bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Conservation and innovation in a traditional dialect
Authors: Stuart-Smith Jane , Timmins Claire , Tweedie Fiona
Published: September 2007

Johnston (1997) suggests that, if defined in terms of phonology, Scots as a traditional dialect in Britain has a “rosy future”. Glaswegian is known to continue Scots L‑vocalization in words such as ball and all. L‑vocalization of a different type, similar to that found in Cockney, is one feature which has been observed to be diffusing rapidly across accents of English. This paper considers the evidence for these two distinct processes of L‑vocalization in Glaswegian, drawing on empirical evidence from two corpora of Glaswegian collected in the early 1980s and late 1990s. The results from the later corpus confirm the vigorous maintenance of the Scots l‑vocalization, but at the same time provide clear indications of the incorporation of innovative L‑vocalization. Our findings confirm that at the phonological level at least, the Urban Scots of Glaswegian youngsters is both conservative and innovative.
Anti-deletions in an L2 grammar
Authors: Mesthrie Rajend
Published: September 2007

This paper offers a unified account of the syntactic “deviations” found in a second language variety of English, viz. Black South African English (BlSAfE). Most writing on the topic has been content to supply lists of non-standard features which are thought to be diagnostic of the variety. This paper aims to characterise the syntax of the variety via its recurrent properties, rather than as a superset of unrelated features. In this regard I use the cover term “anti-deletion” for three relatable properties: (a) restoring a feature that tends to be deleted in modern standard English, e.g. the infinitive marker to in She made me to go; (b) retaining, rather than deleting elements that are known to be deleted in some (non-standard) varieties of English, e.g. retention rather than deletion of the copula; and (c) inserting additional grammatical morphemes into the standard English structure, e.g. cross-clausal double conjunctions like although… but. The concept of an anti-deletion allows one to characterise one of the two systems that underlie BlSAfE, the other being the standard syntax of the Target Language (TL). More generally, the notion of “anti-deletion” can be used fruitfully in characterising the syntax of individual second language varieties of English on a continuum.
Describing verb-complementational profiles of New Englishes
Authors: Mukherjee Joybrato , Hoffmann Sebastian
Published: September 2007

The present paper investigates the emergence of local norms in Indian English at the level of verb complementation, an area which so far has not attracted much attention in research into New Englishes. In attempting to describe the verb-complementational profile of Indian English, we offer a pilot study which combines a descriptive aim and a methodological aim. At the descriptive level, the present article focuses on ditransitive verbs and their complementation and addresses two related questions: (1) To what extent do the frequency and distribution of complementation patterns of specific ditransitive verbs (e.g. give) differ between Indian English and British English? (2) To what extent is the basic ditransitive pattern with two object noun phrases (e.g. in he sent Mary his warmest wishes) associated with different verbs in British English and Indian English? The present paper reveals that in both regards there are clear and identifiable differences in verb complementation between the two varieties. At the methodological level, this pilot study combines the use of balanced and representative subcorpora from the International Corpus of English (ICE) with the in-depth analysis of a much larger database that has been extracted from the Internet archive of the daily Indian newspaper The Statesman. This makes it possible to also detect examples of low-frequency constructions in Indian English, e.g. sporadic cases of ditransitive complementation of verbs such as advise, gift and impart.
Prosodic rhythm and African American English
Authors: Thomas Erik R. , Carter Phillip M.
Published: September 2007

Prosodic rhythm was measured for a sample of 20 African American and 20 European American speakers from North Carolina using the metric devised by Low, Grabe and Nolan (2000), which involves comparisons of the durations of vowels in adjacent syllables. In order to gain historical perspective, the same technique was applied to the ex-slave recordings described in Bailey, Maynor and Cukor-Avila (1991) and to recordings of five Southern European Americans born before the Civil War. In addition, Jamaicans, Hispanics of Mexican origin who spoke English as their L2, and Hispanics speaking Spanish served as control groups. Results showed that the North Carolina African Americans and European Americans were both quite stress-timed overall, with no significant difference between them. Spanish emerged as solidly syllable-timed, while Jamaican English and Hispanic English were intermediate. The ex-slaves were significantly less stress-timed than either younger African Americans or European Americans born before the Civil War. This finding suggests that African American English was once similar to Jamaican English in prosodic rhythm.
The pronunciation of Scottish Standard English in Lerwick, Shetland
Authors: Sundkvist Peter
Published: September 2007

Previous research on Shetland speech has not explicitly dealt with speech forms leaning towards Scottish Standard English (SSE) but has focused on Shetland dialect, the local Scots dialect. This paper argues that a local accent of SSE can be identified in Shetland, especially for speakers in Lerwick, the largest town in Shetland. The accent has not been previously fully described, and this paper presents an analysis of systemic, distributional and realizational aspects of the vowel and consonant systems, based on data from a recent survey (Sundkvist 2004). It is suggested that the Lerwick accent displays a phonemic inventory and lexical distribution similar to that commonly reported for mainland accents of SSE, with the exception of a somewhat larger inventory of vowel phonemes. At the level of phonetic realization, the Lerwick accent shares several features with mainland varieties of SSE, but displays a number of localized features in addition.
Older men and younger women
Authors: Barbieri Federica
Published: September 2007

This article investigates the effect of the external variables speaker age and sex on the use of the quotatives be like, go, be all, and say in present-day spoken American English. The study is based on a large computerized corpus of naturally-occurring conversation collected from a wide range of speakers across the United States. The results show that there are striking differences in the way that men and women under the age of forty use these quotatives. Young women are in the lead in the use of be like, but the use of this quotative decreases dramatically among women in their late 20s and in their 30s. In contrast, the use of be like increases among men in their late 20s. The patterns of use described here represent a departure from previous findings and suggest that the effect of speaker’s age and sex on quotative use is more complex than has been posited so far.
Focus marking in Indian English
Authors: Lange Claudia
Published: September 2007

This paper investigates the use of only and itself in Indian English, drawing on data from the Indian subcorpus of the International Corpus of English (ICE-India). In all varieties of English, only is used as an exclusive focus particle and itself as a reflexive pronoun and intensifier. Indian English has developed an additional use for only and itself as presentational, i.e. non-contrastive focus markers. The paper investigates the syntactic and semantic contexts of itself and only in order to capture the two lexical items’ functional extension in current Indian English. One interesting finding concerns the distribution of the two forms within the corpus: Itself is mainly found in written texts, while only is restricted to the spoken language. The paper further considers the origin and the likely future of this innovation in Indian English: Whereas it is quite clear that substrate influence is directly responsible for the innovative usage, the question whether this usage will also become accepted as part of an emerging Indian English standard remains to be settled.
Intonational marking of new and given information in Cameroon English
Authors: Ouafeu Yves Talla Sando
Published: September 2007

Studies on English intonation have shown that native English speakers consistently accent new information and deaccent given information in the discourse structure (Brown 1983; Fowler and Housum 1987; etc.). On the other hand, findings on the intonation of some non-native English varieties, Nigerian English (Gut 2003, 2005) and Indian English (Gumperz 1982) for example, suggest that speakers of these varieties of English rarely deaccent given information in the discourse structure, hence making both types of information prominent. This study reports findings of the analyses of the intonational marking of the two types of information in Cameroon English (CamE). Data from two speaking styles, the Passage Reading Style (PRS) and the Conversational Style (CS), were analysed both auditorily and acoustically. Results show that, unlike speakers of some other non-native varieties of English, Cameroon English speakers make new information more prominent than given information in the discourse structure. As for how Cameroon English speakers acoustically implement the intonational marking of new and given information, the findings further reveal that they make more use of intensity and duration than of other acoustic parameters like high pitch accent (H*), findings which are somewhat dissimilar to those documented in native varieties of English whereby the most obvious acoustic correlate of new information in discourse is the high pitch accent (H*).
Multi-word sequences and their relevance for recent models of Functional Grammar
Authors: Butler Christopher S.
Published: September 2007

In recent research considerable interest has been shown in strings of linguistic items which appear to behave, in certain respects, as single items, and which are referred to in this paper as multi-word sequences. The aim of the paper is to investigate the interface between work on such phenomena and recent developments in the theory of Functional Grammar. A selective review of corpus-based approaches to multi-word sequences is followed by a brief introduction to Wray’s psycholinguistically-oriented model of formulaicity. A corpus example is then discussed in some detail. The discussion up to this point is then related to four recent models within the overall framework of Functional Grammar which aim to increase the level of psychological adequacy of the theory: Nuyts’ Functional Procedural Grammar, Hengeveld’s Functional Discourse Grammar, Mackenzie’s Incremental Functional Grammar and Bakker and Siewierska’s expression rule model. Brief comments are also made on multi-word sequences in relation to production vs. comprehension and on the relationship between formulaicity and levels of structure.
Processes of semogenesis in English intonation
Authors: Tench Paul
Published: September 2007

Semogenesis, the creation of meaning, has been promoted by Halliday & Matthiessen (1999) as a ‘guiding principle’ in their presentation of a systemic functional theory of language — that language has within itself the resources by which people can create new meanings. Halliday & Matthiessen illustrated three processes of semogenesis and used an example of English intonation to illustrate one of the processes, deconstruction. This paper proposes two other processes, blending and reconstitution, to account for three other developments in English intonation: the falling-rising tone, the so-called high rising terminal/tone (HRT) and the mid level tone for routine listing.
Voice in Chinese
Authors: Sum-hung Li Eden
Published: September 2007

The present paper revisits a long-standing controversial issue in Chinese grammar — the passive voice — from a systemic functional approach. This study examines how the ba- and bei-constructions control the flow of information in text and shows that they are textually motivated. It argues, by differentiating the bei-construction from the OSV structure, and the ba-construction from the SOV and SVO structures, that the two constructions are not options of THEME, but form a separate level within the grammar. It then describes the system of VOICE in the language. Furthermore, facing the increasing productivity of the ba- and bei-constructions in process types other than transitive material processes, this study examines this trend of increasing productivity.
The communicative potential of verbs of “away-from” motion in English, German and Russian
Authors: Sharoff Serge
Published: September 2007

This paper proposes a model for describing lexical semantics within systemic-functional theory. Formal approaches to lexical semantics assume that words have meanings which exist independently from communication and are represented by means of (semi-) formal definitions. Functional approaches treat language as a tool for social interaction and, in the case of lexical semantics, assume that lexical items provide resources for realising the communicative intentions of the speaker. The paper explores problems occurring when uses of words in context are categorised according to pre-established sense distinctions and proposes a mechanism that uses systemic networks to describe meanings of lexical items as functions of their uses. The paper ends with a case study of uses of English, German and Russian verbs of motion, including options for their translation. The model is also tested empirically by considering word uses in an aligned parallel English-German-Russian corpus.
The role of appraisal and corpora in detecting covert evaluation
Authors: Coffin Caroline , O'Halloran Kieran
Published: September 2007

‘Dog-whistle politics’ is a phrase that has recently been coined to capture a form of covert evaluation. This is where political communication seemingly uses neutral meanings but where in fact a negative message is likely to be ‘heard’ by the target community (Manning 2004). This article explores the use of dog-whistle journalism in the British popular tabloid The Sun by examining a news report published in it on May 1st 2004, the day that 10 new countries joined the European Union (EU). In order to systematically account for the positioning effect of this form of covert evaluation we suggest that it is useful to combine an APPRAISAL analysis of the May 1st text with an APPRAISAL analysis of a corpus of related news articles published in the run up to EU enlargement. As further substantiation, we interrogate the 45 million word corpus of Sun news texts in the Bank of English. The combined method, we argue, provides an empirically-based, systematic account of how the May 1st report is likely to position Sun readers to see the new EU citizens as a threat to Britain’s lifestyle and welfare system — despite the fact that there are no directly inscribed wordings stating such a viewpoint.
Gesture, thought and spatial language
Authors: Emmorey Karen , Casey Shannon
Published: September 2007

This study explores the conceptual and communicative roles of gesture by examining the consequences of gesture prevention for the type of spatial language used to solve a spatial problem. English speakers were asked to describe where to place a group of blocks so that the blocks completely filled a puzzle grid. Half the subjects were allowed to gesture and half were prevented from gesturing. In addition, half the subjects could see their addressee and half could not. Addressee visibility affected how reliant subjects were on specifying puzzle grid co-ordinates, regardless of gesture condition. When describing block locations, subjects who were allowed to gesture were more likely to describe block orientation and rotation, but only when they could see the addressee. Further, gesture and speech complemented each other such that subjects were less likely to lexically specify rotation direction when this information was expressed by gesture; however, this was not a deliberate communicative choice because subjects who were not visible to their addressee also tended to leave rotation direction unspecified when they gestured. Finally, speakers produced deictic anaphoric constructions (e.g., “turn it this way”) which referred to their own gestures only when they could see the addressee. Together, these findings support the hypothesis that gesture is both an act of communication and an act of thought, and the results fail to support the hypothesis that gesture functions primarily to facilitate lexical retrieval.
Pointing left in Ghana
Authors: Kita Sotaro , Essegbey James
Published: September 2007

In Ghana, many peolple consider pointing by the left hand to be a taboo. We investigated consequences of this taboo on the Ghanaian gestural practice by observing gestures produced during naturalistic situations of giving route directions. First, there is a politeness convention to place the left hand on the lower back, as if to hide it from the interlocutor. Second, as a consequence of left-hand suppression, right-handed pointing may involve an anatomically staining position when indicating a leftward direction across the body. Third, pointing is sometimes performed with both hands together, which does not violate the taboo. Despite the taboo, left-handed pointing is not suppressed fully. Left-handed pointing gestures occur in association with the verbalization of the concept LEFT, suggesting the embodied nature of the concept. In addition, it is noteworthy that there is a class of left-handed gestures, which are so reduced in form that Ghanaians do not consider them as pointing for the purpose of the taboo.
An experimental investigation of the role of different types of iconic gesture in communication
Authors: Beattie Geoffrey , Shovelton Heather
Published: September 2007

Respondents, who had either seen or not seen a sample of the iconic gestures that encoders produce when narrating a story, answered questions about the original story and it was found that the overall accuracy score for respondents who saw the iconic gestures in addition to hearing the speech was 56.8% compared to 48.6% for speech only. This was a highly reliable effect and suggests that iconic gestures are indeed communicative. Character viewpoint gestures were also significantly more communicative than observer viewpoint gestures particularly about the semantic feature relative position, but the observer viewpoint gestures were effective at communicating information, particularly about the semantic features speed and shape. There were no significant correlations between the amount of information that gestures added to speech and the amount they conveyed in its absence, which suggests that the relationship between speech and gesture is not fixed but variable. The implications of this research for our fundamental conception of iconic gestures are considered.
Gesture during speech in first and second language
Authors: Hadar Uri , Dar Rivka , Teitelman Amit
Published: September 2007

Many of the hand-arm gestures that accompany speech — especially wide and complex (‘ideational’) gestures — seem to be associated with speech dysfluencies and, it has been suggested, may facilitate word retrieval. Such facilitation may originate in either semantic or phonological processes. The present study has investigated this issue by looking at ideational gestures in five subjects who had Hebrew as first (L1) and English as second (L2) language. Their performance was monitored during speech in L1 and L2, as well as during a-vista translation from L1 to L2 and vice versa. It has been assumed that speech in L2 involves more lexical search than speech in L1 on both semantic and phonological levels. By contrast, translation between languages probably puts a heavier load on phonological processes than on semantic processes. This implies that speech in L2 should generate the highest rates of ideational gestures; translation into L2 should show the lowest gesture rates, while speech in L1 should show intermediate rates. These predictions were borne out by our results.
The dream body in somatic psychology
Authors: Young Katharine
Published: September 2007

Gestures have been investigated primarily as pictorial representations intended to communicate information to their perceivers visually. This paper argues that affiliative gestures, the gestures affiliated with words, are neither visual nor communicative. They are kinaesthetic apprehensions directed by gesturers to themselves. Perceivers do glean information from the gestures but this is not their primary intent. Gestural practices in a somatic therapeutic session provide a unique opportunity to examine the way gestures can be used to influence the gesturer. Specifically, gestures invest the gesturer in the narrative realm she conjures up on the therapeutic occasion, in this instance, a dream world. The somaticist then uses embodiments from the virtual space of the dream narrative to effect change on the therapeutic occasion. This practice illuminates the philosophical problem of free will: how we are able to influence our own embodied processes volitionally.
Symbolic gestures
Authors: Poggi Isabella
Published: September 2007

The paper describes some aspects of symbolic gestures, by providing examples from the Italian symbolic gestures, the autonomous culturally codified gestures used by Italian hearing people in everyday communication. It shows how the signal, the meaning and the norms of use of each gesture can be analyzed. The semantic aspects of symbolic gestures (context of use, synonyms, verbal formulation, meaning, grammatical and pragmatic classification) are illustrated in detail, a semantic typology of Italian symbolic gestures is presented, and it is shown how rhetorical figures are at work in their meanings as a source for synchronic polysemy and diachronic evolution. The paper finally presents the structure of the Italian gestionary, a dictionary in progress of Italian symbolic gestures.
Towards a grammar of gesture
Authors: Dutsch Dorota
Published: September 2007

In his Institutio (11.3.85–88), Quintilian divides all human gestures into “imitative” and “natural,” with natural gestures forming a symbolic code comparable to spoken language. This language of gesture would have included hand movements equivalent to adverbs, pronouns, nouns, and verbs. Such symbolic gestures, spontaneously accompanying words, were the only ones that Quintilian recommended for the orator.

The actor’s gestures, dependent as they were on the lines spoken — and not on the actor’s thoughts and feelings — could not be spontaneous. The gestures made on stage were imitative of the various categories of the natural (i.e. symbolic) gestures, or of actions of everyday life.
Gestural expression, perception and language
Authors: Fortuna Sara
Published: September 2007

This paper discusses J.J. Engel’s theory of mimicry, which is part of a broad discussion within German philosophy in late 1700 about physiognomics i.e. human bodily expression and perception. The core of Engel’s investigation consists in a theory of human gesture which avoid both the conventional and the physiological elements and focuses on the semantic and reflective components. The author shows how this reflection about the symbolic devices involved in gestural comprehension and communication develop a parallel reflection about the origin and functioning of verbal processes of communication.
A child’s point and the achievement of intentionality
Authors: Jones Sarah E. , Zimmerman Don H.
Published: September 2007

This paper examines the intentionality of very young children’s communicative action by looking at interactional sequences that are touched off by a child’s point. Young children use points and vocalizations, including “proto words,” to orient to some feature of their situation in a manner that makes relevant a response by the caregiver. These gestures initiate interactional sequences through which the caregiver locates a candidate specification of the point’s target. The child’s point is oriented to by caregivers as a recognizable action directed to some end. We suggest that intentionality, is a feature of participants’ production and recognition of actions becomes visible in interaction between the child and the caregiver as it unfolds in a particular situation.

The electronic edition of this article includes audio-visual data.
Gestures by advanced Spanish-English second-language learners
Authors: Sherman Jody , Nicoladis Elena
Published: September 2007

We examined the role of deictic (i.e., point) and symbolic (i.e., imagistic) gestures in advanced Spanish-English second-language learners to determine whether the role of gestures is consistent with that of intermediate second-language learners (i.e., Gullberg, 1998). Participants (10 L1 Spanish and 10 L1 English) watched two short cartoons and re-told the stories in both of their languages to native-speaking listeners who had never seen the film. Gestures were coded and analyzed in relation to word types from the verbal narratives. We found that participants used more deictic gestures in their second language, similar to the trend noted in previous research. Contrary to research with low or intermediate proficiency participants, however, symbolic gestures did not appear related to proficiency. Possible reasons for the differences in gesture use by proficiency are discussed.
The evolutionary socioecology of gestural communication
Authors: Blute Marion
Published: September 2007

This paper begins with a brief introduction to gestures in the context of communication, multi-process selection theory, and evolutionary socio-ecology. Evolutionary ecology asks, and seeks to answer the question of under what ecological conditions selection favors what kinds of characteristics including the behavioral characteristics oriented towards the physical environment and other species. While communication is sometimes involved in interactions among species, it is most prevalent among members of the same population or species. Evolutionary socio-ecology then asks and seeks to answer the same question about ecologically versus socially oriented characteristics as well as about the purely social. In discussing some general principles of the evolutionary socio-ecology of communication including gestures, this paper pays particular attention to the sometimes cooperative, sometimes antagonistic, and often mixed nature of social communication. It concludes with a discussion of what determines the ‘loudness’ of signals such as the vigor of gestures and what ‘rituals’ are communicating.
Gesture in evolutionary perspective
Authors: Bouissac Paul
Published: September 2007

Gesture is mostly a function of the upper limbs of Homo sapiens and is constrained by the skeleton and neuromuscular apparatus which have evolved under the selection pressures of arboreal environments. This article raises the issue of the early adaptations which determined the range of movements which made possible the emergence of gesture both technical and cultural. It addresses the problem of explaining in evolutionary terms the multi-functionality of the human hand and arm. It suggests that once early humans became bipedal further pressures combined to conserve and expand the range of adaptations afforded by the upper limbs through selection processes such as exaptation, niche construction and the Baldwin effect. It concludes that a theory of gesture must integrate evolutionary and developmental considerations.
Actors and the body
Authors: Astington John H.
Published: September 2007

The ways in which the performing of gesture is inscribed into the very texts of Shakespeare’s plays constitutes a “meta-theatrical” and “meta-gestural” discourse which this article analyses with reference to Hamlet, Othello, The Winter’s Tale and Twelfth Night. Shakespeare is shown to be a “gestural writer”, well versed in the rhetorical tradition and sensitive to the subtleties of body language within and without the world of stage.
Gestures accompanying Torah learning/recital among Yemenite Jews
Authors: Katsman Roman
Published: September 2007

The article discusses one of the most ancient and unique customs in Jewish liturgy — the hand movements that accompany the Torah recital ritual in the Yemenite Jewish tradition. They are usually perceived as connected to the melody path of the recital: as a technique for its memorization and performance. For the first time, these movements and the technique of their performance are being recorded, classified and described in a systematic scholar way, particularly in terms of anthropokinesics and task dynamics. Their connection is discussed to other elements and techniques of the ritual. The gestures have been studied in two major frameworks: Torah learning in a children’s religious class, and Torah recital in the synagogue. The article argues that the recital gestures function as a kind of body technique, whose cultural, symbolic, aesthetic and psycho-dynamic significance reaches much farther than memorization of the recital melody.
The motor system and the relationships between speech and gesture
Authors: Gentilucci Maurizio , Dalla Volta Riccardo
Published: September 2007

Studies of primate premotor cortex, and, in particular, of the so-called “mirror system” suggest a double hand/mouth motor command system that may have evolved initially in the context of ingestion, and later formed a platform for combined manual and vocal communication. In humans, manual gesture, when it accompanies speech, is tightly integrated with speech production. Speech production itself is influenced by executing or observing transitive actions, and manual actions also play an important role in language development in children, from the babbling stage onwards. Behavioural data reported here even show a reciprocal influence between word and symbolic gestures. Studies employing neuroimaging and repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (rTMS) techniques suggest that the system governing both speech and gesture is located in Broca’s area.
Gesture and institutional interaction
Authors: Heath Christian , Luff Paul
Published: September 2007

Despite the growing body of research concerned with talk and interaction in institutional settings, the ways in which complex forms of organisational activity are accomplished in and through gesture remain relatively neglected. In this paper, we consider auctions of fine art and antiques and examine the ways in which auctioneers deploy an organisation that creates competition and enables the price of goods to be rapidly escalated in a systematic and transparent manner. We explore the ways in which gesture and other forms of bodily conduct are used, with and within talk, to elicit, juxtapose and publicly reveal the actions of potential buyers and enable participants to have a sense of the source and integrity of the various contributions. We consider how the gesturing hands serve to engender specific actions and how they are transformed in the course of their articulation to respond to the contribution, or absence of contribution, of bidders. In various ways therefore, the paper is concerned with addressing how gesture and other forms of bodily conduct are interactionally articulated with talk so as to accomplish a highly specialised and contingent form of organisational activity; an activity that enables price to be rapidly escalated and the sale of goods to be witnessed by an audience on the fall of a hammer.
Totò’s talking body
Authors: Poole Gordon
Published: September 2007

The full-bodied, multi-faceted use of gesture by Italy’s beloved vaudeville and cinema comedian Antonio De Curtis, in art Totò, is rooted in the rich gesture language of Naples. Totò’s humble origins, the experience of poverty and deprivation, conditioned his art, as did his immersion as a mere child into the rough-and-tumble world of Neapolitan street theater. The teeming neighborhoods of Naples, a Baroque city, have made it into somewhat of a theatrum mundi, producing many fine actors and playwrights. The essay, illustrated by photograms from a few of Totò’s films, suggests that Neapolitan gesture, whose purpose is communication, is stylized by Totò and transformed into artistry of a high order.
L’étude de L’allemand en France
Authors: Kaltz Barbara
Published: September 2007

Cet article donne un aperçu sommaire de l’étude de l’allemand en France depuis ses débuts au XVIe siècle jusqu’à l’implantation des études germaniques dans l’enseignement supérieur, dans la seconde moitié du XIXe siècle. La perspective globale fait apparaître le poids des préjugés et idées reçues de toutes sortes qui ont déterminé la perception du fait allemand par les Français à travers les siècles. D’autre part, les étapes du processus long et laborieux que fut l’institutionnalisation de l’étude de l’allemand en France sont brièvement retracées.
Robert Dodsley and the Genesis of Lowth’s
Authors: Tieken-Boon van Ostade Ingrid
Published: September 2007

On the basis of an analysis of the correspondence of the 18h-century London bookseller Robert Dodsley (1703–1764), a proposal is offered concerning the origin of Robert Lowth’s (1710–1787) Short Introduction to English Grammar (1762). The author presents arguments which suggest that Lowth’s grammar was not his own idea but that of Dodsley, who also invoked the assistance of another author whose work he published, William Melmoth (1710–1799). If this thesis holds, Lowth’s grammar is just as much the outcome of a ‘bookseller’s project’, as Dr Johnson’s Dictionary (1755), the idea for which, according to Johnson’s biographer Boswell, also came from Dodsley.
The legacy of J. R. Firth
Authors: Rebori Victoria
Published: September 2007

The present paper is a report on research on the British linguist John Rupert Firth (1890–1960) carried out in Britain during the academic year 2000–2001. It sketches some characteristics of Firth’s personality, scholarly life and thinking based on two kinds of different sources: the testimonies of people who were close to him and recently found historical documents. The main contribution of this paper is to furnish fresh data about Firth’s biography with particular reference to the question of how he became interested in the science of language.
Contested past
Authors: Bergunder Michael
Published: September 2007

During the British colonial regime in the 19th century Western Indologists and missionaries, with the participation of the indigenous scholars who controlled traditional systems of knowledge, formed models for the description of early religious history which was especially inspired by linguistic ideas whose central concept was the so-called ‘Aryan immigration’ into Northern India. This Orientalist historiography concerning events that lay back several thousand years found its way into political and religious discourse in one form or another. These projections developed into highly significant ingredients of the various political, ethnic, and religious movements and parties, such as the Dravidian Movement or the Nationalist Hindu groupings. The present paper tries to map out the corner stones of modern-day discourses concerning Indian pre- and early history which has developed into something of a veritable battle about the past..
Reading theRemarqueurs
Authors: Ayres-Bennett Wendy
Published: September 2007

It is commonly stated that metalinguistic texts reflect the historical, social and intellectual context in which they are produced. In this article the author examines how later readings of ‘classic’ texts can both reflect the changing concerns of the time and colour subsequent readings of those texts. The case-study provided is the work of the three great 17th-century Frenchremarqueursor authors of volumes of observations on the French language – Claude Favre de Vaugelas (1585–1650), Gilles Ménage (1613–1692) and Dominique Bouhours (1628–1702); their observations were read by and assimilated into the work of subsequent French grammarians working within often very different socio-cultural and intellectual frames of reference. Readings of these volumes of remarks on French from each century following their publication are used to illustrate the argument.
A model of genre in document layout
Authors: Delin Judy , Bateman John A. , Allen Patrick
Published: September 2007

We present a framework for the describing the genres of illustrated documents, based on analysis at five levels: content structure, rhetorical structure, layout structure, navigation structure, and linguistic structure. We also include three sources of constraints under which a document might be produced and interpreted: canvas constraints, production constraints, and consumption constraints. Document genres are conceptualised as complex specifications composed of descriptions at each of the five levels that conform in characteristic ways to the three kinds of constraint. We propose that the eight parameters together form a ‘space’ of possible identities for documents, electronic or paper. The notion of ‘genre space’ captures the fact that it is possible for new genres to develop at different positions in the space, as well enabling relationships between document types, or even transformations between them, to be examined and described.
Social issues infotainment
Authors: Gregory Judy
Published: September 2007

Printed leaflets are widely used in social issues campaigns, but there is little evidence to suggest that they are consistently successful and little research to help campaigners decide what techniques will attract audience attention. Existing research suggests that leaflets may be successful for audiences who are actively looking for information, but less successful for audiences who either don’t know or don’t care about the topic being promoted. In this paper, I focus on the strategies that campaigners use to attract readers’ attention to social issues leaflets. I identify two broad message strategies – information/argument strategies and emotion/entertainment strategies – and, through a review of the social issues literature, examine how these strategies are typically used by campaigners. I review a collection of existing social issues leaflets to explore the strategies most frequently used, and analyse one leaflet to describe how attention-getting strategies are used in practice. Through my review of existing leaflets, I conclude that most leaflets adopt an information/argument strategy to present their information. I argue that this may explain why leaflets are most useful for audiences who are already interested in the topic. The information/argument strategy provides straightforward information: it assumes an interested audience and does little to attract audience attention. I question whether leaflets may be more successful with uninterested audiences if they adopted some of the attention-getting devices included in the emotion/entertainment message strategy.
The ‘magic number 5’
Authors: Barnum Carol
Published: September 2007

Common practice holds that 80% of usability findings are discovered after five participants. Recent findings from web testing indicate that a much larger number of participants is required to get results and that independent teams testing the same web-based product do replicate results. Other findings suggest that results improve when testing teams work closely with developers in planning the test. This paper presents an insider view of the CUE-2 evaluation that may stimulate further debate regarding the results, plus two cases in which different teams uncovered the same usability issues, working independently but closely with the sponsor.
Designing an interactive decision explorer
Authors: Wright Patricia , John Christopher , Belt Steve
Published: September 2007

Two interactive displays were designed that let people modify lifestyle hazard factors (e.g. diet/exercise) and see how this changed their likelihood of serious illness, such as coronary heart disease and stroke, in the next 10 years. Pilot testing showed it was better to create strong visual links between changing hazard factors and their effects on risk of illness, than to link hazard selections to their changes. Revisions to left-right sequencing on screen were needed when moving from graphic to tabular displays. This reflected the design principle of giving salience to the user’s goals through the visual rhetoric of the screen display.
Images as anti-smoking fear appeals
Authors: Timmers Rian , van der Wijst Per
Published: September 2007

The research questions in this study were: Is a fear appeal more effective in persuading a target group when it capitalizes on fears that live within that target group, and what role do emotions play in the persuasion process? In an experiment, the effects of capitalizing on fears within a target group of teenagers are studied. Furthermore, the role of smoking behavior on the persuasive power of fear appeals is taken into account. The results indicate that capitalizing on genuine fears did not result in more effective fear appeals. Emotions, however, play an important role in the persuasion process.
Fixedness in genre-specific language and intercultural differences
Authors: Shei Chi-Chiang
Published: September 2007

This article uses bilingual corpora to explore fixedness in a specific genre of human languages. It compares Chinese and English fire news reports and attempts to find features of fixedness in phraseology and textuality across the two languages from this particular perspective. First, collocations regarding fire incident processing are dealt with in both languages. Then the lexical units larger than collocations are explored, followed by a discussion on textual cohesion created by collocation and variable lexical units. A script model for the Chinese fire news texts is then proposed, to illustrate the concept of “text contour” in certain types of discourse. Finally, the implication of this fixedness and its variability across languages is discussed in terms of the problems it poses for language learners and translators.
Frequency of ‘core idioms’ in the British National Corpus (BNC)
Authors: Grant Lynn E.
Published: September 2007

This article looks at how a comprehensive list of one category of idioms, that of ‘core idioms’, was established. When the criteria to define a core idiom were strictly applied to a dictionary of idioms, the result was that the large number of ‘idioms’ was reduced to a small number of ‘core idioms’. The original list from the first source dictionary was added to by applying the same criteria to other idiom dictionaries, and other sources of idioms. Once the list was complete, a corpus search of the final total of 104 ‘core idioms’ was carried out in the British National Corpus (BNC). The search revealed that none of the 104 core idioms occurs frequently enough to merit inclusion in the 5,000 most frequent words of English.
Evolution and present situation of corpus research in China
Authors: Feng Zhiwei
Published: September 2007

In this paper, the author introduces in detail the development and present situation of corpus linguistics in China: earlier corpora, large-scale & authentic text corpora, national corpora, speech corpora, bilingual corpora and corpora of minority languages in China. The various processing techniques for corpora are also introduced: automatic word segmentation of Chinese text, automatic PoS tagging, automatic tagging of phrase structure and automatic alignment of bilingual corpora. This paper is a bird’s-eye view of corpus linguistics of China. Finally, the author discusses several problems in present corpus research: standardization of corpus specifications, commonly sharing of language resources, knowledge properties, etc.
Lexical bundles and discourse signalling in academic lectures
Authors: Nesi Hilary , Basturkmen Helen
Published: September 2007

This paper discusses some approaches to the categorisation of cohesive devices with reference to spoken academic discourse, multi-word units, and strings of frequently co-occurring words (lexical bundles). It goes on to investigate the cohesive role of lexical bundles in a corpus of 160 university lectures (120 from the BASE corpus and 40 from MICASE). Like the bundles from the T2K SWAL teaching subcorpus, investigated by Biber, Conrad and Cortes (2004), the bundles in the lecture corpus included both ‘oral’ and ‘literate’ elements. The majority of frequently occurring bundles were found to be used to signal discourse relations, although their cohesive function was not necessarily obvious when listed out of context.
because of the role of er front office um in hotel
Authors: Warren Martin
Published: September 2007

This paper describes lexical cohesion across participants in a discourse, and across discourse events, and the additional contribution made by speakers’ choices of prominence in the cohesive chains. The choice of prominence is made to communicate what is perceived to be situationally informative in the local context of interaction (Brazil 1985 and 1997). This study describes a connection between a speaker’s choice of a lexical or non-lexical word in a cohesive chain and the speaker’s choice of prominence and, in doing so, offers a partial explanation to the question Hoey (1991:17) asks of Winter (1974 and 1979): ‘under what circumstances do we use one (cohesive device) rather than the other?’. It also describes how the selection of prominence across speakers in a discourse can signal divergence and convergence between them. Lastly, the paper discusses the pedagogical implications of the study with regard to English language learning and teaching.
Describing the extended meanings of lexical cohesion in a corpus of SARS spoken discourse
Authors: Cheng Winnie
Published: September 2007

The study reported in this paper applies Sinclair’s (2004) descriptive model of lexical items, which consists of five categories of co-selection: two obligatory categories the core and semantic prosody, and three optional categories collocation, colligation and semantic preference. The study examines a selection of spoken discourse events collected in Hong Kong during and in the immediate aftermath of the SARS crisis in 2003. These discourse events form part of the Hong Kong Corpus of Spoken English (HKCSE). The findings show that once the overlapping patterns of co-selection of the most frequently occurring lexical words in the SARS corpus have been determined, it is possible to describe the cumulative effects of the habitual co-selection in the lexical items that contribute to textual meanings and coherence within and across the texts. It is argued that patterns of co-selection provide a fuller picture of textual and intertextual coherence than concentrating solely on lexical cohesion.
Lexical cohesion
Authors: Mahlberg Michaela
Published: September 2007

Cohesion is generally described with regard to two broad categories: ‘grammatical cohesion’ and ‘lexical cohesion’. These categories reflect a view on language that treats grammar and lexis along separate lines. Language teaching textbooks on cohesion often follow this division. In contrast, a corpus theoretical approach to the description of English prioritises lexis and does not assume that lexical and grammatical phenomena can be clearly distinguished. Consequently, cohesion can be seen in a new light: cohesion is created by interlocking lexico-grammatical patterns and overlapping lexical items. A corpus theoretical approach to cohesion has important implications for English language teaching. The article looks at difficulties of teaching cohesion, shows links between communicative approaches to ELT and corpus linguistics, and suggests practical applications of corpus theoretical concepts.