bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Communicative Constraints in EFL Pre-School Settings: A Corpus-Driven Approach
Authors: Romero-Trillo Jesús , García Ana Llinares
Published: October 2007

The present article investigates the use of interrogatives made by teachers and the responses given by learners in two different (bilingual and non-bilingual) English language classroom contexts in two Spanish nursery schools.

The analysis shows the relevance of the type of functions made by the teachers through interrogatives, rather than the quantity of input in the target language. The study classifies the functions of interrogatives in the pre-school context and makes a statistical corpus-driven analysis of the questions and responses in the two schools. Finally, the article makes some suggestions, based on the data, about the kind of questions than can lead to a more natural L2 development in the classroom context.
In search of representativity in specialised corpora
Authors: Williams Geoffrey
Published: October 2007

In large reference corpora representativeness is attempted through carefully selected sampling and sheer size. The situation is different with special language corpora in that their very nature limits them in size. Their representativity is measured by reference to external selection criteria, generally following bibliographic classifications, which tend to be subjective. In order to overcome subjectivity in specialised corpora, a corpus-directed system of internal selection using lexical criteria is proposed. The aim is not to create rigid boundaries but to see clearly what is actually present in the corpus. The method adopted is demonstrated on a corpus consisting of research articles from specialised journals and conference proceedings in the field of plant biology. Restricted collocational networks are used to isolate prototypical groupings within the corpus. It is shown that audience is an important factor in strong and weak prototypical groupings in theme and domain specific corpora. Articles addressing domain specialists through a journal tend to be more central than those presented to a theme-specific discourse community through conference proceedings.
The contribution of verbal semantic content towards term recognition
Authors: Eumeridou Eugenia
Published: October 2007

Automatic term recognition is a natural language processing technology which is gaining increasing prominence in our information-overloaded society. Apart from its use for quick and efficient updating of terminologies and thesauri, it has also been used for machine translation, information retrieval, document indexing and classification as well as content representation. Until very recently, term identification techniques rested solely on the mapping of term linguistic properties onto computational procedures. However, actual terminological practice has shown that context is also important for term identification and interpretation as terms may appear in different forms depending on the situation of use. The aim of this article is to show the importance of contextual information for automatic term recognition by exploiting the relation between verbal semantic content and term occurrence in three subcorpora drawn from the British National Corpus.
Towards a science of the bio-technological mind
Authors: Clark Andy
Published: October 2007

The study of Cognitive Technology is, in a very real sense, the study of ourselves. Who we are, what we are, and even where we are, are all jointly determined by our biological natures and the web of supporting (and constraining) technologies in which we live, work and dream. But what general principles and concepts will allow us to make systematic sense (indeed, to make a science) of the bio-technological mind? I offer a brief, personal sketch of the underappreciated intimacy of human organisms and technological scaffoldings, and then rehearse 7 questions that such a science needs urgently to address.
Robots as cognitive tools
Authors: Pfeifer Rolf
Published: October 2007

Artificial intelligence is by its very nature synthetic, its motto is “Understanding by building”. In the early days of artificial intelligence the focus was on abstract thinking and problem solving. These phenomena could be naturally mapped onto algorithms, which is why originally AI was considered to be part of computer science and the tool was computer programming. Over time, it turned out that this view was too limited to understand natural forms of intelligence and that embodiment must be taken into account. As a consequence the focus changed to systems that are able to autonomously interact with their environment and the main tool became the robot. The “developmental robotics” approach incorporates the major implications of embodiment with regard to what has been and can potentially be learned about human cognition by employing robots as cognitive tools. The use of “robots as cognitive tools” is illustrated in a number of case studies by discussing the major implications of embodiment, which are of a dynamical and information theoretic nature.
The concept of self and apology strategies in two cultures
Authors: Okumura Keiko , Li Wei
Published: October 2007

The speech act of apologising aims at maintaining, restoring and enhancing interpersonal relationships. Most of the existing studies of apology in different languages and cultures follow the Brown and Levinson (1987) approach and describe apology as a ‘negative politeness’ strategy. In this paper, we study the use of apology by two groups of women from Japanese and British cultural backgrounds, in conjunction with an examination of the cultural conception of ‘self’. Using both standard test (Twenty Statements Test, TST) and questionnaire data, we demonstrate that important differences exist in the self concept of the two groups, and these differences are reflected in and impact on the women’s use of apologies in social interaction.
Putonghua
Authors: Lu Dan , Au-Yeung Yin yee
Published: October 2007

Putonghua, the official Chinese language of mainland China, has become an intriguing topic for language researchers
and teachers in Hong Kong. This study involved 275 Form VI (Grade 12) students in Hong Kong. The twin research
questions are to investigate the subjects’ general attitudes toward the use of Putonghua in Hong Kong contexts as
well as the learning of the language. The research is qualitative in nature and discusses the data through statistical analysis.
The major findings are: (1) on the whole the subjects are instrumentally motivated to learn Putonghua; (2) subjects’
learning motivation is related to their political and cultural identity; (3) subjects still give more preference to English over
Putonghua; (4) currently it is premature to greatly expand the use of Putonghua in education and other social domains
such as government affairs. Based on these findings, the paper poses critical comments on Pierson’s study (1991,
1998). It seems clear that the spread of Putonghua in Hong Kong lacks a social and psychological support currently. The
spread can occur only on a logical and incremental basis in tandem with a titanic effort to produce qualified, competent
local teachers in order to teach this target language.
Understanding Asian students’ oral participation modes in American classrooms
Authors: Liu Jun
Published: October 2007

Second language acquisition (SLA) researchers have not adequately explored English as a Second Language (ESL)
students’ use of English in academic settings other than the language classroom. Social contexts of language learn-
ing, such as students’ content course classrooms, affect not only the amount and the type of input learners receive,
but also the extent to which learners are able to engage in meaningful real-life communication in the target language. An
increasing educational concern in American academic settings is some ESL students’ minimization of the
importance of verbal communication in their content courses. To challenge the linguistic explanation of the inability of
ESL students to adapt to active oral participation modes in their content courses, this study, by focusing on Asian graduate
students in different majors in a US university, examined multiple pertinent factors affecting their oral participation modes
via both classroom observations and interviews. Sociocultural, linguistic, cognitive, affective, and pedagogical/
environmental factors were found to influence these students’ oral communication in their content courses, with
socio-cultural factors exerting the largest influence on students’ classroom reticence. Directions for further research
are recommended.
Japanese school children in Melbourne and their language maintenance efforts
Authors: Yoshimitsu Kuniko
Published: October 2007

This paper presents a case study of language maintenance efforts made by bilingual Japanese children in Melbourne
whose parents are of Japanese background. The children were selected from two sub-groups in the Japanese community:
the children of business sojourners (temporary residents), the largest sub-group in the community, and the children of
permanent residents, the second largest sub-group. Focusing on the micro-level language planning for maintenance, this
study examines the speakers’ degree and direction of maintenance in terms of Japanese language proficiency, and
it analyses the correlation between the maintenance achieved, the factors, and the strategies adopted. Two instruments have
been developed for the assessment of speakers’ naturally occurring spoken discourse data. It is argued that the
children’s differing residential status, being either a sojourner or permanent resident, is a key factor affecting the
maintenance process and its outcomes, and that maintenance at the micro-level, specifically individual and family levels,
is the result of the combined efforts of the parents and the children.
Japanese students’ management processes and their acquisition of English academic competence during study abroad
Authors: Marriott Helen
Published: October 2007

This paper deals with Japanese students who enroll in a postgraduate program at an Australian university. Using
the language management model, I analyse the types of difficulties they experience in the English academic context in terms
of deviations from the norm, and then examine the various types of adjustment processes through which they develop their
English academic competence.
From the biographical narratives of Czech Germans
Authors: Nekvapil Jiří
Published: October 2007

The article proceeds from the linguistic, social and political situation that has developed on the territory of the Czech Republic over the course of the 20th century. The biographical accounts given by people of German extraction who live in the Czech Republic form the empirical starting point. The article focuses on how they construct their language biographies. Of particular interest is how they acquired the Czech language (especially after 1945) — namely which factors in the acquisition of Czech they view as important and what their reported acquisition strategies are like. Similarly, the paper takes notice of how the German language has been preserved in the older generations of Czech Germans and the ways in which the younger generations of Czech Germans acquire German.
Communicating across and within generations
Authors: Giles Howard , Liang Beatrice , Noels Kimberly A. , McCann Robert M.
Published: October 2007

Previous studies of people’s perceptions of intergenerational communication in many countries around the Pacific Rim suggest that aspects of intergenerational communication in some East Asian nations may be more problematic than in some Western ones. This study extends the earlier work by considering similarities and differences between Taiwanese and American young adults’ perceptions of communication with same-age peers and adults 65 years of age and older. As well, in an attempt to discover how the acculturation process may affect intergenerational relations, the perceptions of young Chinese-Americans were also examined. Two-hundred and three participants (including 98 Taiwanese, 47 Euro-Americans, and 59 Chinese-Americans) completed a questionnaire that assessed their perceptions of accommodation and nonaccommodation from members of the two age groups. Also assessed was the extent to which the participants felt deferential towards and avoidant of communication with these two age groups, as well as the experience of positive emotions in these interactions. Consistent with earlier work, young adults were more positive with regards to communication with other younger adults than with older adults, and Euro-Americans generally perceived interactions more positively than people in Taiwan. The Chinese-Americans were similar to the Taiwanese in some respects and similar to the Euro-Americans in others.
New development of Chinese lexicon
Authors: Liu Yongquan
Published: October 2007

By way of relevant examples, this article introduces the problem of Chinese language modernization and the absorption of foreign and new technological words into Modern Chinese. It is suggested that the use of Pinyn in the People’s Republic of China has opened the door to the use of Roman letters in weird words which combine Chinese characters with Roman letters. As China moves further into the computer age, the paper speculates on the superior efficiency of phonetics scripts and the dilemma they will present to Chinese authorities in choosing between tradition and modern efficiency.
Public relations in South Korea
Authors: Kim Yungwook , Childers Hon Linda
Published: October 2007

The purpose of this study is to examine how and why existing public relations theories, developed largely in the United States, work or do not work to the public relations function in South Korea with the consideration of differences in cultural and business systems.

Qualitative interviews with CEOs and public relations executives in Korea revealed difficulties in applying Western models of public relations and cultural norms for communication to the Korean situation. Also most Korean public relations practitioners perform technical duties, yet they understand the function and importance of the manager role. Current trends suggest that Korean companies increasingly understand the value of public relations in this pluralistic and integrated society.
Counting and dis-counting learner group variation
Authors: Davison Chris , McKay Penny
Published: October 2007

Australia is a multilingual multicultural country with an impressive record of educational provision for students from language other than English (LOTE) backgrounds. The recent widespread development of common standards and benchmarks in English language and literacy in schools can be seen as a valuable component of this provision. However, care needs to be taken to avoid projecting a false picture of linguistic homogeneity by ignoring variation between English-speaking background (ESB) and English as a Second Language (ESL) learner groups. This paper demonstrates how the recent introduction of national Literacy Benchmarks, unlike the earlier development of curriculum and standards frameworks, has dis-counted ESL achievement by failing to take sufficient account of learner variation. Problems have also occurred in balancing the conflicting motivations for benchmarking: assessment, accountability and education, which result in different “standards” for standard-setting being assumed by the various stakeholders. The paper concludes that real accountability and progress in ESL learning and teaching can only be shown effectively through the use of a complementary but distinctive set of standards or benchmarks for ESL learners at different stages of schooling.
Language standards and language variation in Brunei Darussalam
Authors: Svalberg Agneta M-L
Published: October 2007

An assumption of this paper is that non-standard use of language will be accompanied by non-standard features of understanding. An attempt is made to access the meaning perceptions of learners at different levels of proficiency. The paper reports on what English learners in Brunei think English modal verb forms mean. It focuses specifically on would and discusses its use in Standard British English and in Brunei English. Bruneian perceptions of the meaning of this modal are compared with its use. It is claimed that the non-standard use of would for non-assertiveness in Brunei English can partly be explained by users overfocusing on its non-factivity meaning. The issues of what the target variety may be and the appropriacy of non-standard features in this sociocultural and linguistic context are briefly discussed.
When do Chinese girls order boys around?
Authors: Guo Jiansheng
Published: October 2007

The study examines gender differences in communicative strategies of Mandarin-speaking children in Beijing, China. Five-year-olds naturalistic discourse shows that both girls and boys can be bossy and demanding on the one hand, and submissive and tolerant for impositions and chastisement on the other, depending on contexts. Girls are impositive and chastising in the social/moral domain, where boys are most tolerant of and submissive to imposition. In contrast, boys are most impositive and chastising in the technical/problem-solving domain, where girls are most tolerant of imposition and admissive of inferiority. These gender differences make mixed-sex group interactions appear smooth and uneventful, and make same-sex group interactions appear competitive and problematic. These results call for a theoretical shift from an Essentialist universal perspective to a more culturally-sensitive, local and contextualized approach in research on gender and language communication, short of falling into a completely relativist Postmodern approach.
Harmony, hierarchy and duty based morality
Authors: Weatherley Robert
Published: October 2007

This article examines and rejects the perspective that Confucianism was compatible with a notion of rights. In contrast to the established doctrine of human rights which conceives human beings as moral equals, Confucianism was grounded in a philosophy and practice of moral inequality which measured human morality in relation to each persons position in the familial and social hierarchy. The roots of the Confucian antipathy towards human rights stemmed from the overriding significance attached to the attainment of social harmony since it was this that justified the apparent need for a hierarchical and therefore unequal society. This propensity towards harmony and hierarchy also ran counter to the notion that individuals possessed rights per se. With each person in the hierarchy expected to perform an onerous array of duties, there was little, if any, room for the pursuit of independent or separate interests. Consequently, any understanding that individuals were endowed with rights was stifled from the outset.
Constructing Cathay
Authors: Cheng W.K.
Published: October 2007

As relation between China and the West changed precipitately in the middle of the nineteenth century, there was a heightened demand in the West for knowledge about the Flowery Kingdom. But until well into the twentieth century, virtually the only direct source of information about China and the Chinese came from missionaries, in which respect they were often lauded as cultural brokers. As missionary communication of their experience provided Western readers with a vicarious experience of China, their cultural brokerage inexorably shaped Western popular perceptions of China and the Chinese in the West. These perceptions, when channeled politically, often had a defining effect on the nature and manner of the Western presence in China. This essay examines the China writing of John Macgowan, a veteran missionary from the London Missionary Society. What is interesting about Macgowans cultural brokerage is that unlike other missionaries (e.g., Arthur Smith) who often struggled with the difficulties between the missionary enterprise and Western expansionism, Macgowan uninhibitedly affirmed the intimacy between Mission and Empire. His writings on China and Chinese life  their social behavior and habits of thought, their relation with the living environment, the religious and cultural values by which they ordered their lives  therefore gave strong credence not only to the necessity, viability, and nobility of the christianizing project but ultimately to the sanctity of Western presence in China. In other words, Macgowans brokerage of his China knowledge exemplified the processes in which knowledge was legislated and communicated to establish the ideological conditions of the Western expansionism in China.
Development of demo type connectives and na elements
Authors: Onodera Noriko O.
Published: October 2007

This paper suggests the independence of grammaticalization and pragmaticalization processes. These two processes are originally and self-evidently autonomous evolutionary paths that occur independently of each other. However, grammaticalization is often discussed, indeed in the majority of the recent studies, in correlation to some unidirectional features that co-occur with grammaticalization. Such features include, structurally, for example, “bondedness” and “structural scope” (Lehmann 1995), and functionally, for example, “increase in abstraction” and “pragmaticalization”. These unidirectional features are at times even considered too authoritatively criterial to judge a given language change as an instance of grammaticalization.

This study illustrates a piece of evidence for the asymmetric relationship of grammaticalization and pragmaticalization. That is, the two groups of Japanese discourse markers — (1) demo type connectives and (2) na elements — experience quite different historical changes. The group (1) undergoes both grammaticalization and pragmaticalization, but the group (2) undergoes pragmaticalization without involving grammaticalization.
‘But-þat þou louye me, Sertes y dye fore loue of þe’
Authors: Honegger Thomas
Published: October 2007

In this paper, I look at how medieval and early modern poets present and exploit the potential inherent in opening moves in (love) relationships for the purpose of plot motivation and protagonist characterisation. The depiction of the opening moves depends on three interrelated pairs of variables: 1) legalistic tradition (marriage as the reason for initiating a relationship) vs emotional tradition (focus is on the beloved person’s affection), 2) plot motivation vs protagonist characterisation, and 3) brevity vs length. Longer texts that focus on the lovers’ feelings and that pay some attention to protagonist characterisation are more likely to feature relatively complex linguistic strategies presented in a basically realistic interactional manner. In shorter texts of the emotional tradition, the complexity is reduced, and poets working in the legalistic tradition often pay hardly any attention at all to the finer points of opening moves in love interaction.
Narrative Discourse Markers in Malory’s Morte D’Arthur
Authors: Fludernik Monika
Published: October 2007

On the basis of the model of narrative structure proposed in Fludernik (1996b) this paper presents the results of an investigation of discourse markers in Thomas Malory’s Morte D’Arthur, with a complete line-by-line analysis of The Tale of King Arthur, Books I to III (“Merlin”; “Balin”; “Torre and Pellinor”), A Noble Tale of Sir Launcelot du Lake, and The Book of Sir Tristram de Lyones (Book XIV: “Launcelot and Elaine”). The paper argues that the inflation of discourse markers in Malory is a sign of their imminent disappearance from narrative prose and that other features that indicate a dissolution of the oral narrative episode pattern are also visible in the text.
Metonymy
Authors: Koch Peter
Published: October 2007

The range of phenomena labelled as “metonymy” is so multifarious that it may seem impossible to reduce all these phenomena to a common semantic denominator. In accordance with many traditional and modern accounts in the fields of rhetoric and linguistics, this article reconstructs metonymy as a linguistic effect upon the content of a given form, based on a figure/ground effect along the contiguity relations within a given frame and generated by pragmatic processes. Thanks to these criteria, we are able to demonstrate the internal diversity as well as the fundamental unity of metonymy with respect to numerous aspects of language (innovation and conventionality, paradigmatic and syntagmatic dimension, linguistic subsystems like grammar, lexicon, etc., different levels of conceptual abstraction, concept and referent, speaker and hearer activities, principle of relevance) and to put metonymy in its right place by distinguishing it from linguistic effects based on other conceptual, especially taxonomic, relations and from other contiguity-based effects.
“Hear my soul speak”
Authors: Troupp Lotte
Published: October 2007

The Tempest is a “mankind” type of play, and Shakespeare’s strategy is to present fallen man in terms of language. Various aspects of “fallen language” are encoded in the characterisation and verbal exchanges. The unifying feature is a notable lack of “caritas”, due to an extreme self-centredness in the speakers, which Shakespeare displays in scenes of all-round incomprehension between many of the persons of the play. Such closed states of mind I have labelled “subjective”, giving this word a negative connotation. A regenerative process is marked by a hard-won return to communication worthy of being called “human” according to Renaissance ideals. I have labelled such negotiations between characters “intersubjective”. In the play, the channels of communication are restored by means of various insights, among them Prospero’s better self-knowledge and Ferdinand’s experiential discovery of truth. The “language of the soul” flows when such processes are set in motion; this special language is written into the play and is experienced in many guises within the play and, according to Renaissance rhetorical theory, by the audience as well.
The pragmatics of captatio benevolentiae in the Cely letters
Authors: Sanchez Roura Teresa
Published: October 2007

This paper treats the rhetorical strategy of securing the addressee’s goodwill, also known as captatio benevolentiae. Following the postulation in Brown and Levinson (1987), I examine its possible pragmatic properties and effect, and its politeness value in the face wants of the addressees, taking into consideration the social distance and relative power of the correspondents. Captatio benevolentiae passages have been selected from the Cely Letters on the basis of their rhetorical properties, their intended use and also their position in the letter; captatio benevolentiae occurs not only at the beginning of the letter, as was traditionally dictated in the original ars dictaminis manuals, but also throughout the body of the text.
When news isnt news
Authors: ben-Aaron Diana
Published: October 2007

Most research studies of news assume a bias toward the extreme, the unusual, and the new. However, much of the content of newspapers consists of the routine and the predictable. Using a collection of articles from the New York Times sampled from 1852 to the present, this paper examines news about one subject, national holidays, with a view to explaining the pragmatic functions of such formally unnewsworthy articles. In the national holiday news cycle, the newspaper first announces or forecasts the observances, and after they have taken place the public response is evaluated for enthusiasm and decorum. The standard of behaviour is reinforced through small human interest stories that contain inferential gaps encouraging readers to draw on their knowledge of human conduct. The basic principle being inferred is politeness toward the nation, in the sense of respecting its positive face by anticipating and following its wishes, and respecting its negative face by avoiding challenges and focusing on citizen responsibilities rather than citizen rights. The result is news stories that violate some of the most important hard news values previously identified by researchers, by being predictable, ambiguous, static, and generally good news. The analysis also shows how news which is apparently free of conflict can prepare readers for future consumption of conflict-oriented news.
Language, identity and war
Authors: Nelson Daniel N.
Published: October 2007

How are language, identity and war related? This exploratory essay probes the conceptual and logical connections among these three elemental factors of human existence, offers thoughts about an alternative discourse, and takes a look at suggestive data regarding the tie between violence and identity. I posit that who we are, what we say and when we fight are inseparable from one another. In this argumentative essay, language is seen as forming a nucleus of identity, identity as being forged in conflict, and discourse marking our path to, through and out of war and peace. Abating identity threats through identity-affirming discourse may, I conclude, be the best and most lasting tool towards peace.
Rhetorical strategies and identity politics in the discourse of colonial withdrawal
Authors: Flowerdew John
Published: October 2007

Skilful use of the rhetorical tropes which typify the language of serious political occasions — described here as “rhetorical weight” — is closely associated with charismatic political leaders. This paper studies the political rhetoric of a skilled exponent of the art, Chris Patten, the last British colonial governor of Hong Kong, and shows how he used rhetorical weight to promote his political agenda. Detailed analysis of four segments of Patten’s political oratory, spread over the period of his five-year term of office, highlights his heavy use of the tropes of metaphor, antithesis, parallelism, actualisation, and the unities of time, place and action. The paper demonstrates how the use of these tropes related to Patten’s overall political goals and their manipulative nature within the context of his discursive construction of Britain’s imperial/national history and identity.
The origins of empty categories in Singapore English
Authors: Bao Zhiming
Published: October 2007

The system of empty categories in Singapore English, a contact language with an endogenous ecology, arises through the interaction of three parameters: [topic-prominence], [pro-drop], and [wh-movement]. These parameters are reset under the pressure of the languages in the contact ecology, mainly the substrate Chinese dialects, and the lexifier English. The paper adopts a holistic approach to creole genesis, in which substrate and superstrate influence is expressed in terms of parametric re-structuring constrained by principles of Universal Grammar. Surface-true substrate, superstrate, or novel features are exponents of this parametric re-structuring.
Narrative Identity Empiricized: A Dialogical and Positioning Approach to Autobiographical Research Interviews
Authors: Lucius-Hoene Gabriele , Deppermann Arnulf
Published: October 2007

Narrative identity has achieved a scientific status as an elaborate concept of the storied nature of human experience and personal identity. Yet, many questions remain as to its empirical substrate. By exploring the pragmatic aspect of narrative research interviewing, i.e., the performative and positioning aspects of the narrative situation and the narrative product, as well as its particular autoepistemological and communicative tasks, this article tries to bridge the gap between the theoretical concept of narrative identity and the act of constructing identity in research interviewing.

Research data generated by autobiographical interviews are usually regarded and analyzed as monological narratives drawn from autobiographical memory. Narrative research interviewing, however, is always a dialogical, pragmatic activity: Narrator and researcher establish an interpersonal relationship made up of institutional, imaginative, socio-categorial and other communicative frames which are enacted by both partners during the interview. This pragmatic constitution of the interview as an interactive process calls for a communicative and constructivist approach to oral narratives which reveals different levels of the listener’s conceptions of himself or herself and the research situation in the narrator’s story. Along with the different voices and identity constructions, the narrator also constructs different recipients in his or her discursive positioning of the listener.

By using the concept of positioning, we propose both a conceptual framework and the corresponding analytical tools for identifying textual indicators and contextual interpretative resources for a discursive approach to narrative identity constructions in research interviewing. This option allows insight into the strategies narrators employ to negotiate their identities in the situation itself, which may be fruitful for many research contexts that use the concept of narrative identity. (Narrative, Autobiography, Research Interviewing, Conversation Analysis)
Narrative as a Social Engagement Tool: The Excessive Use of Evaluation in Narratives from Children with Williams Syndrome
Authors: Losh Molly , Bellugi Ursula , Reilly Judy
Published: October 2007

Williams syndrome is a rare genetic disorder characterized by a unique physiological and behavioral profile, involving excessive sociability and relatively spared linguistic abilities in spite of mild to moderate mental retardation. The present study examines the narrative development of children with Williams syndrome and, for the first time, compares their performance to typically developing chronological-age matched children to examine the development of both structural linguistic abilities as well as the use of evaluation to elaborate and enrich narrative. Thirty children with Williams syndrome (5- through 10-years-old) and 30 typically developing age- and gender-matched comparison children were asked to tell a story from a wordless picture book. Results indicated that as a group, children with Williams syndrome committed significantly more morphological errors and used less complex syntax than comparison children, not surprising considering their language delay and impaired cognitive abilities. Significantly, children with Williams syndrome greatly exceeded comparison children in their elaboration and use of evaluative devices and showed particular preference for types of evaluation which serve as social engagement devices, reflecting their profile of excessive sociability. (Williams syndrome, Narrative, Evaluation)
Stories of Courtship and Marriage: Orientations in Openings
Authors: Baker Carolyn , Cavallaro Johnson Greer
Published: October 2007

This paper presents initial analyses of the opening sequences of a number of courtship and marriage stories told by elderly Italian-Australians. Using a conversation-analytic perspective, the paper contributes to the study of how storytelling is a co-construction of teller and audience. The focus is on how the storyteller(s) and the interviewer, referring to a list of topics that might be covered in the story, negotiate how the story should be told. These instances of conversational storytelling differ from those in naturally occurring settings, since the storytelling is being recorded; further, they are distinctive because the storytellers know that the audio-recordings will be later transformed into chapters in a book. Therefore, there is a distinctive “for the record”orientation by both storyteller and interviewer, as might occur with oral history research. This paper explicates what might be involved in getting stories started under such circumstances. Some of the theoretical issues that arise from the analysis include the status, for storytellers, of the assumption that there is a correct or true story that represents what once happened. The orientation taken to analysis of the storytelling, however, is concerned with the “act of telling”(cf. Bamberg, 1997). This paper thus contributes to a pragmatic approach to narrative and narrative analysis.
Narrating Community in Doctrina Classes
Authors: Baquedano-Lopez Patricia
Published: October 2007

While narrative focuses on particular protagonists and events, narrative also situates tellers and their audiences within a web of historical and cultural expectations, ideologies, and meanings, more broadly. As such, narrative creates shared understandings and community among those participating in narrative activity. Moreover, the narrative process extends beyond the boundaries of the here and now to embrace people and places in a cultural past. This article examines the religious narrative accounts of the apparition of Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe told in children’s religious education classes called doctrina at a Catholic parish in Los Angeles. The children that attend these classes are of Mexican descent and their lessons are taught in Spanish. The article analyzes the linguistic and interactional means through which narrative renditions of the story of Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe construct Mexican identity. The narrative renditions tell the story of the apparition of the Virgin Mary in Tepeyac, near Mexico City, in the year 1531, thirteen years after the fall of the Aztec empire to the Spanish conquest. These diasporic narrative accounts transcend time and space, as they continue to be told by Mexican Catholics at places beyond the geopolitical borders of Mexico. Moreover, these narrative tellings are instrumental for positioning teachers and students in a postcolonial moment that revisits the hierarchies of Mexico’s colonial regime vis-à-vis their current experiences as immigrants in Los Angeles.
Memories of mother
Authors: Andrews Molly
Published: October 2007

One of the most dominant cultural narratives is ‘the story of mothering’ but as many researchers have documented, there is a large chasm between this cultural product and individuals’ lived experiences of mothering and being mothered. When individuals talk about their relationships with their mothers, they locate themselves  knowingly or not  politically, economically, and historically. This article analyses data based on in-depth interviews with four men and women between the ages of seventy-five and ninety, and explores the stories they tell about the role of their mothers in relation to the children they were and the adults they became. Of the four cases presented, two involve child beating, in one the mother is absent from the time of the speaker’s early childhood, and one is an account of maternal depression. However, as these individuals recount their early memories of their mothers, they do so as people who have developed significantly since that time. Implicitly challenging the deterministic mother-blaming which lies at the heart of key cultural narratives, these men and women reveal a deep level of understanding  both personal and political  of the difficult circumstances which form the context of many peoples’ experiences of mothering and being mothered.
From the autonomy of syntax to the autonomy of linguistic semantics
Authors: Dor Daniel
Published: October 2007

Current research on the syntax-semantics interface demonstrates the dramatic extent to which syntactic structures constitute transparent reflections of well-defined semantic regularities. As this paper shows, the empirical results accumulated within this framework strongly suggest that a theoretical distinction should be made between two distinct levels of meaning representation: A level of conceptual meaning on the one hand, and a uniquely linguistic level of meaning — Linguistic Semantics — on the other. The semantic notions and regularities which turn out to determine major syntactic phenomena are best interpreted as belonging to the level of Linguistic Semantics, rather than to the level of conceptual meaning. This view helps characterize language as a unique and functional system — a cognitive system whose function is defined at the level of Linguistic Semantics. It explains the fact, most recently highlighted by Levinson (1997), that the expressive power of language, as a tool for the communication of meanings, is constrained in non-trivial ways.
On the generation of coherent dialogue
Authors: Beun Robbert-Jan
Published: October 2007

A dialogue game is presented that enables us to generate coherent elementary conversational sequences at the speech act level. Central to this approach is the fact that the cognitive states of players change as a result of the interpretation of speech acts and that these changes provoke the production of a subsequent speech act. The rules of the game are roughly based on the Gricean maxims of co-operation — i.e., agents are forbidden to put forward information they do not believe and are forbidden to ask anything they already believe; the Gricean maxim of relevance is determined by a so-called imbalance in the players’ belief and desire states. As in realistic conversational situations, it is assumed that the information needed to answer a question can be present in a distributed manner. Consequently, the structure of the dialogues may become rather complex, and may result in the generation of counter-questions and sub-dialogues. It will be shown that the structure and the coherence of conversational units do not necessarily have to be the product of a complex planning process or a speech act grammar, but can be based on elementary generation rules that take only into account the local context. As a result, the conversational game does not suffer from the same computational complexity as existing planning models for speech act generation. Although simple in its basic form, the framework enables us to produce abstract conversations with some properties that agree strikingly with dialogue properties found in Conversation Analysis.
The referential-attributive distinction
Authors: Powell George
Published: October 2007

In this paper my aim is to approach the referential–attributive distinction in the interpretation of definite descriptions, originally discussed by Donnellan (1966), from a cognitive perspective grounded in Sperber and Wilson’s Relevance Theory (Sperber and Wilson 1986/95). In particular, I argue that definite descriptions encode a procedural semantics, in the sense of Blakemore (1987), which is neutral as between referential and attributive readings (among others). On this account, the distinction between referential and attributive readings arises as a result of the differing links that exist between different types of mental representation and the world, rather than as a result of the differing links between language and mental representations.
A cognitive map of indicative and subjunctive mood use in Spanish
Authors: Gregory Amy E.
Published: October 2007

Of general interest, this study confirms the syntactic manifestation of the interpersonal dynamics of the participants in discourse
and of their high-level cognitive processes therein. More specifically, this study formalizes categories of the Spanish indicative
and subjunctive in a cognitive map based on the deictic organization of the Spanish mood system. This cognitive map, based on
a pragmasyntactic approach to mood use, allows us to view mood in Spanish as a mechanism that establishes metaphorical
distance from the individual’s here and now. This study treats the indicative and subjunctive moods of Spanish with
special attention to the so-called ‘factive’ clauses [those clauses subordinated to matrices of subjective comment
such as me alegro que (I am glad that), es bueno que (It is good that), no me gusta que (I don’t
like it that), etc. and mental act matrices such as darse cuenta de que (to realize that), tomar en consideración
que (to take into account that), etc.]. We propose an approach to analyzing mood use that is based on the information value
of an utterance in discourse. In considering information value we take into account (a) Lambrecht’s (1994) work featuring
presuppositions as inherent parts of certain syntactical structures; (b) Mejías-Bikandi’s (1994) claim that the
subjective comment structure in Spanish (subjective comment + que + clause marked with subjunctive) inherently
contains a pragmatic presupposition; (c) Mejías-Bikandi’s reaffirmation that assertion is the role of the indicative
and non-assertion is the role of the subjunctive in Spanish; (d) Lunn’s (1988, 1989a & b) suggestion that the
indicative is used to assert propositions with high information value while the subjunctive’s role is to not assert
propositions with low information value; and (e) Lambrecht’s (1994) ideas on what constitutes information. We assume that
non-assertion, including pragmatic presupposition, and asserted propositions work together to create the relative information
value of utterances. We show how the information value of utterances can be organized by means of deixis to create a cognitive
map. The graphic design for the three dimensional version, which incorporates the notion of the time line with that of
metaphorical distance from any individual’s deictic center, was inspired by Langacker’s (1991) Cognitive Gram-
mar.
Core-Oblique Distinction and Nominalizer Choice in Japanese and Korean
Authors: Horie Kaoru
Published: October 2007

It has been suggested that a core–oblique distinction is not manifested in the grammatical structures of languages like Japanese and Korean, wherein both core and oblique arguments are marked by so-called case-marking particles. This study argues, based on elicitation data from Japanese and Korean as well as Japanese questionnaire data, that a core–oblique distinction in these languages is indeed reflected in the differing selection of sentential nominalizers to mark core and oblique nominalized clauses. Furthermore, this study presents an explanation for the differing selectional patterns of core and oblique marking sentential nominalizers from the viewpoints of markedness and information processing.
Semantic agents, syntactic subjects, and discourse topics
Authors: Beck David
Published: October 2007

The Salishan language Lushootseed has been claimed to lack both syntactic subjects and morphosyntactically transitive clauses, a problematic stance from a universalist/typological point of view. This paper offers evidence both for the syntactic role of subject in Lushootseed and the existence of transitive clauses, and examines the sentence- and discourse-level properties of Lushootseed subjects that make them essential for the grounding of events and discourse in both space and time. Their centrality to the discourse-organization of the language, and hence their recoverability, allows their frequent — and, in transitive clauses, obligatory — elision from the surface form of sentences.
Coding choices in argument structure
Authors: Donohue Mark
Published: October 2007

The syntactic properties of applicatives have received a large amount of attention. Despite this there have been almost no attempts to explain the reasons behind the choice of an applicative coding of an argument when there is an grammatical oblique coding strategy available. This study focuses on dynamic applicative constructions in Tukang Besi, an Austronesian language of central Indonesia, and examines a large corpus for reasons why applicative coding is chosen over oblique coding. Factors such as semantic role information and animacy are as important as textual prominence in the coding decision.
The internal structure of evidentiality in Romance
Authors: Squartini Mario
Published: October 2007

This article discusses the evidential uses of the Future, Conditional and Indicative Imperfect in various Romance languages (mostly French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish) and the semantic factors that underlie the choice between them. The Romance data are used as a background for an evaluation of proposed taxonomies of evidentiality (Willett 1988; Frawley 1992; Botne 1997). It is shown that Willett’s model, based on the primary distinction direct vs. indirect type of evidence, is better suited to account for evidentiality in Romance, while the notion of source should be considered as independently interacting with the type of evidence/mode of knowing.