bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Child second language acquisition or successive first language acquisition?
Authors: Meisel Jürgen M.
Published: March 2014

This paper explores the question of whether child L2 acquisition is more like L1 or adult L2. An analysis of the acquisition of finiteness by German child L2 learners of French leads to the conclusion that successive acquisition of languages exhibits similarities to adult L2 in some aspects of inflectional morphology. This claim is based on the observation that specific features of grammatical development typically occur in one type of acquisition only, not in the other. Unlike mature French and child L1, French subject clitics appear adjacent to non-finite verbs in adult and child L2 French. One can argue that they do not possess the same grammatical status in child and adult L2 grammars as they do in L1 grammars.
Truncation in child L2 acquisition: Evidence from verbless utterances
Authors: Prévost Philippe
Published: March 2014

This chapter examines the nature of verbless utterances, namely utterances requiring a copula or a lexical verb in the target language, in longitudinal production data of two English-speaking children learning French (aged 5;4 and 5;8 at the onset of acquisition). It is suggested that such utterances are projections of lexical categories, much like root infinitives. This is argued to support the Truncation Hypothesis in child L2 acquisition, according to which root declaratives may be underlied by either functional or lexical projections in the early stages (Prévost & White 2000a). This contrasts with proposals by Ionin and Wexler (2002) that verbless utterances stem from access problems to the relevant lexical forms.
Comparing child L2 development with adult L2 development: How to measure L2 proficiency
Authors: Unsworth Sharon
Published: March 2014

Most studies investigating the role of age in L2 acquisition compare L2 children and adults in terms of ultimate attainment (e.g. Johnson & Newport 1989). This paper addresses some of the methodological and conceptual issues which arise when, following Schwartz (1992), such a comparison is made in terms of development. The paper considers three variables carefully controlled for in any such comparison: L1 transfer, age at time of testing and L2 proficiency. A new proficiency measure, the Age-Sensitive Composite Proficiency Score (ASCOPS), is presented. Unlike previous measures, ASCOPS can be used with both L2 children and adults, and it takes into account the intrinsic differences between these two groups relating to their age at time of testing.
Prosodic transfer and the representation of determiners in Turkish-English interlanguage
Authors: Goad Heather , White Lydia
Published: March 2014

Problems with the second language (L2) acquisition of articles in Turkish-English interlanguage are examined, specifically omission, substitution of other determiners in place of articles, overuse of stressed articles and differential treatment of articles in DPs with and without adjectives. Trenkic’s (2007) syntactic misanalysis account is argued against, that difficulties with articles for L2 English speakers from L1s like Turkish and Serbian stem from the absence of DP in the L1 grammar. Instead, in accordance with the Prosodic Transfer Hypothesis, it is proposed that L1 prosodic representations underlie these problems; L2 learners are argued to have difficulty in producing functional morphology in target-like fashion when the L2 requires a prosodic representation that is unavailable in the L1 grammar.
The article paradigm in Spanish-speaking children with SLI in language contact situations
Authors: Anderson Raquel T. , Márquez Alejandra
Published: March 2014

This chapter presents research on article use by Spanish-speaking children in an English language contact situation. We followed sixteen Spanish-speaking children in an English school immersion context for a period of three years, including four children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI), with annual data collection via experimental and spontaneous procedures. Results suggest a different trend in the use of Spanish articles in children with typical language skills and children with SLI with respect to the use of gender agreement. To discern the impact that language skill and sociolinguistic context have on the article paradigm, we compared our results with those reported in other research with typical learners in language contact situations and with other Spanish-speaking children with SLI.
Context and the Scalar Implicatures of Indefinites in Child Spanish
Authors: Vargas-Tokuda Marissa , Grinstead John , Gutiérrez-Rexach Javier
Published: March 2014

In this chapter we review current work on the semantics-pragmatics interface in the adult language and present a description, from earlier work, of the distinct distribution and properties of two Spanish indefinite determiners: unos and algunos. We evaluate the degree to which current theories are able to accommodate these properties and then present the results of two experiments measuring monolingual child Spanish-speakers’ interpretations of them. The experiments show that children are adult-like in their ability to generate implicatures with algunos and cancel them in downward entailing contexts and that they are also aware that there is no implicature generated by unos, despite the similarity of the set interpretations associated with it and those associated with algunos. These findings demonstrate that children are able to surmount considerable learnability obstacles and that, at the age of 5, they have as much access to the logical interpretations of existential quantifiers as they do to their pragmatically-enriched, “some, but not all” interpretation.
Relationships between linguistic and behavioral measures during development
Authors: Pérez-Pereira Miguel , Resches Mariela
Published: March 2014

Forty-two children were assessed through the Galician adaptation of the MacArthur-Bates scales (IDHC) at 18 and 24 months of age, and spontaneous language measures were also obtained at the same ages. When the children were 48 months old, the Reynell Development of Language Scales, TOM tasks, and the WPPSI-R test were applied. Correlation and regression analyses were performed on these scores. Concurrent validity of the IDHC reached high values as measured through the correlations with spontaneous language measures. Predictive validity of the IDHC reached moderate values. IDHC vocabulary size at 24 months of age seemed to be a good predictor of later language development at 48 months, which in turn predicted TOM performance. An indirect effect of language at 24 months on TOM development is hypothesized.
Temporal interface delay and root nonfinite verbs in Spanish-Speaking children with specific language impairment
Authors: Grinstead John , De la Mora Gutiérrez Juliana , Pratt Amy , Flores Blanca
Published: March 2014

Existing research into specific language impairment in Spanish utilizes primarily spontaneous production data and concludes that children do not have problems with verb finiteness. In contrast, we show, through a new receptive measure, the “Grammaticality Choice Task”, that the distribution of the 2 most common errors in child Spanish is sufficient to distinguish language-impaired children from age and language control groups. We conclude that finiteness marking on verbs is a promising clinical marker for SLI in Spanish and that spontaneous measures of finiteness marking do not provide the most accurate representation of children’s grammatical competence in the verbal domain in a null subject language such as Spanish.
Lexique-Grammaire et extensions lexicales
Authors: Balibar-Mrabti Antoinette
Published: March 2014

One can find in French expressions which are equivalent to adverbs ending in -ment, e.g. écouter d'une oreille attentive /distraite as compared to écouter attentivement /distraitement, or dessiner d'une main habile /dessiner d'un crayon habile as compared to dessiner habilement. These expressions, which are considered to be relatively fixed, or semi-compositional, are being studied with ever-increasing precision by linguists and lexicographers. This paper sets out the criteria which define these expressions in Lexicon-Grammar Theory.
À propos des phrases transitives en arabe
Authors: Chad Mohamed
Published: March 2014

This paper concerns the treatment of the "object" in Arabic. Our aim is to determine the criteria for its recognition, in terms of the differences that obtain between it and other complements.
Sur la valeur de l’ « incise » et sa postposition
Authors: de Cornulier Benoît
Published: March 2014

In Please, she said, comme in, the parenthetical she said is rather postponed to Please than inserterted in the middle of Please,[..],come in. It is not responsible for the fact that the occurrence Please, (come in) means that these words have been uttered; this meaning fundamentally belongs to the "mimic" (rather than plainly linguistic) use of Please, come in. In She was tired, it seemed, the assertion of She was tired doesn't reproduce the fact that these words were uttered, but that (apparently) she was tired.
Coréférence événementielle entre deux phrases
Authors: Danlos Laurence
Published: March 2014

Works on temporal relations between two eventualities e1 and e2 always suppose that e1 ≠ e2. We will concentrate on cases where e1 = e2, i.e. on event coreference. Unlike object coreference, event coreference has rarely been studied in detail, except for (pro)nominal phrases referring to an event. We focus here on event coreference between two sentences. This study will put forward unusual linguistic phenomena, e.g. coreference between existentially quantified elements. These phenomena, which question well-established myths, have to be taken into account in text understanding and text generation. They will lead us to introduce and define new discourse relations which will be discussed in the framework of SDRT.
Les attributs du complément d’objet
Authors: Dugas André
Published: March 2014

This paper reports on a study of the attributes associated with the direct or indirect object. These attributes are of the kind:
On a élu Marie présidente
Cet individu a été classé comme dangereux
Je le vois déçu
The list of verbs operating with this construction comes from an exhaustive dictionary of French verbs and their properties compiled by the author, who also bases his review of this subject on the well known lexique-grammaire created under the direction of the late Professor Maurice Gross and his researchers at the Laboratoire Automatique Documentaire et Linguistique (see Table 39 in Boons, Guillet et Leclère, 1976). The main constraints and problems are briefly reviewed and a sketch of the sub-classes is given.
Classes sémantiques et description des langues
Authors: Gross Gaston
Published: March 2014

The purpose of this article is to demonstrate the importance of semantic classes in the description of language. We know that most predicates are polysemous, and that each sense correlates with a particular set of arguments. We can group these arguments into semantic classes ("classes d'objets" (object classes)), so that the meaning of a predicate can be recognized automatically in context. The same can be done for predicates: the establishment of classes (or sub-classes) of "actions", "states" and "events" allows the grouping of verbs, adjectives or nominal predicates which share the same defining properties. To illustrate this, we shall describe the semantic class of "behaviour towards others".
Multi-Lexemic Expressions
Authors: Guenthner Franz , Blanco Xavier
Published: March 2014

This paper presents a high-level classification of multi-word terms and discuss their encoding in electronic dictionaries.
Sur l’ordre des adjectifs
Authors: Kiefer Ferenc
Published: March 2014

The present paper discusses the neutral order of attributive adjectives in French. It starts out with a semantic classification of adjectives, which is based on both syntactic and semantic criteria. The following main types of adjectives are distinguished: (i) absolute adjectives, (ii) relative adjectives, (iii) complex relative adjectives and (iv) irregular adjectives. Within (i) and (ii) further subtypes are discussed. It is claimed that irregular adjectives are semantically more complex than complex relative adjectives, the latter are more complex than relative adjectives, which, in turn, are more complex than absolute adjectives. It is also shown that among the relative adjectives measure adjectives are semantically less complex than evaluative adjectives. A similar complexity hierarchy can be established within the various subclasses of absolute adjectives. The main claim of the paper is that the neutral order of adjectives reflects the hierarchy of semantic complexity: the more complex the adjective is the more peripheral the position will be which it occupies in the sequence of attributive adjectives.
Lexiques-grammaires comparés
Authors: Labelle Jacques
Published: March 2014

This paper deals with the representation of linguistic differences between varieties of french language, french of Quebec and french of France. Quebec french has a lot of linguistic particularities and presents many differences of uses, including lexicon and grammatical properties.
It is an illustration of the application of the theory of lexicon-grammar that appears to be a very efficient tool for doing linguistic comparison, involving, particularly, the syntactic features of the lexicon.
Italian People at Work
Authors: La Fauci Nunzio , Mirto Ignazio Mauro
Published: March 2014

Italian is the only major Romance language featuring a clause type exclusively devoted to expressing people's jobs. This type, the Job-fare-Construction (JFC), is constructed with a human subject and the verb fare 'do' followed by an obligatorily definite noun. The JFC has thus the appearance of a transitive clause. This paper provides numerous arguments for treating the post-verbal noun as a predicate rather than a direct object and for analysing the JFC as an intransitive in which fare works as a support verb. The JFC has then been compared to a copulative construction that also allows to express people's jobs. It has been shown that the former cannot be considered a doublet of the latter because the two clause-types differ both syntactically and semantically. Within the analysis we suggest, the JFC results from a reduction process alternately operating on two classifying nouns that simultaneously work as noun predicates.
La structure de la phrase en français de Belgique
Authors: Lamiroy Béatrice , Klein Jean
Published: March 2014

The paper aims at analyzing about 500 verbs that typically belong to Belgian French, according to the principles of the lexicon-grammar set forth by Maurice Gross. Four categories are distinguished, viz. verbs that are totally unknown in France, e.g. loanwords from Dutch (20 %), verbs that sound archaic in France (2 %), verbs that are common in France but with a different meaning, the so-called "faux amis" (8 %) and verbs that are used in France but with a different syntactic construction (70 %). Each Belgian verb is ascribed to a syntactic class, based on the (in)transitive character of the verb, the absence/ presence of a prepositional complement, etc. The Belgian verbs are thus classified in 33 different classes, the largest of which correspond to transitive structures with two arguments, viz. subject and direct object. Two major findings of the paper are that Belgian French differs more from the French spoken in France than is usually assumed, and that the differences not only concern lexical matters, but, maybe more importantly, syntactic differences.
Restructuration and the subject of adjectives
Authors: Laporte Éric
Published: March 2014

The distribution of the subject of adjectives in French is particularly difficult to represent in a lexicon-grammar, because of the numerous restructurations of the subject. In addition, the description of subject distribution is connected with the separation of senses and the description of the complements in the adjectival sentence. Thus, it is a fundamental issue. We identify several situations where it seems possible to choose a satisfactory strategy. We discuss this organization through various examples of adjectives.
Les aventures de Max et Eve, j’ai aimé
Authors: Leeman Danielle
Published: March 2014

It is generally considered that in French, unlike English, the phenomenon of topica-lisation applied to a direct object, as in This book, I have read, does not exist. In fact, constructions such as this are common in oral language and are also encountered in written language. I shall nevertheless show that, appearances to the contrary, in a sentence such as La tarte, j'ai aimé, the NP la tarte is not a direct object and that, in consequence, this construction is not an instance of topicalisation (it should be recalled that the canonical example of topicalisation is Le chocolat, j'aime). My demonstration is based on comparisons between the orthographic, intonational, distributive and syntactic properties of utterances such as La tarte, j'ai aimé and Trois enfants, j'ai eus.
Some Linguistic Problems in Building a Korean Electronic Lexicon of Simple Verbs
Authors: Nam Jeesun
Published: March 2014

Any system that aims to automatically process a natural language should first be equipped with a well-constructed electronic lexicon. An electronic lexicon is a large-scale database that contains all linguistic information a machine requires, i.e. inflectional, derivational, syntactic and some reliable semantic information. To build a systematic lexicon of simple verbs, several linguistic criteria should be considered. This study constitutes a preliminary step in the construction of a syntactic lexicon of Korean verbs. In section 2, we consider the problem of hada (to do) sequences, which raises the contentions of distinguishing between a simple verb and a verb phrase in Korean. In section 3, we discuss the derivational entries and complex forms: how to handle these items is not a simple question in a machine-readable lexicon. Section 4 covers the treatment of some incomplete forms in the lexicon. Finally, in the last section, we outline the direction of future work. To construct a reliable electronic lexicon, the morphosyntactic characteristics of all lexical entries have to be described in a systematic and exhaustive way. Only then can we expect to expand the list by consulting large-scale corpora. The results obtained by lexicon-grammar studies will play a significant role in the construction of a systematic electronic database, indispensable in any computational application area.
Shall we hors d’œuvres? The Assimilation of Gallicisms into English
Authors: Renouf Antoinette
Published: March 2014

The dialects of the region now known as France have been contributing words and idioms to the English language for the last millennium. These Gallicisms serve a number of purposes, from filling lacunae, to associating the writer with French sophistication and style, to creating particular stylistic effects in writing and speech. This study takes a subset of established Gallicisms, which are formally and stylistically capable of evoking Frenchness, and examines their linguistic treatment in English. Sometimes they are used just as they are in French. Some uses are simply inaccurate by French standards: in relation to gender and number agreement, and to spelling. Other uses are unconventional by French standards but represent the standard English practices of modifying foreign loans to fit English norms; these include the possible conflation of formal and orthographic variants of a Gallic phrase, the tendency to employ a word across a range of grammatical and syntactic classes, and the use of word play. The study concludes with the impressionistic observation that English seems to assimilate French as much as modern French is 'invaded' by English.
Reconnaissance des déterminants français
Authors: Silberztein Max
Published: March 2014

This article describes the implementation of a large-coverage description of French determiners and predeterminers, that includes simple words such as le, compounds such as la plupart des, and more complex sequences such as toute une partie de ce groupe de. The grammar is available in the form of a library of over one hundred INTEX graphs. Its organization follows as closely as possible the classification of the determiners described by Maurice Gross in Syntaxe du nom, 1986.
Using INTEX graphs to represent syntactic constraints on the grammatical words that constitute determiners presents several advantages over using two-dimension lexicon-grammar tables, especially in terms of legibility.
I show also that the difficult problem of describing recursive determiners and their constraints (e.g. in un groupe de groupes d'amis) is naturally described by recursive graphs. This library can be compiled into a (non-recursive) minimal deterministic finite-state automaton that contains over 1,000 states and 25,000 transitions.
Cross-language phonetic similarity of vowels
Authors: Strange Winifred
Published: March 2014

Current theories of second language (L2) speech perception/production have been developed to explain the relative difficulties L2 learners have in learning specific non-native phonetic segments/contrasts. In each theory, the concept of cross-language (L1/L2) phonetic similarity is invoked to account for the fact that some non-native contrasts are more difficult to perceptually differentiate (and to produce authentically) than others, both initially and after years of experience with the L2. In this paper, two kinds of empirical techniques used to establish L1/L2 similarity of vowel systems are described and critiqued: 1) quantitative analyses of L1/L2 acoustic similarity and 2) perceptual assimilation paradigms that directly ask listeners to judge the similarity of L1 and L2 vowels. Methodological issues addressed include: a) the development of appropriate production/listening protocols, b) assessment of the relative contribution of spectral (quality) and temporal (quantity) parameters in specifying crosslanguage phonetic similarity of vowels, c) the design of perceptual assimilation tasks, and d) the statistical treatment of similarity judgments. Finally, the conditions under which results from acoustic comparisons and perceptual similarity tasks either agree or conflict will be discussed in terms of their implications about the nature of the underlying representations of L1 and L2 phonetic categories.
You are what you eat phonetically
Authors: Frieda Elaina M. , Nozawa Takeshi
Published: March 2014

The following set of experiments tests whether linguistic experience plays a significant role in the perception of foreign vowels. Models of second language acquisition purport that a second language is perceived in direct relation to the native language and that specific predictions can be drawn regarding which contrasts will be most problematic for nonnative speakers. With this in mind, native Japanese and Korean speakers were tested on their discrimination and assimilation of English vowels. In Experiment 1, participants performed an assimilation task where they identified English vowels in terms of their native vowel categories. Further, listeners rated their vowel selections for category goodness. These data were then implemented in developing hypotheses as to possible discrimination outcomes for Experiment 2. Discrimination results confirmed predictions generated by the assimilation experiment but this held true only for inexperienced nonnative speakers of English.
Speech learning, lexical reorganization, and the development of word recognition by native and non-native English speakers
Authors: Walley Amanda C.
Published: March 2014

Flege’s Speech Learning Model (SLM) focuses on how the perception and production of sounds in a second language (L2) are influenced by the first or native language (L1). A central claim of the model is that as the phonetic space becomes increasingly devoted or committed to the L1, L2 speech learning becomes more difficult. In particular, L2 learners have trouble establishing new perceptual categories, especially for sounds that are similar to those in the L1, and with respect to production, foreign accents are more likely to result. A corollary claim of SLM is that L1 sound perception is still quite flexible or “open” in childhood, in contrast to the impression given by much of the infant speech perception literature.
Our Lexical Restructuring Model (LRM) is also concerned with L1 sound perception in childhood, but focuses to a greater extent on the relations between phonological and lexical levels of representation and processing. According to LRM, a) lexical representations are initially holistic (i.e., based on units larger than the phonemic/phonetic segment, such as the syllable), and b) as the child’s mental lexicon grows, representations become more fine-grained and/or segmentally-based.
This chapter elaborates on these claims of the two models and their implications for spoken word recognition by native and non-native listeners, both children and adults. The extent to which these claims are supported by recent findings are considered, as well as suggestions for future research.
Phonemic errors in different word positions and their effects on intelligibility of non-native speech
Authors: Bent Tessa , Bradlow Ann R. , Smith Bruce L.
Published: March 2014

Speech produced by non-native talkers deviates from native talker norms in systematic ways that reflect the interaction between the talker’s native language and the target language. These deviations result in speech that is almost always easily identified by native listeners as “foreign-accented” and that is typically less intelligible for native listeners than native-accented speech. Determining the contribution of various types of foreign-accented speech features to reductions in intelligibility for native listeners can help advance our understanding of the nature of native and target language sound structure interactions in relation to their consequences for speech communication This study related variability in segmental production accuracy of foreign-accented speech to variability in overall intelligibility across individual talkers of foreign-accented English who all came from the same native language background, but varied in their levels of English speech production proficiency. The results showed that vowel, but not consonant, production accuracy correlates with intelligibility; and, errors in word-initial position are more detrimental to intelligibility than errors in other positions. These findings provide the basis for a principled and detailed description of the phonetic nature of foreign-accented speech in relation to its communicative function.
2. Language production from a neurolinguistic perspective
Authors: Laganaro Marina
Published: March 2014

Ce chapitre présente une introduction aux études neurolinguistiques. Il se propose en particulier d’illustrer comment on peut aborder des questions sur les représentations et les processus impliqués dans la production du langage à travers l’analyse du comportement linguistique de personnes cérebrolésées ainsi que la façon dont ces données divergent ou convergent avec les résultats empiriques psycholinguistiques. Après un aperçu historique et méthodologique des études neurolinguistiques seront présentées des études comportementales et électrophysiologiques portant sur les représentations impliquées dans l’encodage de la forme phonologique des mots et sur le cours temporel des processus d’encodage des mots.

The chapter illustrates how questions about language processing and representations can be addressed through the study of people who suffered brain damage. It introduces an overview of the neurolinguistic literature on language production and discusses the convergences and divergences of neurolinguistic results with psycholinguistic data. It then focuses on phonological encoding and presents behavioral and electrophysiological studies on the questions of which information is represented vs. computed during phonological encoding and on the timecourse of phonological encoding during the language production processing.
6. The role and status of the French language in North Africa
Authors: Aitsiselmi Farid , Marley Dawn
Published: March 2014

Ce chapitre traite du rôle et du statut de la langue française dans le Maghreb d’aujourd’hui en commençant par un rappel rapide du contexte historique pour essayer d’expliquer les origines et les causes des tensions qui existent dans ces pays en ce qui concerne tout ce qui touche les questions de langue et d’identité. Il apparaît clairement que malgré une politique d’arabisation visant à promouvoir la langue arabe et à réduire le rôle de la langue française ou même à l’éliminer complètement de la région, celle-ci continue à occuper une place préponderante dans les trois pays maghrébins. Les conclusions que nous avons pu tirer ne peuvent être que des tentatives de simplification d’une situation complexe qui est en constante évolution et qui change au moment même où nous achevons d’écrire ce chapitre.

In this chapter we will examine the role and status of the French language in the Maghreb today, beginning with a brief historical overview to explain the background to this complex issue of language contact. It seems clear that despite an Arabization policy aiming to promote Arabic and reduce the role of French, or even eliminate it completely from the region, the French language continues to play a key role in the three countries of the Maghreb. Any conclusions, however, can only be provisional, as language contact situations are constantly evolving, and even as we complete this chapter new developments are occurring.
7. Anthropological linguistic perspectives on writing Guadeloupean Kréyòl: Struggles for recognition of the language and struggles over authority
Authors: Managan Kathe
Published: March 2014

L’anthropologie linguistique considère l’utilisation des langues et l’aménagement des langues comme des pratiques sociales qui sont influencées par la culture et l’idéologie. J’utilise une perspective anthropolinguistique pour analyser les efforts de propagation d’une orthographe standardisée en créole guadeloupéen qui le distingue nettement du français. Les conflits sur l’écriture du créole et sur les formes que cette écriture devrait prendre font partie d’une plus vaste lutte idéologique sur le créole et l’identité guadeloupéenne et les rapports avec le français et l’identité française. L’éducation de l’écriture et de la lecture du créole se répandent, mais les opinions sur l’écriture du créole restent ambivalentes et, d’ailleurs, la plus grande partie de l’écriture en créole n’utilise pas les conventions de l’orthographe standardisée. Néanmoins, les donnés que j’ai pu recueillir entre 1998 et 2006 montrent que les aspects les plus contestés de cette orthographe gagnent du terrain et sont même mobilisés comme des emblèmes de l’identité guadeloupéenne.

Anthropological linguistics approaches language use and language planning as culturally informed, ideologically shaped social practice. Drawing on an anthropological linguistic perspective, I analyze efforts to disseminate a standardized orthography for Guadeloupean Kréyòl that clearly distinguishes it from French. Conflicts over writing Kréyòl and the forms it should take are part of a broader ideological struggle over Kréyòl and Guadeloupean identity in relation to French language and French identity. Kréyòl literacy education is becoming more widespread, but views on Kréyòl writing remain ambivalent and most Kréyòl writing does not adhere to the standardized orthographic conventions. Nonetheless, my data, collected between 1998–2006, indicate that the most contested features are gaining ground and are even mobilized as emblems of Guadeloupean identity.
8. Literacy and technology in French language teaching: Issues and prospects
Authors: Kern Richard
Published: March 2014

La mondialisation et Internet ont énormément diversifié les occasions de contact interculturel, un contact qui s’établit souvent par écrit. Ce chapitre présente la littératie comme un ensemble de pratiques cognitives, sociales et culturelles qui interagissent avec des supports matériels de l’écriture. La discussion, illustrée par des données empiriques, se centre sur quatre dimensions du rôle de la littératie dans des contextes de communication médiatisée par les ordinateurs: la venue de nouvelles formes de langue, les jeux de langue, la communication interculturelle en ligne, et la communication multimodale. Constatant que les nouvelles cultures de lecture et d’écriture dans la communication électronique sont de plus en plus caractérisées par des normes dynamiques et multiples, le chapitre conclut par une discussion des implications pour la recherche sur l’acquisition des langues secondes/étrangères.

Globalization and the Internet have greatly diversified the opportunities for intercultural contact, and this contact is very often mediated by writing. This chapter frames literacy as sets of cognitive, social, and cultural practices that interact with material technologies of writing. Four issues related to the role of literacy and technology in French language learning are reviewed and illustrated with data: new online language forms, language play, online intercultural communication, and multimodal communication. Suggesting that the new cultures of reading and writing in electronic environments are increasingly characterized by multiple, dynamic norms, the chapter concludes with a discussion of implications for research in second/foreign language acquisition.
9. Forensic linguistics and French
Authors: Kibbee Douglas A.
Published: March 2014

Nous examinons rapidement les cinq domaines de recherche en linguistique forensique, avant de nous consacrer à l’étude de la notion du désavantage linguistique dans l’histoire de la France. L’importance du désavantage linguistique n’est devenue primordiale qu’après des réformes dans la procédure juridique et l’expansion du pouvoir royal. La langue du roi s’est installée avec la justice du roi, et s’est répandue avec les conquêtes et les acquisitions territoriales des Bourbon. Après la Révolution, la politique d’égalité s’est poursuivie par une politique d’uniformité linguistique, réduisant le nombre de citoyens qui ne parlent pas la langue du gouvernement, et le désavantage linguistique de la très grande majorité de la population. Nous examinons en particulier l’emploi des interprètes et des traducteurs dans les cours de justice, et les restrictions bureaucratiques concernant les prénoms. Puisque les autres domaines de la linguistique forensique sont, jusqu’à présent, peu étudiés dans le monde francophone, c’est un domaine de recherche particulièrement fertile pour les jeunes chercheurs.

After a review of the five major areas in which forensic linguistic research is active, we examine in particular the notion of linguistic disadvantage as it has evolved in France. The importance of linguistic disadvantage is related to the inquest method of legal procedure, and grew with the increased power of the king’s law, as opposed to local customary law. The king’s language spread with the king’s justice, even as new conquests and acquisitions gave the king dominion over more regions that spoke languages other than French. After the French Revolution, the policy of equality through linguistic uniformity steadily reduced the number of non-French-speakers, and the linguistic disadvantage of many French citizens. We examine the use of interpreters and translators in the court system, and also the requirements relating to the registration of names for newborns. The dearth of research on forensic linguistics in the Francophone world makes this a particularly fertile field for the future.
Perspectives on second language acquisition at different ages
Authors: Dimroth Christine
Published: March 2014

Empirical studies addressing the age factor in second language acquisition have mainly been concerned with a comparison of end state data (from learners before and after the closure of a putative Critical Period for language acquisition) to the native speaker norm. Based on longitudinal corpus data, this paper investigates the affect of age on end state, rate and the process of acquisition and addresses the question of whether different grammatical domains are equally affected. To this end, the paper presents summarized findings from the acquisition of word order and inflectional morphology in L2 German by Russian learners of different ages and discusses theoretical implications that can be drawn from this evidence.
The impact of teacher input, guidance and feedback on ESL children's task-based interactions
Authors: Oliver Rhonda , Philp Jenefer , Mackey Alison
Published: March 2014

In this chapter we examine children’s interaction during authentic lessons involving tasks in L2 classrooms, comparing the effects of teacher guidance for 5–7 year olds (n = 22) and 11–12 year olds (n = 20). Three experimental conditions representing a continuum of teacher guidance were examined: task instructions alone, task instructions with examples, and task instructions followed by on-task guidance and feedback. In all conditions, regardless of age, children interacted in ways deemed facilitative of language learning, although older children seemed to benefit most from on-task guidance. We discuss these findings in terms of the potential benefits of tasks for L2 production and interaction in children’s ESL classrooms, as well as the under-researched but important role of the teacher’s input and guidance.
Incidental focus on form and learning outcomes with young foreign language classroom learners
Authors: Alcón-Soler Eva , García Mayo María del Pilar
Published: March 2014

This chapter addresses the issue of how unplanned focus on formis accomplished in an English as a foreign language (EFL) classroom and its effect on adolescents’ learning outcomes. The findings support previous research indicating that adolescents benefit from interaction in foreign language classrooms as well as claims that for adolescents, as with adults, focus on form is an effective means of raising awareness of lexical items. Findings also suggest that the relationship between noticing, uptake and longer-term learning requires more research with this population in order to better understand the processes.
Podcasts and second language learning
Authors: McBride Kara
Published: March 2014

This chapter discusses how podcasts that were not originally made specifically for second language (L2) learners can be used in L2 classes to promote listening comprehension and intercultural competence. The chapter first defines and describes podcasts and offers strategies for locating useful ones. Next, listening comprehension is examined in order to identify practices that may improve bottom-up and top-down skills and the automaticity by which these are executed. The topic of authenticity is reviewed in terms of how authentic podcasts are a rich source of cultural and pragmatic information, and when students learn how to find podcasts of interest to them, they are likely to become more motivated and autonomous learners. The issue of how to avoid potentially offensive materials is also touched upon. Finally, this chapter outlines activities that can be done in class and out, keeping in mind potential curricular- and time-related restrictions and giving suggestions for how the above-mentioned skills can be targeted, as well as vocabulary building, collaboration, and pronunciation practice.
The discussion forum as a component of a technology-enhanced Integrated Performance Assessment
Authors: Abraham Lee B. , Williams Lawrence
Published: March 2014

This chapter explores the use of online discussion forums as a component of an Integrated Performance Assessment (IPA) (Adair-Hauck, Glisan, Koda, Swender, & Sandrock, 2006; Glisan, Uribe, & Adair-Hauck, 2007) within a (foreign) language curriculum. First, we examine the linguistic, discursive, and interactional versatility of discussion forums. Next, we describe the background of the IPA and highlight the advantages of integrating discussion forums into a proposed Technology-Enhanced Performance Assessment (TIPA). This chapter presents two models for incorporating the discussion forum into a TIPA as either the interpretive or the interpersonal mode of communication for a theme-based unit on ecology and the environment. An analysis of the discourse in these models also illustrates the linguistic affordances that this online communication environment offers for signaling participants’ stance and attitudes through the use of pronouns, verb tense, aspect, and mood. As such, an interpersonal task in a TIPA could expand discourse options (Kramsch, 1985) beyond those that are typically available to students. The TIPA offers a framework that would allow students to participate in these online environments for academic, professional, or personal reasons. Recommendations for integrating ca TIPA with offline collaborative tasks are also presented.
Extracting knowledge-rich contexts for terminography
Authors: Meyer Ingrid
Published: March 2014

Knowledge-rich contexts express conceptual information for a term. Terminographers need such contexts to construct definitions, and to acquire domain knowledge. This paper summarizes what we have learned about extracting knowledge-rich contexts semi-automatically. First, we define the concept of a knowledge-rich context, its major types and its components. Second, we describe a methodology for developing extraction tools that is based on lexical, grammatical and paralinguistic patterns. Third, we outline the most problematic research issues that must be addressed before semi-automatic knowledge extraction can become a fully mature field.
Corpus-based extension of a terminological semantic lexicon
Authors: Nazarenko A. , Zweigenbaum Pierre , Habert Benoît , Bouaud J.
Published: March 2014

This paper addresses the problem of extending and tuning a terminological semantic lexicon to new domains and corpora. We argue that by relying on both a sublanguage corpus and a core semantic lexicon, it is possible to give an adequate description of the words that occur in the corpus. Our tuning method explores the corpus and gathers words that are likely to have similar meanings on the basis of their dependency relationships in the corpus. The aim of the present work is to assess the potential for classifying words based on the semantic categories of “neighbors”. The tagging procedure is tested and parameterized on a rather small French corpus dealing with coronary diseases (85,000 word units). This method is systematically evaluated by creating and categorizing artificial unknown words. Although word semantic categorization cannot be fully automated, the results show that our tagging procedure is a valuable help to account for new words and new word uses in a sublanguage.
Personal pronouns in argumentation
Authors: Ratia Maura
Published: March 2014

This article examines the use of personal pronouns in argumentation in two medical texts about the health effects of tobacco. The pamphlets were written in 1601 and 1602; the latter was written as a reply to the first. My method is qualitative, combining elements from different theories and it is unlike to any previous work done in the field. The analysis of personal pronouns draws mostly on Katie Wales's theory of present-day personal pronouns (1996). Central concepts of the theory are endophora and exophora and egocentric and vocative tendencies of generalised references. The present study also considers the affective (emotive) quality of personal pronouns. The analysis shows considerable variation between the texts in the use of personal pronouns and argumentative strategies.
Verba sic spernit mea
Authors: Speyer Augustin
Published: March 2014

To obtain textual coherence two things are important: a match between the concepts of an utterance with those of the preceding utterance (semantic coherence) and, crucial especially in dialogue, the fulfilment of the first speaker's intentions and perlocutionary acts by the following speaker's utterance (pragmatic coherence).

Classical drama usually offers a coherent text, i.e. a text which satisfies the two above-mentioned conditions. In this paper I show that Seneca is an exception to that, as he uses rupture of coherence not only frequently, but also to certain ends, namely to demonstrate a character's mental challenge, to emphasise certain character traits such as arrogance, or to point out that communication in certain situations is impossible.
Medieval mixed-language business discourse and the rise of Standard English
Authors: Wright Laura
Published: March 2014

In the debate about the origins of Standard English, the role of the written medium of administration has been the centre of attention. An administration cannot function without the activities of its traders, who by virtue of their daily goings-on engage in two-way, face-to-face interaction with speakers of other dialects. This chapter explores the written language of London merchants as it was prior to the development of Standard English, looking at the fusion of Anglo-Norman and Middle English as well as the morphological changes that came to form Standard English, and also factoring in patterns of trade contact. The conclusion is that Standard English may be regarded as a side-effect of change in commerce.
Similar situations
Authors: Akman Varol
Published: March 2014

This paper studies the notion of similarity with reference to situations of situation theory. While the commonsense notion of two situations resembling each other appears to be valuable in our daily life, we show that it is problematic for the same reasons researchers have been pointing out in psychological and philosophical literature. That human beings can use the notion naturally (without much effort) shows that their cognitive make-up is probably much more powerful than is commonly thought.
Appropriateness
Authors: Nyan Thanh
Published: March 2014

Building on previous work predicated on the co-evolution of language and the brain, this article takes the view that (a) appropriate behavior – linguistic or otherwise – is adaptive; (b) from the standpoint of the speaker’s processing system, it is chiefly a matter of activating skills arising from background knowledge. This background knowledge, I begin by arguing, should be seen as part of a decision-making process, as construed by Damasio (1994). Next I provide a sketch of how appropriate behavior arises from the corresponding memory system. Following this I set reasons for viewing linguistic appropriate behavior in terms of the same apparatus. In the final section I consider the implications of this adaptive perspective for the notion of context.
Collaborative use of contrastive markers
Authors: Carota Francesca
Published: March 2014

The study presented in this paper examines the context-dependence and dialogue functions of the contrastive markers of Italian ma (but), invece (instead), mentre (while) and però (nevertheless) within task-oriented dialogues. Corpus data evidence their sensitivity to a acognitive interpersonal context, conceived as a common ground. Such a cognitive state – shared by co-participants through the coordinative process of grounding – interacts with the global dialogue structure, which is cognitively shaped by “meta-negotiating” and grounding the dialogue topic. Locally, the relation between the current dialogue structural units and the global dialogue topic is said to be specified by information structure, in particular intra-utterance themes. It is argued that contrastive markers re-orient the co-participants’ cognitive states towards grounding ungrounded topical aspects to be meta-negotiated. They offer a collaborative context-updating strategy, tracking the status of common ground during dialogue topic management.