bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Gesture and speech rephrasings in conversation
Authors: Tabensky Alexis
Published: September 2007

In conversation it is common for participants to take up and repeat or rephrase in various ways what their partners say. Through the analysis of some extracts of conversations recorded on video, this paper shows that speakers can rephrase their partners’ gestures as well as their words. The focus is on the operations that the speakers (the “recipients” in the study) perform upon their partners’ speech and gesture, and in particular, on the positioning of the gesture relative to the verbal item in the new utterance. The study suggests that speakers can treat gesture and speech as a whole or as independent materials that can be separated or fused to form new language units.
The nature, morphology and functions of gestures, manners and postures as documented by creative literature
Authors: Poyatos Fernando
Published: September 2007

The aim of this article is to show how the creative literatures of the different cultures offer kinesic researchers a reliable and virtually inexhaustible corpus of documentation which can enrich kinesic research by contributing to a detailed morphological and functional taxonomy of visual behaviors. Furthermore, besides its theoretical and methodological implications, this perspective suggests the interdisciplinary consequences and additional research avenues derived from this use of literature (further susceptible of being complemented by data found in the representational arts, particularly painting and the better book illustrations) in the study of peoples communicative movements and positions within areas like semiotics, anthropology, sociology and psychology.
Pragmatic aspects of representational gestures
Authors: Holler Judith , Beattie Geoffrey
Published: September 2007

Two studies are reported that investigate how speakers use gesture in association with verbal ambiguity in two communicational situations characteristic of everyday talk. The first study uses a design that mimics a speaker’s self-repair initiated by the listener, while the second study involves speakers producing longer stretches of speech involving lexical ambiguity, without the listener interacting verbally with the speaker. The findings of both studies show that speakers do use gesture to clarify verbal ambiguity. Moreover, they suggest that the speaker’s awareness of a potential communication problem, and the fact that this communication problem is associated with the speech itself, are crucial variables influencing speakers’ gestural behaviour. Differences in the complexity of the form of the gestures are also observed and the theoretical implications of this are discussed. Overall, these studies provide important insights into semantic and pragmatic aspects of representational hand gestures and speech-gesture interaction in everyday talk.
Gesture and right hemisphere involvement in evaluating lecture material
Authors: Kelly Spencer D. , Goldsmith Leslie H.
Published: September 2007

This study investigated hemispheric lateralization in comprehending and evaluating lecture material with and without nonverbal hand gestures. Participants watched a lecture with and without gesture under conditions of cognitive load in the left or right hemisphere. There were no effects of gesture or load on lecture comprehension, but gesture and load influenced how participants evaluated the lecture. Specifically, presence of gesture significantly influenced participants’ affective evaluations of the lecturer in both load conditions. However, gesture influenced cognitive evaluations of the lecture material only when the right hemisphere was free from cognitive load. The results suggest that the right hemisphere may be specialized for processing information conveyed through hand gestures.
Linguistic influences on gesture’s form
Authors: Gerwing Jennifer , Bavelas Janet
Published: September 2007

Hand gestures in face-to-face dialogue are symbolic acts, integrated with speech. Little is known about the factors that determine the physical form of these gestures. When the gesture depicts a previous nonsymbolic action, it obviously resembles this action; however, such gestures are not only noticeably different from the original action but, when they occur in a series, are different from each other. This paper presents an experiment with two separate analyses (one quantitative, one qualitative) testing the hypothesis that the immediate communicative function is a determinant of the symbolic form of the gesture. First, we manipulated whether the speaker was describing the previous action to an addressee who had done the same actions and therefore shared common ground or to one who had done different actions and therefore did not share common ground. The common ground gestures were judged to be significantly less complex, precise, or informative than the latter, a finding similar to the effects of common ground on words. In the qualitative analysis, we used the given versus new principle to analyze a series of gestures about the same actions by the same speaker. The speaker emphasized the new information in each gesture by making it larger, clearer, etc. When this information became given, a gesture for the same action became smaller or less precise, which is similar to findings for given versus new information in words. Thus the immediate communicative function (e.g., to convey information that is common ground or that is new) played a major role in determining the physical form of the gestures.
Gestural communication in three species of macaques (Macaca mulatta, M. nemestrina, M. arctoides)
Authors: Maestripieri Dario
Published: September 2007

The present study compared the frequency and contextual usage of the most prominent gestural signals of dominance, submission, affiliation, and bonding in rhesus, pigtail, and stumptail macaques living in captivity. Most similarities among species were found in signals of dominance and submission and most differences in affiliative gestures and bonding patterns. Rhesus macaques have a relatively poor gestural repertoire, pigtail macaques possess conspicuous signals of affiliation and bonding, and stumptail macaques have the richest repertoire of assertive and submissive signals. The similarities and differences in the gestural repertoires of rhesus, pigtail, and stumptail macaques can be related to the intragroup social dynamics of these species as well as to their evolutionary history.
Multimodal concomitants of manual gesture by chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes)
Authors: Leavens David A. , Hopkins William D.
Published: September 2007

It is well-established that chimpanzees vocalize more in the presence of relatively large amounts of food. The present study administered four trials in random order to each of 20 chimpanzees: (1) small piece of fruit, placed near to cage (~30 cm.), (2) large piece of fruit, placed near to cage, (3) small piece of fruit, placed far from cage (~130 cm.), and (4) large piece of fruit, placed far from cage. On arrival of an experimenter, the chimpanzees not only vocalized more in the presence of the large piece of fruit, confirming previous studies’ findings, but also exhibited more multimodal behavior (vocalizations, manual gestures, and gaze alternation between the food and the experimenter), which extends previous research. More gaze alternation was exhibited to food placed more peripherally. Arousal may be indexed in this species by the number of modalities in which they communicate.
From action to language through gesture
Authors: Capirci Olga , Contaldo Annarita , Caselli Maria Cristina , Volterra Virginia
Published: September 2007

The present study reports empirical longitudinal data on the early stages of language development. The main hypothesis is that the output systems of speech and gesture may draw on underlying brain mechanisms common to both language and motor functions. We analyze the spontaneous interaction with their parents of three typically-developing children (2 M, 1 F) videotaped monthly at home between 10 and 23 months of age. Data analyses focused on the production of actions, representational and deictic gestures and words, and gesture-word combinations. Results indicate that there is a continuity between the production of the first action schemes, the first gestures and the first words produced by children. The relationship between gestures and words changes over time. The onset of two-word speech was preceded by the emergence of gesture-word combinations. The results are discussed in order to integrate and support the evolutionary and neurophysiological views of language origins and development.
The two faces of gesture
Authors: Goldin-Meadow Susan
Published: September 2007

Gesture is typically produced with speech, forming a fully integrated system with that speech. However, under unusual circumstances, gesture can be produced completely on its own — without speech. In these instances, gesture takes over the full burden of communication usually shared by the two modalities. What happens to gesture in these two very different contexts? One possibility is that there are no differences in the forms gesture takes in these two contexts — that gesture is gesture no matter what its function. But, in fact, that’s not what we find. When gesture is produced on its own, it assumes the full burden of communication and takes on a language-like form, with sentence-level ordering rules, word-level paradigms, and grammatical categories. In contrast, when gesture is produced in conjunction with speech, it shares the burden of communication with speech and takes on a global imagistic form, often conveying information not found anywhere in speech. Gesture thus changes its form according to its function.
When size really matters
Authors: Beattie Geoffrey , Shovelton Heather
Published: September 2007

Although some studies have demonstrated that imagistic gestures do communicate significant amounts of information none have attempted to analyze the significance of that information for the linguistic account within which it is embedded. This study focuses on the semantic dimension size and in a corpus of narratives identifies every single instance of size information and identifies whether this size information is encoded in speech, in gesture, or in speech and gesture. Crucially, it considers the judged relative importance of each instance of size information. It was discovered that high importance size information was significantly more likely to be encoded in gesture rather than in speech, whereas low importance size information was more likely to be encoded in speech rather than in gesture. This suggests that speakers may vary what information is encoded gesturally, according to its salience for the overall meaning to be conveyed. This result has major implications for the conceptualization of how gesture and speech work together in everyday talk.
Gestures as embodied cognition
Authors: Kinsbourne Marcel
Published: September 2007

Fundamental dimensions of behavior include approach, withdrawal, domination, submission, indicating and dearousing maneuvers. Generically, approach involves flexion at many joints, withdrawal involves extension. Dominating involves moving upwards, submitting involves moving downwards. Indicating involves pointing. Repetitive meaningless motions control anxiety. These movement patterns are found in behaviorally simple animals, and in young infants, except for pointing, which emerges in babies at about 11 months of age. When human adults express thoughts that have directional attributes in fact or in metaphor, co-occurring gestures are likely to have corresponding characteristics that are observed early in neuromotor development.
Gestures in the manuscripts of Terence and late revivals of literary drama
Authors: Dutsch Dorota
Published: September 2007

Several manuscripts of Terence feature a cycle of miniatures depicting masked actors. The miniatures mark scene-headings and on this account have often been dismissed as merely decorative and irrelevant to the history of ancient theater. Nevertheless, the pictures project an illusion of theatricality so irresistible and lively, that it is hardly possible that the illustrated Terence does not reflect some sort of performance practice.

This paper focuses on the code of gesture depicted in the miniatures and examines its relationship with late revivals of literary drama. I first discuss the iconographic and textual evidence pertaining to the date of the prototype of the miniatures; I then examine Quintilian’s remarks on dramatic gesture in order to outline the code he associated with the stage. This outline serves as a comparandum for the typology of gestures depicted in the Parisian codex of Terence (B.N. 7899), which is based on an analysis of the set of hand positions used to illustrate the Andria. (A glossary decoding the gestures of the Andria and comparing them with both hand positions from Quintilian’s catalogue and those known from earlier iconography is appended to the end of this paper.) The results of this comparison, along with some observations on the artist’s technique, suggest an answer to the question of which (if any) performance practice the miniatures could reflect.
The role of gesture in memory and social communication
Authors: Breckinridge Church Ruth , Garber Philip , Rogalski Kathryn
Published: September 2007

This study asked whether: (1) adults process representational gesture and (2) gesture is remembered over time. Forty-five college students (ages 22–38) were each randomly assigned to watch a set of Speech Only and Speech + Gesture video stimuli (containing statements that were extracted from social conversation) either in an immediate or delayed condition. After watching the videotape, participants were asked to write recollections of the video stimuli either immediately after watching the videotape or thirty minutes later. We found that gesture was processed along with speech and that unlike speech, it was less likely to deteriorate over time. Moreover, speech stimuli that were accompanied by gesture were significantly more likely to be recalled than speech stimuli occurring without gesture. These results suggest that gesture is processed by adults along with speech during communication and that gesture might have a different status in memory than speech.
Aus dem leben eines lautgesetzes
Authors: Romaschko Sergej A.
Published: September 2007

Das, was man in der Indogermanistik als ‘das Graßmann’sche Gesetz’ bezeichnet, erscheint dem Autor dieses Beitrags zufolge oft nicht identisch mit dem, was den tatsächlichen Beitrag Hermann Graßmanns (1809–1877) ausmachte und was er selbst als seine persönliche Leistung betrachtete. Der Versuch, die authentische Entdeckung und ihren Unterschied von den früheren Arbeiten festzustellen, zeigt, daß die von Graßmann vorgeschlagene Interpretation vom theoretischen Gesamtkontext der indogermanischen Rekonstruktionsarbeit der Zeit abhängig war. Die spätere Verschiebung des Kontexts verursachte auch die Veränderungen in der Interpretation derselben empirischen Tatsachen (die man von der Graßmann’schen Interpretation unterscheiden muß) und markierte eine neue Phase in der Geschichte des ‘Graßmann’schen Gesetzes’.
Le développement des idées saussuriennes chez Charles Bally et Albert Sechehaye
Authors: Amacker René
Published: September 2007

Charles Bally (1865–1947) et Albert Sechehaye (1870–1946), linguistes déjà affirmés à la mort de Saussure, n’ont pas vraiment profité du CLG pour établir leurs doctrines respectives, que les thèses saussuriennes leur ont plutôt permis de préciser que de modifier. En revanche, on surprend chez eux, avant 1913, des traces d’une influence privée de Saussure, qui explique certaines convergences terminologiques et conceptuelles, quoique partielles (notamment sur signe, système et langue ~ parole). Après le Cours, Bally se servira assez artificiellement des idées saussuriennes, tandis que Sechehaye finira par se rapprocher remarquablement de ce qu’en sera l’interprétation moderne.
La linguistique générale de Ferdinand de Saussure
Authors: Bouquet Simon
Published: September 2007

On parle aujourd’hui d’un ‘retour à Saussure’. Comment cette expression doit-elle s’entendre au regard de l’histoire éditoriale complexe des textes saussuriens de linguistique générale? Comme un retour à des idées de Saussure que l’on a connues grâce au Cours de linguistique générale? ou comme un retour à des textes pour partie méconnus, pour partie inédits? Répondre à ces questions implique de revenir sur la singulière histoire éditoriale en question. C’est ce que fait cet article, en présentant à la fois le corpus des textes disponibles et l’histoire de leur éditions, avant d’évoquer sur ce que pourrait ètre un retour à Saussure, aujourd’hui, en termes de contenus.
More about Saussure
Authors: Lepschy Giulio
Published: September 2007

Some comments are offered on the history of Saussure’s reception and on the relation between the text of the Cours de linguistique générale and (a) the manuscript material on which it is based, and (b) Saussure’s own reflections, in as far as they are ascertainable. The discussion leads up to a review of Simon Bouquet’s Introduction à la lecture de Saussure (Paris, 1997).
Saussure translated
Authors: Sanders Carol
Published: September 2007

This article examines the degree to which Saussure has been well served in English translation. It looks at features such as the disappearance of markers of uncertainty and the contribution of sentence structure to the development of a convincing argument, to see how these fare in the various versions. Taking the key Saussurean terms of langage, langue and parole, it evaluates the translations of the Cours de linguistique générale by Baskin (1959), Harris (1983), as well as those edited by Harris, Komatsu and Wolf (1993, 1996, 1997).
The efforts of the Aubrey correspondence group to revise John Wilkins’Essay(1668) and their context
Authors: Lewis Rhodri
Published: September 2007

In the aftermath of the publication of John Wilkins’sEssay towards a Real Character and a Philosophical Language(1668), the Royal Society established a committee to consider and develop Wilkins’s proposals, whose members included Seth Ward (1617–89), Robert Hooke (1635–1703), Robert Boyle (1627–1691), John Wallis (1616–1703), John Ray (1627–1705), Christopher Wren (1632–1723) and William Holder (1616–1698). Despite the fact that this committee never reported, work on theEssaydid continue, with many of the individual members conducting a detailed correspondence, marshalled by John Aubrey (1626–1697). In addition to the members of the original Royal Society committee, this group’s participants included Francis Lodwick (1619–1694), the Somerset clergyman Andrew Paschall (c.1630–c.1696), and Thomas Pigott (1657–1686), fellow of Wadham College, Oxford. The correspondents could not, however, agree on the best means of advancing theEssay, with the principal bone of contention being the ideas of Seth Ward. Thus, their efforts were eventually fruitless. This article traces the activities of this group and the intellectual milieu in which the revision of Wilkins’sEssaytook place.
Dutch linguists between Humboldt and Saussure
Authors: Noordegraaf Jan
Published: September 2007

The impact Ferdinand de Saussure’sCours de linguistique générale(1916) had on Dutch linguistics in the 1930s and 1940s has not yet become the object of a thorough investigation. It can be pointed out, however, that in the interwar period Dutch reactions to theCourswere of a mixed character. When one finds Saussure’s book referred to by leading Dutch linguists such as Etsko Kruisinga (1875–1944), H. J. Pos (1898–1955) and A. W. de Groot (1892–1963), the question should be asked to what extent theCourswas seen as a new and important specimen of linguistic theorizing. Moreover, it can be argued that several Dutch linguists felt themselves to be in a different linguistic tradition. Such is definitely the case with Jac. van Ginneken (1877–1945). He took part in the organization of the first international congress of linguists (1928) and the first international phonetic congress (1932). Although critical of theCours, he sympathized with the Prague approach to phonology, of which he was one of the early propagandists in Western Europe. However, he did not become a confirmed structuralist. Practising a holistic approach to language and culture he felt more affinity with the ‘Neolinguists’, and tended to revert to 19th-century thinkers such as Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835), as some of his papers clearly show. In an intriguing posthumous essay,Het mysterie der menschelijke taal(‘The mystery of human language’, 1946), Van Ginneken acknowledged that over the years language had become a mystery to him.
Speculations about thePotestas Litterarumin medieval grammar (11th through 13th centuries)
Authors: Rodríguez Estrella Pérez
Published: September 2007

The aim of this paper is to study the concept ofpotestas, one of the three ‘accidents’ of ‘letters’ in the Roman tradition. More specifically, it intends to examine the way in which the speculative grammarians from the 11th to the 13th centuries dealt with speech sounds and which issues were attached to it. The commentators of the beginning of this period mapped out the route to be followed in the attempt at a thorough explanation and systematization of Prisician’s adumbrations. To that purpose, they forged the successful termmodus pronunciandiand classified thepotestasinto five types. This chapter was granted as much discussion as any other: some concepts and terminology of the Aristotelian universe were employed in it (e.g., the opposition substantial/accidental, potentiality/act). Nevertheless, some remarkable differences between the points of view of the 12th-century grammarians and those of the 13th-century have been observed, among them the interest on the part of the latter in the generation of sound. In this century, two works, the anonymousTractatus de grammaticaand John Dacus’s modisticSumma, held for different reasons a very particular position in the evolution of the doctrine on thepotestas. In this respect, the influence of the former on the latter has been noticed. With their speculations all these medieval grammarians succeded in differentiating two levels within the realm of speech sounds.
The asterisk from historical to descriptive and theoretical linguistics
Authors: Graffi Giorgio
Published: September 2007

The use of the asterisk in descriptive and theoretical linguistics is attested well before the 1950s (contrary to what has been maintained by Householder in 1973). It is suggested that the meaning of the asterisk was extended from that of ‘unattested form’, which was standard in historical linguistics, to that of ‘unattested form’ in sense of ‘non-existent’; a further step was to assign to the asterisk the meaning of ‘impossible form’, hence also of ‘ungrammatical sentence’.
Die ursprünglichen fragestellungen hinter August schleichers Stammbaum-Theorie und Johannes Schmidts Wellen-Metapher
Authors: van Pottelberge Jeroen
Published: September 2007

August Schleicher’s genealogical tree (Stammbaum) and Johannes Schmidt’s wave metaphor (Welle) are very well known linguistic concepts. At the same time there has been a widespread misunderstanding about their original meaning and the questions they were intended to deal with. Both were originally classificatory concepts, not models of language change. Schleicher, on the one hand, introduced theStammbaumby transforming hierarchical classes of Indo-European languages into successive historical stages. Schmidt, on the other hand, rejected the idea of subgrouping Indo-European languages as required by Schleicher’sStammbaum. Instead, he assumed an original continuum of languages. He described this continuum metaphorically in terms of concentric ‘waves’. The interpretation of the wave image as a metaphor for the geographical spread of linguistic innovations (as has become common) is the result of later adaptations in dialectology.
Lexicography and the Evolution of Consciousness
Authors: Subbiondo Joseph L.
Published: September 2007

Owen Barfield (1898–1997), a cultural critic and historian, has been appreciated by literary scholars and artists including C. S. Lewis, T. S. Eliot, and W. H. Auden, but he has been relatively unnoticed by linguists despite the fact that he advanced a thoughtfully reasoned and documented theory of language history throughout his many writings. In his theory of etymological semantics, Barfield asserted that the etymology of words reveals an evolution of human consciousness. Barfield’s relationship between language and consciousness is significant to the history of linguistics because he not only described what changed in a language’s history, but he also explained why it changed. In his seminal History in English Words (1926), a book written at the beginning of his nearly 70-year career as a scholar and writer, Barfield initially presented his theory with examples from the history of English beginning with its origins in Indo-European. This theory became a central and unifying theme in all of his work – a theory which he refined and expanded in many later writings, especially in Poetic Diction (1928), Speaker’s Meaning (1967), and History, Guilt, and Habit (1979).
Gab es eine Fachsprachenforschung im 17. Jahrhundert?
Authors: Klein Wolf Peter
Published: September 2007

Der vorliegende Aufsatz legt am Beispiel des Universalgelehrten Johann Heinrich Alsted (1588–1638) dar, dass man sich bereits im 17. Jahrhundert systematisch mit Fachsprachen beschäftigte. Die damalige Fachsprachenforschung war hauptsächlich lexikographisch orientiert und stand in enger Verbindung zur Entwicklung der vergleichenden Sprachwissenschaft ihrer Zeit. Methodologisch orientierte sie sich an fest umrissenen lexikologischen Analysekategorien, mit denen sich vor allem semantische und etymologische Spezifika der Fachwörter in den Blick nehmen ließen. Dabei analysierte man, wenn nötig, auch die Differenz der Fachsprache zur Gemeinsprache. Ferner wurden zur Darstellung der Fachwortschätze avancierte Darstellungstechniken der Zeit wie die Lehre von denloci communesund ramistische Theorieversatzstücke genutzt. Die Übertragung der lateinisch-griechischen Terminologie in die verschiedenen Volkssprachen spielte bei dieser Beschäftigung noch keine Rolle. Stattdessen müssen die Bemühungen zur Identifikation und Analyse der Fachlexik als konstitutive Bestandteile der einschlägigen universalwissenschaftlichen Entwürfe und Projekte gesehen werden.
Language as the Key to the Epistemological Labyrinth
Authors: Lifschitz Avi S.
Published: September 2007

A belief in a firm correspondence between objects, ideas, and their representation in language pervaded the works of Anne Robert Jacques Turgot (1727–1781) in 1750. This conviction is particularly manifest in Turgot’s sharp critique of Berkeley’s philosophical system and his remarks on Maupertuis’s reconstruction of the origin of language. During the 1750s Turgot’s epistemological views underwent a change, apparent in two of his contributions to the Encyclopédie: the entries Existence and Étymologie (1756). These articles included a reassessment of Berkeleyan immaterialism, facing an ultimate crisis of definition and representation. A similar development may be traced in contemporary works by Condillac and Diderot. Turgot’s Encyclopédie entries also envisaged a new science, an archeology of the human mind aided by the examination of linguistic development and change. This entailed the scientific verification of conjectures in any historical account of ideas, turning etymological and psychological inquiries into what Turgot termed ‘experimental metaphysics’.
The definitions of the Greek Middle Voice between Apollonius Dyscolus and Constantinus Lascaris
Authors: Signes-Codoñer Juan
Published: September 2007

The present study offers a typological and a chronological classification of all the extant definitions of the middle voice from Apollonius Dyscolus (2nd century A. D.) to Constantinus Lascaris (1434–1501), the last significant Byzantine grammarian of the Modern times. As a result of the investigation, it becomes clear that there was no generally acknowledged definition of the middle voice in the Greek grammatical tradition until the Renaissance, when the last Byzantine grammarians attempted an all-embracing and complex systematization of the verbal voices. Before that time, what we find is a range of five different definitions, which were combined in different ways by Greek grammarians according to their needs and the scope of their works. Accordingly, the Greek Canones (morphological tables which listed and commented all variant forms of the corresponding verbal conjugations) generally stressed the morphological differences of the middle forms, whereas the Syntaxes neglected morphology and centred on the semantics and syntactic constructions of the middle verbal paradigms. The combination of both criteria in the more general and theoretical Grammars would thus allow for a variety of interpretations.
The linguistic thought of Friedrich August Wolf
Authors: Haug Dag
Published: September 2007

This paper examines the linguistic thought of Friedrich August Wolf (1759–1824), the founder of modern classical philology, and tries to show that contrary to what is commonly assumed, grammar played an important role in his research program for a ‘science of antiquity’. Specifically, Wolf encouraged the study of philosophical grammar, which was the leading linguistic paradigm in Germany around 1800, and he developed an original theory of tense within this methodological framework. But philosophical grammar would appear obsolete soon after the establishment of historical-comparative linguistics and this, it is argued, is an important reason for the enmities in the first half of the 19th century between Indo-Europeanists and the Classical scholars who stayed within the old linguistic paradigm.
Mythe aryen et référent linguistique indo-européen dans la Russie du XIXe siècle
Authors: Laruelle Marlène
Published: September 2007

Like the other European countries, Russia of the 19th century experienced much of the same scholarly discourse concerning the Aryan idea. The Russian Aryan myth distinguishes itself from the German and French versions by the absence of racialism and its Orthodox anchoring, this way offering the possibility of a certain ‘decentralization’ in the face of the Western experience of Aryanism. This difference often permits Slavophile intellectual circles at the periphery of the classic university life to develop a genealogical discourse concerning nationhood and the legitimization of the imperial expansion of Russia in Asia and the Far East. As a result, the Aryan reference blossomed in the historical and archaeological arguments for the justification of the supposed national continuity and statehood between the ancient Scythian world and contemporary Russia. The proximity between the Slavic and the Indo-Iranian languages, of the Oriental branch of the Indo-European family, would naturally constitute, for the Slavophiles, a scientific argument in favour of the Aryan assertion of Russia : the competition between the Germanic peoples and the Slaves for the most ancient antiquity is then transposed into the notion of language.
Reichling and De Groot
Authors: Elffers Els
Published: September 2007

Dutch structuralism developed during the first half of the 20th century as a heterogeneous movement. Interest in the works of Karl Bühler (1879–1963), however, can be observed in the publications of Dutch linguists as different as Albert Willem de Groot (1892–1963) and Anton Reichling (1898–1986), professors of General Linguistics at the universities of, respectively, Utrecht and Amsterdam. Although the ways in which they discuss and make use of Bühler’s insights differ widely, in agreement with their very divergent theoretical orientations, there is one common element: both scholars discovered and criticized, independently of each other, the same ambiguity in the famous organon-model, presented by Bühler in hisSprachtheorie(1934).
Structuralism and Autonomy
Authors: Anderson John M.
Published: September 2007

Structuralism sought to introduce various kinds of autonomy into the study of language, including the autonomy of that study itself. The basis for this was the insistence on categorial autonomy, whereby categories are identified language-internally (whether in a particular language or in language generally). In relation to phonology, categorial autonomy has generally been tempered by grounding: the categories correlate (at least prototypically) with substance, phonetic properties. This is manifested in the idea of ‘natural classes’ in generative phonology, for instance. Usually, however, and particularly since Bloomfield, no such grounding (in meaning) has been attributed to syntax. This attitude culminates in the principle of the autonomy of syntax which was put forward in transformational-generative grammar. Such an attitude can be contrasted not merely with most pre-structural linguistics but also, in its severity, with other developments in structuralism. In present-day terms, the groundedness of syntax assumes that only the behaviour of semantically typical members of a category determines its basic syntax, and this syntax reflects the semantic properties; groundedness filters out potential syntactic analyses that are incompatible with this.
Biographische Kohärenz in der Wechselwirkung von Philologie und (R‑)Emigration
Authors: Lang Ewald
Published: September 2007

The article portrays Wolfgang Steinitz (1905–1967) as an broad-minded linguist, whose life was determined by the political events in Europe between 1924 and 1967 and by his personal fate as a Jewish scientist, as a German communist of middle-class intellectual origin, and as a refugee to the USSR, Estonia and Sweden, who became an influential figure in the humanities in post-war East Germany. The paper focuses on detecting features of an inner biographical coherence in Steinitz’oeuvre – despite the outer changes he had to experience with respect to political systems (Nazi-Germany, Stalin’s Soviet Union, Sweden, Soviet-occupied East-Germany/GDR) and scientific fields he had to deal with (Finno-Ugristics, Ostyakology, folklore, ethnology, German studies, and other subjects). The paper illustrates features of biographical coherence emerging from a productive connection of personal motivation and philological method. The way in which Steinitz (1934) analyzed the grammatical parallelisms in Finno-Karelian folk poetry as ‘variations under conditions of contrast’ provides the over-all pattern for the range of scientific endeavours he addressed in his subsequent scientific undertakings. With reference to the personal friendship of the two émigré scholars Wolfgang Steinitz and Roman Jakobson, the paper suggests the life-saving role a commitment to scientific work can play as a balancing pole in difficult political times.
James Merrick (1720–1769)
Authors: Tieken-Boon van Ostade Ingrid
Published: September 2007

At the end of the preface to hisShort Introduction to English Grammar(1762) Robert Lowth (1710–1787) makes an appeal for comments on his work. This article analyses his correspon­dence with James Merrick (1720–1769), a friend and fellow scholar, written between December 1761 and October 1764, in which he receives such comments. The discussion is an illustration of the current debate at the time as to whether Custom or Propriety should be invoked in deciding on correct usage. It shows first and foremost that Lowth’s attitude to grammar was focussed on the level of usage rather than the structure of the language.
‘…to this rule there are many exceptions’
Authors: Tomalin Marcus
Published: September 2007

This article assesses Robert Maunsell’s (1810–1894)Grammar of the New Zealand Language(1842). In particular, it is shown that, contrary to established belief, Maunsell’sGrammarwas not exclusively based upon European or Hebrew grammatical models, but rather that it constituted an intriguing synthesis of different aspects of both traditions. Consequently, the relationship between Maunsell’s work and influential English texts such as Robert Lowth’sA Short Introduction to English Grammar(1762) and Lindley Murray’sEnglish Grammar(1795) is explored in considerable detail in an attempt to indicate exactly how the 18th century English grammatical tradition influenced the demanding task of analysing an indigenous language encountered in a British colony in the early 19th century.
L’abandon progressif du fonctionnalisme dans les travaux de William Labov
Authors: Verleyen Stijn
Published: September 2007

This paper traces the gradual abandonment of a functionalist perspective in labovian sociolinguistics. In an introductory point, the influence of French functionalism on William Labov, via Uriel Weinreich, is discussed. In the central part of the paper, Labov’s changing attitude towards functionalism is analysed, by distinguishing between different meanings of ‘functionalism’ and ‘functional’. It is shown how Labov gradually rejects the functionalist inspiration that was important in the beginning of his career. The reasons for this change in perspective, and its consequences, are examined. It is concluded that the rejection of the functionalist hypothesis does not affect the core of Labov’s work, which focuses on the correlation of social and linguistic structures. However, it leads to a very different conception of the nature of language variation and change.
Displaying multi-domain graphical databases
Authors: Kroft Paul , Wickens Christopher D.
Published: September 2007

Display designers are often given the challenge of placing a large amount of information within a limited amount of display ‘real estate’. One possible solution to the problem is combining databases of information pertaining to the same spatial area into one, integrated display, reducing the amount of scanning required and allowing information to be presented in a larger display. On the other hand, integration will also increase the clutter of the displays. The effects of clutter may be mitigated through the use of decluttering techniques, but some of these solutions may require additional user interactivity. In the experiment, student pilots used six display configurations to answer multiple choice questions about the current airspace situation. Two databases, a navigation database and an air hazard database, were presented in each display. In addition, the type of question (focused or divided attention) was manipulated to assess the effects of the task on display performance. Responses were faster when the databases were integrated than separated, particularly when questions required integration across both databases, where accuracy also was greater. These results suggest that the combined benefits of reduced scanning and larger display size outweigh the costs of clutter. Interaction of any sort imposed a time cost, which was greatest when the questions involved both databases.
Types of information?
Authors: Andrews Michael
Published: September 2007

http://www.informationdesign.org
Conceptual maps in e-learning
Authors: Armani Jacopo , Rocci Andrea
Published: September 2007

The paper presents a design strategy for e-learning hypermedia interfaces based on the notion of conceptual-navigational map. It proposes to analyze the cognitive and communication problems that arise in the use of hypermedia applications with specific goals, such as e-learning courseware modules, with the linguistic tools of pragmatics and discourse analysis, and shows how this can help in identifying specific communication problems related to the grounding and contextualization of new information, and how it can lead to new insights for design and to interfaces inspired by the linguistic means used in verbal communication to manage analogous problems. The implementation of such a design strategy in the SWISSLING courseware modules is discussed, and future directions of development towards context- aware adaptive hypermedia are briefly outlined.
Design education of the lay client
Authors: Nielsen Liv Merete
Published: September 2007

The increasing use of visualised information puts the design qualifications of laymen, both as consumers and clients, on the agenda. Visual literacy is in this article regarded as a basic skill for the 21st century, possibly quite as important for democratic participation as are reading and writing. Design education of laymen is discussed; if they need any, and if so, who should give such education. Education ‘in action’ and pre-qualification of laymen are regarded as two strategies. Compulsory school, television and newspapers are arenas for building knowledge and positive attitudes to design.
Rhetorical Structure Theory and quality assessment of students’ texts
Authors: Gruber Helmut
Published: September 2007

In this paper, I argue that the analysis of coherence structures of university students’ texts may contribute to text improvement. Furthermore, my results suggest a relationship between various coherence phenomena and the grades students earn for their papers. Based on the analysis of Austrian university students’ texts from three different business and economy-related study programs and interviews with instructors, I demonstrate that due to the often superficial grading practice of instructors, ‘disrupted text spans’ frequently remain unnoticed although they impair text quality. Regarding the relationship between texts’ grades and coherence phenomena, I show that relation-type differences between low and high graded papers seem to be discipline specific, whereas a general tendency exists that high graded papers display a more ‘symmetrical’ text structure and low graded papers have ‘asymmetrical’ structures.
The multilayered structure of enterprise discourse
Authors: Gunnarsson Britt-Louise
Published: September 2007

This article explores the complex relationship between enterprise and discourse from a sociolinguistic viewpoint. A model of communication is presented which depicts the multilayered framework of texts within organizations. With this model as a background, results from two studies on enterprise discourse are discussed. The first study analyzed communication within banks and structural engineering companies in Sweden, Germany and Great Britain. Interviews were held with staff at different levels, and written documents were analyzed. Though of course the discourse within the studied companies had much in common, differences were found as well, which can be explained by variation in sector, the organizational culture and the national culture. The second study focused on the multilingual production of texts in a Swedish based international company. An analysis of company brochures produced in different European branches showed considerable variation in relation to content, arguments and style. Though the headquarters steered the sales companies by means of a common text base, the various brochures also revealed differences that reflected ideas from the local level. Both studies thus show how the creation of uniqueness and attractiveness on the one hand takes place within the limits set by the sector concerned and on the other is determined by the relevant national culture(s). The company is part of a wider sectoral network that frequently has well-established discourse traditions. Moreover, a company also operates within a national culture, or several cultures, forcing it to adapt to national discourse patterns as well.
Problems in the Field. Assessing document quality: Not as easy as one might think
Authors: de Stadler Leon
Published: September 2007

This article focuses on the usability of quality-assessment methods in designing documents for a multicultural society. The case discussed is a project run by the Unit for Document Design of the Language Centre of the Stellenbosch University for SETA (Sector Education and Training Authority) in South Africa.
Genre
Authors: Carliner Saul , Boswood Timothy
Published: September 2007

This paper presents a case for a genre-based approach to research into online communication. Questions about the appropriateness and extensiveness of research-based guidelines for communicating online exist. These questions include the appropriateness of transferring guidelines from research on print communication online without first re-verifying them, the appropriateness of generalizing conclusions from context-based, small sample-sized usabilty studies, the extent of generalizability of empirical studies, and the limited scope of guidelines that focus almost exclusively on physical features of text.

Genre – ‘a familiar pattern, a way of organizing information that has become so common that readers will probably recognize each new instance as belonging to the genre’ (Price & Price, 2002:272) – provides an alternative, contextually-based approach. It is a useful context because most online communication occurs within the confines of a specific genre and, as genres become more common, users develop expectations about the type of content presented and the format of its presentation. Three methods can help researchers understand the nature of online genres: (1) discourse analysis helps researchers identify the features of a genre, (2) usability studies help researchers assess whether the features promote effective user performance (and, if so, how), and (3) design team research identifies why features were included and which other alternatives were considered, rejected, and why. An effective study of genre uses all three. Focusing on genre, too, allows researchers within sub-disciplines of communication to focus their work on their areas of specialty.
It-extraposition in English
Authors: Kaltenböck Gunther
Published: September 2007

This paper investigates the communicative use ofit-extraposition (e.g.It is surprising that John went to London) in texts, based on a corpus analysis of 1,701 instances in the British component of theInternational Corpus of English. Contrary to the wayit-extraposition is often treated in the literature, it does not represent a uniform functional category whose communicative purpose arises mainly from its status as the stylistically unmarked counterpart of non-extraposition. An analysis of the information status of the extraposed subject shows that it is possible to distinguish two basic types (Given Complement Extraposition and New Complement Extraposition) which differ fundamentally in their communicative potential and distribution in different (spoken and written) text types. For each of the two informational types a number of specific uses in texts are identified taking into account thematic structure (topic-comment) and the semantic nature of the matrix predicate.
The function of metaphor
Authors: Stefanowitsch Anatol
Published: September 2007

This paper presents a corpus-based approach to investigating the function of metaphor, specifically to the question whether the use of metaphorical language is motivated primarily by stylistic considerations or by cognitive principles. The paper focuses on concepts that can be expressed alternatively by a literal or a metaphorical linguistic expression with the same structural properties. Such expressions can be individual words (such asgraspandunderstand, which can both encode the concept UNDERSTAND), or fixed phrases (such asin the heart ofandin the center of, which can both encode the concept IN THE CENTER OF). It turns out that a comparison of the distinctive collocates of the literal and the metaphorical variant in each case provides clear evidence for the hypothesis that metaphorical language has a cognitive function.