended to the domain of numerical approximation (as in ‘around five bottles’), as they not uncommonly are, and when such expressions are then admitted to grammatical relations otherwise reserved for noun phrases, such as subject and direct object, as is only natural, a conflict is bound to arise: the internal structure of such expressions is that of an adpositional phrase, headed by the ex-local adposition, but their external distribution is that of a noun phrase. German and several other languages demonstrate that repair is inevitable in this dilemma, unless wholly different ways of expressing numerical approximation were to be resorted to. By necessity, such approximative numerical expressions will gradually be reanalysed from being adpositional phrases to being noun phrases for many, most, or indeed all external and internal purposes, such as subcategorization, verb agreement, case assignment, and determination. Instead of new grammar emerging as in grammaticalization, the old grammar of phrase types is reasserting itself in such reanalyses.
Some strategies for coding sentential subjects in English
Authors: Fanego Teresa
Published: September 2007

This study examines two types of -ing subjects in English: the Late Modern English pattern the deceiving him was easy and constructions such as by trying to make her mother happy
proved unlucky for Paul, which are becoming frequent among American undergraduates. It is argued that the presence of the and by in both structures is prompted by the desire to provide explicit grammatical marking for clauses that, because of their role as pre-verbal subjects, are cognitively very complex. The paper discusses the ongoing grammaticalization of by Xing sequences and outlines the historical developments leading to the emergence of the pattern with an introductory the, for which it proposes an analysis in terms of Lass’s (1990, 1997) concept of exaptation.
Can the lexicalization/grammaticalization distinction be reconciled?
Authors: Lightfoot Douglas J.
Published: September 2007

Recent work on the relationship between lexicalization and grammaticalization appears to yield a consensus compatible with traditional notions of gestalt linguistics. A survey of the literature indicates the complexity of this supposed dichotomy, and provides a starting point from which we may evaluate a diagrammatic approach to the problem. Examples focus on the German derivational suffix -heit, cognate with English -hood. Such suffixation has traditionally been difficult for scholars to assess in terms of lexicality and grammaticality. Taking the gestalt concepts of parts and wholes into account, the inherent flexibility and fluidity between lexicalization and grammaticalization becomes apparent.
A typology of good grammars
Authors: Rice Keren
Published: September 2007

Writing a grammar is an exhilarating and exhausting experience. All grammars must meet high expectations. This paper reports on a study of qualities sought in grammars based on a survey of reviews of grammars. The study reveals that linguists expect a grammar to be comprehensive, clear, and accessible to all. It should also contain careful argumentation and a wealth of data that is appropriate, authentic, and meticulously checked. Writers of grammars must ask themselves a variety of questions before they begin, including what the goal of the grammar is, who the audience for the grammar is, how much time there is to write the grammar, and what the language reveals about its grammar. The paper then discusses and evaluates specific examples of good grammars of various types.
The deictic nature of the directives in Biblical Hebrew
Authors: Hatav Galia
Published: September 2007

Biblical Hebrew has three specific verb forms for performing directive speech-acts such as commands and requests. Hebraists (e.g., Bendavid 1967) observe that two other forms are also used for this purpose, in addition to other uses.

 In Hatav (1997), I show that those two forms are general modals, which may be used for any kind of modality, including directives.

 Complying with Grice’s (1975) cooperative rule, I argue in this paper, a biblical character would prefer the specific forms to perform directives. However, I show that the specific forms are deictic in nature, and can be used only when the speech-time functions as the reference-time of the utterance. In case of another reference-time, the speaker must resort to the general modals.
Relative Clauses in English conversation
Authors: Fox Barbara A. , Thompson Sandra A.
Published: September 2007

This paper is a usage-based study of the grammar of that set of English Relative Clauses with which a relativizer has been described as optional. We argue that the regularities in the use of relativizers in English can be seen as systematically arising from pragmatic-prosodic factors, creating frequency effects, resulting in some cases highly grammaticized formats: the more the Main Clause and the Relative Clause are integrated with each other, that is, approach monoclausal status, the more likely we are to find no relativizer used; conversely, the more separate the two clauses are, the more likely we are to find an overt relativizer. These findings have led us to suggest that the more monoclausal combinations have become unitary storage and processing chunks. We thus see these findings as a contribution not only to our understanding of Relative Clauses, but to our understanding of syntactic organization in general and of the nature of the grammatical practices in which speakers engage in everyday interactions.
Aspectual clusters of Russian verbs
Authors: Janda Laura A.
Published: September 2007

The traditional “pair” model of Russian aspect fails to distinguish among Perfectives and ignores the fact that most verbs exist in larger clusters of three or more aspectually related forms. I propose semantic parameters that account for the interaction of aspect and actionality and use them to construct a semantic map of Russian aspectual relationships. I show, using a multiply stratified sample of 283 verb clusters (including over 2000 verbs), that the composition of clusters conforms to a strict implicational hierarchy that predicts all and only the cluster types attested in Russian. The proposed model replaces aspectual “pairs” with a model that captures the more complex reality of aspectual relationships among Russian verbs and provides a hypothesis for cross-linguistic comparison.
Word order variation and ba sentences in Chinese
Authors: Liu Feng-hsi
Published: September 2007

Despite extensive research on ba sentences in Chinese, the issue of when ba sentences are used in discourse has received little attention. This study examines the word order variation involving ba sentences by comparing three word orders: the canonical postverbal form, the ba form, and the topicalized preposed form. I show that the choice of the ba form depends on multiple factors, including information status, weight and topicality. The ba form is more likely to be used under two conditions: (a) when the ba NP carries old information but is not highly topical, (b) when the ba NP carries new information and is heavy. Further, my findings raise doubts on the ba NP’s role as a topic in discourse.
Syntactic-semantic interaction in Israeli Sign Language verbs
Authors: Meir Irit
Published: September 2007

Previous studies of various sign languages have identified several classes of verbs which differ from each other on the basis of which agreement affixes can be attached to them. This paper focuses on one group of verbs, which inflect for person and number (i.e. agreement verbs, using Padden’s 1990 terminology). The paper is concerned with the question of whether the agreement affixes that attach to agreement verbs correspond to the syntactic notions of subject and object, or to the thematic notions of source and goal. It is suggested that this question can be answered only by focusing on a subset of agreement verbs, namely backwards verbs. By comparing backwards verbs to regular agreement verbs, from the points of view of their morphological, syntactic and thematic behavior, the precise nature of the agreement system is revealed: agreement verbs are morphologically marked for both syntactic and thematic agreement. This is achieved by utilizing two different phonological elements available in the language: the direction of the path movement, and the facing (as distinct from orientation) of the hands. This analysis differs from previous treatments, which have disregarded facing as an independent marking device, and have therefore failed to account fully for the facts. It is argued that only an analysis which draws a distinction between these two mechanisms is descriptively adequate and explanatory.
On Defining Lexeme in a Signed Language
Authors: Johnston Trevor , Schembri Adam C.
Published: September 2007

In this paper we attempt to define the notion of ‘lexeme’ in relation to signed languages. We begin by defining signs as a distinct kind of visual-gestural communicative act, different from other communicative uses of gesture. This is followed by a discussion of the most important categories of productive forms in signed languages, referred to simply as signs. The close relationship between the formational aspects of these signs and their meaning is also discussed and exemplified. We then describe the criteria for recognizing lexemes as a subset of signs, and distinguishing variant and modified forms. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications the notion of lexeme has for our understanding of the lexicon of signed languages and for signed language lexicography.
Signed language classifier predicates
Authors: Cogill-Koez Dorothea
Published: September 2007

It is argued that signed communication systems differ from spoken ones in having not one but two structured systems of representation. In addition to the linguistic mode (which is shared with spoken communication, and which appears to be fundamentally identical across spoken and signed modalities), signers also command distinctive, formal systems of schematic visual representation. These are the forms of signing known as classifier predicates.
For the past two decades, signed classifier predicates have been modeled as linguistic. However, the basic formal units of such signing, the combination of these units, and their breakdown, all differ both from patterns seen in other signed forms that have long been recognized as linguistic, and from the classic patterns of language in general. Classifier predicates continue to be modeled as linguistic mostly on the basis of assumptions about alternatives, specifically about the form and acquisition of systems of visual-spatial representation. These assumptions are shown to be incorrect.
Signed classifiers are shown to correspond in many respects not merely to visual representation, but to a particular strategy of depiction known as schematic visual representation. This is the mode of depiction that appears to be most natural for both children and adults to master, and that is commonly seen in drawing.
There is thus strong evidence that in signed language classifiers we have what, from the point of view of traditional (spoken-language based) linguistics, is a qualitatively new communication mode: formal, structured systems of visual representation that exist side-by-side with linguistic modalities, within the total signed communication system.
Methods and procedures in sign language acquisition studies
Authors: Baker Anne , van den Bogaerde Beppie , Woll Bencie
Published: September 2007

Sign language acquisition is a relatively new field and is still developing its own good practice. This paper gives an overview of the most common procedures in research design, choice of subjects, transcription and documentation. The paper concludes with a brief overview of the chronology of development of sign languages.
Adult–child interaction in a BSL nursery — getting their attention!
Authors: Smith Sandra , Sutton-Spence Rachel
Published: September 2007

This paper reports on attention-getting strategies during adult–child interaction in a BSL-language nursery. The data come from a small study conducted at the School of Education at Leeds University, in which deaf children in a Deaf nursery run by Deaf adults were filmed. Deaf adults and deaf children both used waving and tapping to gain attention. Deaf adults used waving strategies more than the children did, while the children used more tapping strategies than the adults did. Additional ways of seeking attention and a range of different types of tapping and waving were identified, providing insights into the different uses of waving and the tapping in different situations. Findings also revealed possible developmental stages in attention-seeking.
What does the study of signed languages tell us about ‘language’?
Authors: Wilbur Ronnie B.
Published: September 2007

Linguists focusing on what all languages have in common seek to identify universals, tendencies, and other patterns to construct a general model of human language, Universal Grammar (UG). The design features of this model are that it must account for linguistic universals, account for linguistic diversity, and account for language learnability.

Sign languages contribute to the construction of this model by providing a new source of data, permitting the claims and assumptions of UG to be rigorously tested and modified. One result of this research has been that the notion of ‘language’ itself has been clarified, clearly separating it from speech. It has also been possible to identify the design features of ‘natural languages’ themselves, and then to explain why pedagogical signing systems are not natural languages. This paper provides an overview of these issues.
Noun/Verb Pairs in Austrian Sign Language (ÖGS)
Authors: Hunger Barbara
Published: September 2007

The present work provides the evidence for a measurable distinction between members of formationally related Noun/Verb Pairs in ÖGS. Like similar investigations in other sign languages, such as American (ASL), Australian (Auslan) and British (BSL), this empirical study investigates nouns and verbs of related pairs in ÖGS from several perspectives. The primary investigation focuses on the movement component of signs, which is identified as the major differentiating factor between related nouns and verbs. The study also briefly examines nonmanual markers and the adjacent lexical categories of nouns and verbs in context. The findings are compared with the distinctions reported for other sign languages and show that ÖGS also follows the distinction model that other sign languages use for distinguishing between related nouns and verbs, in particular, distinctions in the movement components of signs. The formational difference between related ÖGS nouns and verbs is systematically shown in their duration, with verbs substantially longer in duration than their comparable nouns. It is not known whether this observed difference will generalize to the wider comparison of ÖGS unrelated verbs and nouns.
Sign Language and Deaf Education
Authors: Pribanić Ljubica
Published: September 2007

Deaf education in Croatia still continues to use a predominantly auditory-speech approach, spoken Croatian only, and simultaneous communication (SC). In the last few years a few changes in tradition have been made: most importantly, educational interpreting is now available in high schools and at the university level. Given the lack of bilingual deaf education and early sign language exposure, deaf children make very slow progress in literacy, compared with deaf children of deaf parents. Benefits of early sign language acquisition can be seen in deaf children of deaf parents not only in better social adaptation skills, but also in their better academic achievement compared with other deaf children. The cultural approach to deaf education views sign language as the most natural linguistic form of deaf people, and a powerful means of communication for all purposes and in all circumstances. Here, we discuss case studies of Sweden and Denmark, with 20 years of tradition in deaf bilingual education; the Netherlands, with about 10 years of deaf bilingual education; and Spain, where deaf bilingual education is in the process of implementation. These examples (Sweden, Spain, Netherlands) demonstrate the processes of policy changes and the shift to deaf education that is aimed at taking care of the needs of deaf children and their families, as well as implementing the human rights protections for linguistic minorities.
On Justification in Translation Studies
Authors: Rothe-Neves Rui
Published: September 2007

A descriptive analysis of translations, such as that outlined in Toury (1995), is said to involve the establishment of translation relationships within coupled pairs of replacing and replaced textual segments. But how is one to assess the significance of particular kinds of segment for the entire text under analysis? The present article tackles this methodological issue and reports on a study designed to provide quantitative data to answer that question. For that purpose, an analysis was conducted of translations by Frederico Mueller, the first Brazilian translator of the writings of Rudolf Steiner, the founder of Anthroposophy. This study may prove useful in highlighting the role of quantitative text analyses in Translation Studies.
Are Menu Translations Getting Worse?
Authors: Fallada Pouget Carmina
Published: September 2007

Translations of restaurant menus from Catalan or Spanish into English are important for the Catalan restaurant industry and for tourism in general, since an improvement in the quality of the translations may lead to higher standards of service and better socio-cultural exchanges. A sample of 1013 menu items from the Tarragona area suggests there are differences in functionality between the menus translated in the 1970s/1980s and those translated in the 1990s. A possible reason for these differences is that all the menus from the 1970s/80s were translated by professional translators, and those from the 1990s, by non-professional translators. The study also suggests that books on menu translations published by the Catalan government in 1991 did not reach the restaurant owners and that official translation policy in this area has thus had little effect.
Think-aloud protocols in translation research
Authors: Bernardini Silvia
Published: September 2007

Over the last decade, Think-aloud Protocols (TAPs) have been used extensively in process-oriented Translation Studies (TS). The serious questions regarding the experimental validity of this research methodology when applied to translation have nonetheless often remained unspoken. This paper surveys the breakthroughs as well as the limits of the growing body of literature dealing with TAPs in TS, points at the necessity to take issues of experimental, theoretical and environmental validity more seriously, and offers suggestions for improvements. The claim is that the risks involved in the adoption of a lax experimental methodology in TAP studies, often underestimated in the past, may invalidate not only the results obtained in the single projects, but, crucially, the method as a whole.
Enriching translations, simplified language?
Authors: Paloposki Outi
Published: September 2007

Intuitively, the suggestion that lexical simplification be a translation universal seems to run counter to the established idea of translation as enrichment. The present paper seeks to relate the two ideas, simplification and enrichment, while addressing the issue of testing hypotheses about universality in Translation Studies, especially in Corpus Translation Studies. The nature of the data used and its implications to the results are discussed. Finnish 19th century texts constitute a case in point on the problems that heterogeneous data may give rise to, and it is suggested that alternative ways of studying lexical phenomena are needed, in order to complement the findings in Corpus Translation Studies.
Translationese – a myth or an empirical fact?
Authors: Tirkkonen-Condit Sonja
Published: September 2007

This paper reports on a study in which subjects were asked to distinguish translations from originally produced (non-translated) texts. The aim was to identify the linguistic features shared by texts assumed to be translations, as well as those shared by texts assumed to be originally produced. The results show (i) that translations were not readily identifiable, and (ii) that the feature that seemed to guide the subjects’ decisions was the frequency vs. scarcity of target language specific (unique) items in the texts: their frequency led subjects to assume—correctly or incorrectly—that a text was original rather than translated. It is concluded that the unique items in non-translations vs. translations deserve further research in respect of their frequency and the impressions they make on readers.
Approaches to the translation of children’s literature
Authors: Tabbert Reinbert
Published: September 2007

College of Higher Education, Schwäbisch Gmünd Children’s literature, a traditional domain of teachers and librarians, has, in the past 30 years, been made a subject of academic research. Simultaneously, more and more studies have been dedicated to the translation of children’s literature. There are four important factors which have prompted such studies: (1) the assumption that translated children’s books build bridges between different cultures, (2) text-specific challenges to the translator, (3) the polysystem theory which classifies children’s literature as a subsystem of minor prestige within literature, and (4) the age-specific addressees either as implied or as real readers. This review of critical approaches to the translation of children’s literature is structured in such a way that the methodological shift from source orientation to target orientation becomes obvious.
Pragmatic analysis as a methodology
Authors: Setton Robin
Published: September 2007

A few years ago I proposed a new ‘cognitive-pragmatic’ approach to understanding simultaneous interpretation (Setton 1999) which has, gratifyingly, been acknowledged in several reviews, including one in these pages (Target 13:1 (2001, 177–183). The editor has kindly let me use it as an opportunity to clear up some misunderstandings, respond to some stimulating challenges, and try to develop some recent ideas on how to operationalise the paradigm.
What happened to God and the angels
Authors: Malmkjær Kirsten
Published: September 2007

The paper which follows uses a set of translations by Henry William Dulcken of stories written by Hans Christian Andersen and published in Danish between 1835 and 1866 as the object of an exercise in translational stylistic analysis. Section 1 presents the author, Section 2 discusses translational stylistics, Section 3 sets the scene for the stylistic study by outlining the impact of fairytale translations on the literary polysystem in Britain in the 19th Century and the reception in Victorian Britain of Andersen’s stories, and by introducing the translator and comparing his translations briefly with other early translations. Section 4 is devoted to the stylistic study, while Section 5 suggests that translational stylistics can be an important component in comparative cultural studies.
How frequent are the contractions?
Authors: Olohan Maeve
Published: September 2007

This paper analyses contractions in translated language, comparing the use of contracted forms by translators of fiction and biography into English with the contraction patterns of writers of similar texts in English. Significant differences are found between the English of literary translation and contemporary literary English writing, in terms of both variety of contracted forms encountered and frequency of occurrence of contractions. Qualitative analyses then focus on the functional description of some contracted and non-contracted forms, and also consider the contraction practices of different translators. The relationships between contractions and other linguistic features, explicitation in translation, translator style, discourse function and genre are touched upon, and avenues for further research of this nature are suggested.
How to be a (recognized) translator
Authors: Sela-Sheffy Rakefet
Published: September 2007

Focusing on translators as a cultural-professional group, this article mobilizes the Bourdieusian concepts of field and habitus for explaining the tension between the constrained and the versatile nature of translators’ action, as determined by their cultural group-identification and by their position in their specific field of action. Emphasizing the basic parameter of status contests and struggle for symbolic capital, it elaborates on three important aspects of translators’ differentiating self-images and strategies of action, using examples from the field of Hebrew translation in contemporary Israel: (1) the variability of strategies translators employ while playing either conservative or innovative roles, as cultural custodians or cultural importers, in specific historical contexts; (2) the dynamic construction and stratification of the field of translation, which results from the endeavor to establish its autonomous source of prestige, oscillating between impersonal professional status and an artistic-like personal “stardom”; and (3) translators’ preferred models of self-fashioning, according to which they select and signify the facts of their life-conditions and use them for improving their status and terms of work.
Refraction and recognition
Authors: Grutman Rainier
Published: September 2007

Texts foregrounding different languages pose unusual challenges for translators and translation scholars alike. This article seeks to provide some insights into what happens to multilingual literature in translation. First, Antoine Berman’s writings on translation are used to reframe questions of semantic loss in terms of the ideological underpinnings of translation as a cultural practice. This leads to a wider consideration of contextual aspects involved in the “refraction” of foreign languages, such as the translating literature’s relative position in the “World Republic of Letters” (Casanova). Drawing on a Canadian case-study (Marie-Claire Blais in English translation), it is suggested that asymmetrical relations between dominating and dominated literatures need not be negativeper se, but can lead to the recognition of minority writers.