bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
On functionalism and formalism
Authors: Butler Christopher S.
Published: September 2007

The aim of this article is not only to reply to the points made in Newmeyer’s review of my Structure and function: A guide to three major structural-functional theories (S&F), but also to further discussion on relationships between functionalism and formalism. Functionalist claims about external motivation of the language system are discussed, and it is shown that there are very considerable differences between Chomsky’s recent discussion of external motivation and that in the functionalist and cognitivist/constructionist literature. It is pointed out that functional linguistics claims a motivational relationship between semantics and syntax rather than a purely interpretive one as in formalist theories, and that functionalists take a much wider view of what constitutes semantics. Furthermore, not only is there more direct connection between meanings and forms than Newmeyer claims, but also structural-functional theories invoke a second type of semantic motivation not involving one-to-one mapping. They also vary in the level of motivation they postulate. Recent work by Jackendoff and his colleagues is shown to present serious challenges to mainstream generativism and to make many claims which agree with those of functionalism and constructionism, so providing the possibility of interesting cross-fertilisation. Finally, it is pointed out that S&F agrees with Newmeyer that Functional Grammar and Role and Reference Grammar fail to attain fully their professed standards of adequacy.
The semantic and lexical range of the ditransitive construction in the history of (North) Germanic
Authors: Barðdal Jóhanna
Published: September 2007

Current analyses of the semantic structure of the ditransitive construction in English assume that the construction consists of approximately nine semantic subconstructions, namely those of actual, intended, retained and metaphorical transfer (and some corresponding subconstructions). An examination of the ditransitive construction in Icelandic reveals at least seventeen subconstructions in that language. In addition to most of the subconstructions found in English, the ones in Icelandic also denote transfer along a path, possession, utilizing, enabling, hindrance, constraining and mental activities. An investigation of the ditransitive construction in the most archaic Swedish and Norwegian dialects reveals a significant overlap with Icelandic, but also some overlap with English and German. This comparative evidence permits a reconstruction of the semantic structure of the ditransitive construction common to the Germanic language area.
Possibly alternative modality
Authors: Tucker Gordon H.
Published: September 2007

Despite the recognition of secondary ‘modal’ resources such as modal adjectives and adverbs, there has been relatively little discussion of the full extent of their contribution to the expression of modal meaning in general. In this corpus-based study, I focus exclusively on the adverb possibly and describe the range of environments that are revealed by a data set of 2000 randomly selected citations. On the basis of the observed data, I argue for a single core sense of possibly that distinguishes it both from modal operators, such as may/might and from closely related adverbs such as perhaps and maybe. I also argue that, beyond the stereotypical function of possibly as a modal adjunct, there is massive evidence to suggest that it functions additionally as a modalising element in units at the lower rank of group. I therefore propose a revision to the structure of these units to incorporate the expression of modal meaning.
Constructions in language description
Authors: Schultze-Berndt Eva
Published: September 2007

This paper addresses some rarely-discussed theoretical and methodological issues in the application of a monostratal, construction-based linguistic model to language description. Constructions, in this approach, are defined as complex, schematic signs which are non-compositional, i.e. which have to be learned in a way which is similar to lexical items. In principle, the construction-based model is well suited to language description, since constructions which are specific to a language can be dealt with in the same framework as constructions which are common cross-linguistically. Yet, identifying a construction and distinguishing it from a compositional combination of signs, or from a formally and functionally related construction, is not always a straightforward task in descriptive practice. This is particularly true for spoken language, where the interaction of prosody and grammar has to be taken into account. I will propose here that gestalt-based constructions or G-Constructions, for which coherence is ensured by contiguity and prosodic means, should be distinguished from R-Constructions, where a relational element is responsible for the coherence of the construction, and which may therefore be distributed among two (or more) intonation units. These issues are illustrated by applying a construction-based description to various multi-predicate expressions in the Australian language Jaminjung.
An experimental study of when and how speakers use gestures to communicate
Authors: Bavelas Janet , Kenwood Christine , Johnson Trudy , Phillips Bruce
Published: September 2007

This experiment expanded the visual availability paradigm by subsuming it under the broader principle of recipient design. We varied recipient design by asking speakers to describe a picture to someone who would see a videotape of their description or only hear an audiotape. Second, speakers described pictures that varied in verbal encodability. Finally, in addition to gestural rate, we analysed the redundancy of gestures with words. The results (N = 40) confirmed our predictions that speakers gesture at a higher rate and use a higher proportion of nonredundant gestures when their recipient would see their videotape; that they also use more nonredundant gestures when describing a picture for which they have a poor vocabulary; and that these two factors interact to produce the strongest effects when vocabulary is limited and the recipient would see the videotape. These effects support the hypothesis that speakers design their gestures to communicate to recipients.
Raise your hand if you’re spatial
Authors: Hostetter Autumn B. , Alibali Martha W.
Published: September 2007

Individuals differ greatly in how often they gesture when they speak. This study investigated relations between speakers’ verbal and spatial skills and their gesture rates. Two types of verbal skill were measured: semantic fluency, which is thought to index efficiency with lexical access, and phonemic fluency, which is thought to index efficiency with organizing the lexicon in novel ways. Spatial skill was measured with a visualization task. We hypothesized that individuals with low verbal skill but high spatial visualization skill would gesture most often, due to having mental images not closely linked to verbal forms. This hypothesis was supported for phonemic fluency, but not for semantic fluency. We also found that individuals with low phonemic fluency and individuals with high phonemic fluency produced representational gestures at higher rates than individuals with average phonemic fluency. The findings indicate that individual differences in gesture production are associated with individual differences in cognitive skills.
Formulating the Triangle of Doom
Authors: Koschmann Timothy , LeBaron Curtis , Goodwin Charles , Zemel Alan , Dunnington Gary
Published: September 2007

Considerable attention has been paid in the CA literature to the glossing practices through which participants in conversation formulate who they are, what they are talking about, where the things they are talking about are located, and so forth. There are, of course, gestural glossing practices as well. For any concept or category presented gesturally, however, there is a range of possibilities from which a particular formulation may be adopted on any actual occasion of use. Identifying alternative formulations serves as a useful analytic exercise for exploring the pragmatic consequences of a produced gesture. In our own research, we have been studying the practices through which surgeons provide instruction while performing surgeries in a teaching hospital. We describe here a particular anatomy lesson produced during a surgery. The attending surgeon uses his hands and arms to gesturally construct a representation of a specific anatomic region (“the Triangle of Doom”) for the benefit of two medical students viewing and participating in the surgery. Employing the structure of Schegloff’s analysis of place formulations, we conduct an analysis of the attending’s gestural formulation. We will show how analyzing a particular gesture in this way illuminates both the intricate ways in which the gesture is tied to its context of production and the exquisite specificity of the gesture itself.
El Español en los proyectos de lengua universal
Authors: Velarde Lombraña Julián
Published: September 2007

‘One language for the world’ is the most perennial ideal in the history of humanity. Projects for a universal language have been multifarious. Its design typically depends on the dominant linguistic theories of the period in which such languages are conceived. The project by Bonifacio Sotos Ochando (1785–1869) of 1852 can be considered as the highest point reached by the tradition which harks back to the 17th century and tries to develop what is known as a ‘philosophical’ language or characteristica universalis. From 1860 onwards the projects for a universal language are, in general, a posteriori linguistic systems which look at historical grammars and languages in search for general principles and universal rules. Languages used for the design of such a posteriori projects are, for political and cultural reasons, European languages, mainly Romance languages. In this paper the focus is on Spanish. First, a classification of international language projects of is offered that, in some way, use Spanish. Second, the growing of Spanish language in the USA and its relationships with English is analysed. Third, the influence on Spanish by new technologies of communication is discussed. Finally, an analogy is drawn between the role of Latin in the 17th century and English in the 20th with regard to the search for an auxiliary international language.
Pictet’s Du Beau (1856) and the crystallisation of saussurean linguistics
Authors: Joseph John E.
Published: September 2007

The key formative figure in the intellectual life of the young Ferdinand de Saussure was Adolphe Pictet (1799–1875), a family friend best remembered for his Les origines indo-européennes, ou Les Aryas primitifs: Essai de paléontologie linguistique (1859–1863). A review of its second edition written by Saussure two years after Pictet’s death contains a wealth of information about his life and work, including a description of his book Du beau, dans la nature, l’art et la poésie: Etudes esthétiques (1856). In it, Pictet makes clear that aesthetics is principally centred on the problem of the meaning of the word beauty, and that within this problem are to be found all the tensions between the rational and sensible, the intellectual and emotional, the subjective and objective, and intention and reaction, that are at the heart of the whole Enlightenment discourse on the nature of language. A number of remarks on regularity of form in nature, for example in crystallisation, find echoes in Saussure’s later characterisation of the language system, as do Pictet’s assertions about the arbitrary nature of the linguistic sign and about the signified being not a thing but a concept. Indeed, a number of ‘influences’ on Saussure which Aarsleff (1982) credited to Hippolyte Taine (1828–1893) – for whom we have no independent evidence of such influence – can more convincingly be ascribed to his early mentor Pictet. Du beau moreover provides a ‘missing link’ between the Enlightenment philosophers whose aesthetic views it details, and the traces of their philosophical positions that have repeatedly been detected in the Cours de linguistique générale.
Lambert ten Kate and Justus-Georg Schottelius
Authors: Rutten Gijsbert
Published: September 2007

Until now the Dutch linguist Lambert ten Kate (1674–1731), famous for his early discovery ofAblaut, has not been honoured with a publication concerning his relationship to German 17th-century linguists. Such an interpretation, however, shows great similarities between ten Kate and especially Justus-Georg Schottelius (1612–1676) with regard to three fundamental theoretical issues: the primacy of the roots, the authority of historical material, and the importance of analogy and regularity. They both integrate these when assuming the existence of a suprahistorical system of roots on the basis of which the rational processes of derivation and composition create language as it is.
The ‘Genius of language’
Authors: Schlaps Christiane
Published: September 2007

The so-called ‘genius of language’ may be regarded as one of the most influential, and versatile, metalinguistic metaphors used to describe vernacular languages from the 17th century onwards. Over the centuries, philosophers, grammarians, trans­lators and language critics etc. wrote of the ‘genius of language’ in a wide range of text types and with reference to various linguistic positions so that a set of rather diverse types of the concept was created. This paper traces three prominent stages in the development of the ‘genius of language’ argument and, by identifying some of the most frequent types as they evolved in the context of the various linguistic dis­courses, endeavours to show the major transformations of the concept. While early on, discussion of the stylistic and grammatical type of the ‘genius of language’ concentrates on surface features in the languages considered, during the middle of the 18th century, the ‘genius of language’ is relocated to the semantic, interior part of language. With the 19th-century notion of an organological ‘genius of language’, the former static concept is personified and recast in a dynamic form until, taken to its nationalistic extremes, the ‘genius of language’ argument finally ceases to be of any epistemological and scientific value.
Visual verbs
Authors: Krull Robert , Sharp Michael
Published: September 2007

Arrows, when used to depict the direction of movement in procedural illustrations, may be ambiguous with regard to the actual direction in which movements should occur. This ambiguity results from problems in translating threedimensional space to the two-dimensional display planes of the printed page and the computer monitor. We discuss sources of the ambiguity and possible solutions.
A taxonomy of the discourse relations between words and visuals
Authors: Kong Kenneth C.C.
Published: September 2007

A document is mainly composed of words and images, but the complex relationship that binds these two completely different semiotic resources is usually taken for granted as transparent. The simple relations between words and images – ‘anchorage’ and ‘relay’, identified by Barthes almost 30 years ago – are unable to deal with the complexity of their bond, made even more complex by current printing and computer technology. This paper aims to identify the potential relations that bind texts and images together by arguing for a multilevel description of their logico-semantic relationships. The multiple, evaluative and metaphorical functions of the relations will also be discussed. The data generated from the proposed framework can form an empirical corpus for quantitative analysis. Examples from a variety of sources will be used as examples to show how the framework can be operationalized.
The advantage of using relational databases for large corpora
Authors: Davies Mark
Published: September 2007

Relational databases can be used to create large corpora that provide both very good search performance and a wide range of queries. This paper outlines how this approach has been used to create theCorpus del Español, which contains 100 million words of text in Spanish texts from the 1200s-1900s. The main databases are composed of n-grams tables (all unique 1, 2, 3, and 4 word sequences) and the associated frequency of all n-grams in each century (historical Spanish) and register (Modern Spanish). These tables are then joined to other tables containing part of speech, lemma, synonyms, and user-defined lists of words and lemma. There is essentially no limit to the amount of annotation that can be added in additional tables (with little or no impact on performance), and the SQL-based queries allow a wide range of searches that are not available with traditional corpora.
Swedish and Danish, spoken and written language
Authors: Henrichsen Peter Juel , Allwood Jens
Published: September 2007

The aim of much linguistic research is to determine the grammar and the lexicon of a certain language L. The spoken variant of L – in so far as it is considered at all – is generally taken to be just another projection of the same grammar and lexicon. We suspect that this assumption may be wrong. Our suspicion derives from our contrastive analyses of four corpora, two Swedish and two Danish (covering spoken as well as written language), suggesting that – in the dimensions of frequency distribution, word type selection, and distribution over parts of speech – the mode of communication (spoken versus written) is much more significant as a determining factor than even the choice of language (Swedish versus Danish).
Using corpora in machine-learning chatbot systems
Authors: Shawar Bayan Abu , Atwell Eric Steven
Published: September 2007

A chatbot is a machine conversation system which interacts with human users via natural conversational language. Software to machine-learn conversational patterns from a transcribed dialogue corpus has been used to generate a range of chatbots speaking various languages and sublanguages including varieties of English, as well as French, Arabic and Afrikaans. This paper presents a program to learn from spoken transcripts of the Dialogue Diversity Corpus of English, the Minnesota French Corpus, the Corpus of Spoken Afrikaans, the Qur'an Arabic-English parallel corpus, and the British National Corpus of English; we discuss the problems which arose during learning and testing. Two main goals were achieved from the automation process. One was the ability to generate different versions of the chatbot in different languages, bringing chatbot technology to languages with few if any NLP resources: the corpus-based learning techniques transferred straightforwardly to develop chatbots for Afrikaans and Qur'anic Arabic. The second achievement was the ability to learn a very large number of categories within a short time, saving effort and errors in doing such work manually: we generated more than one million AIML categories or conversation-rules from the BNC corpus, 20 times the size of existing AIML rule-sets, and probably the biggest AI Knowledge-Base ever.
HE and THEY in indefinite anaphora in written present-day English
Authors: Laitinen Mikko
Published: September 2007

This article explores the usage of singular HE and plural THEY with their possessive, objective and reflexive forms in anaphoric reference to compound indefinite pronouns in written present-day English. Previous studies have indicated that the most commonly used personal pronouns in anaphoric reference to non-referential indefinite pronouns are indeed HE and THEY. The data for the study are drawn from the written part of the British National Corpus. The structure of the study is such that following the introduction, I will survey the earlier literature on the topic to illustrate that there is a gap in the previous studies on epicene pronouns. The third section defines the indefinite pronouns used in this study. In addition, the section also discusses the differences between the meaning and form of the indefinites and the semantic reference sets of each pronoun paradigm. Following the explanation of the methods, the article sets out the findings.
The textlinguistic dimension of corpus linguistics
Authors: Mahlberg Michaela
Published: September 2007

Corpus research can provide important insights into different areas of language description. The present paper takes a textlinguistic approach to the description of English and puts into perspective the ‘support function’ of general nouns such as man, move and thing. The support function captures various ways in which general nouns are used to present information appropriately in a given context. Specifically, three aspects of the support function are discussed: ‘giving emphasis’, ‘adding information in passing’ and ‘providing an introduction’. From a more theoretical point of view, the present paper argues for an integration of the pattern grammar approach with a textlinguistic perspective.
Controlling the dog, pretending to have a conversation, or just being friendly?
Authors: Mitchell Robert W.
Published: September 2007

This study examines the effects of sex and familiarity on Americans’ talk to dogs during play, using categories derived from research comparing mothers’ and fathers’ talk to infants. Eight men and fifteen women were videotaped whilst playing with their own dog and with another person’s dog, and their utterances were codified for features common to infant-directed talk. Women used the baby talk speech register more than men, and both men and women used this register more when interacting with the unfamiliar dog than with the familiar dog. When playing with the familiar dog, women talked more than men, and their talk was more suggestive of friendliness and having a conversation. When playing with the unfamiliar dog people used more praise, more conversational gambits, a more diverse vocabulary, and longer utterances than when playing with the familiar dog, suggesting that when playing with the unfamiliar dog, people pretended to have more of a conversation, were more attentive to appearing friendly and were less attentive to the dog’s limited understanding. Overall, however, men and women used similar forms of talk when interacting with a dog, whether familiar or not.
To move or not to move
Authors: Liebal Katja , Call Josep , Tomasello Michael , Pika Simone
Published: September 2007

A previous observational study suggested that when faced with a partner with its back turned, chimpanzees tend to move around to the front of a non-attending partner and then gesture — rather than gesturing once to attract attention and then again to convey a specific intent. We investigated this preference experimentally by presenting six orangutans, five gorillas, nine chimpanzees, and four bonobos with a food begging situation in which we varied the body orientation of an experimenter (E) with respect to the subject (front vs. back) and the location of the food (in front or behind E). These manipulations allowed us to measure whether subjects preferred to move around to face E or to use signals to attract her attention before they begged for food. Results showed that all species moved around to face E and then produced visual gestures, instead of using tactile/ auditory gestures behind E to call her attention. Species differences were apparent particularly when the food and E were in different locations. Unlike gorillas and orangutans, chimpanzees and bonobos (from genus Pan) produced their gestures in front of E in all conditions, including that in which subjects had to leave the food behind to communicate with her. Implications of these results are discussed in the context of the evolution of social cognition in great apes.
Vocalize to localize
Authors: Manser Marta B. , Fletcher Lindsay B.
Published: September 2007

In this study of the functionally referential alarm calls in the meerkats (Suricata suricatta), we tested the hypothesis that the ability to refer to a specific location was an important factor in the evolution of discrete vocalizations. We investigated what information receivers gained about the location of the predator from alarm calls with high stimulus specificity compared to alarm calls with low stimulus specificity. Furthermore, we studied whether visual cues about the localization of the predator may be available from the posture of the caller. We described the general behaviour of the caller, the caller’s posture, and in particular its gaze direction. We then observed receivers responding to the different call types, to determine whether the acoustic structure of the calls was enough for them to respond in the appropriate way, or whether they used additional visual cues from the caller. We tested this with specific manipulation experiments, using three set ups of playback experiments: (1) no caller visible; (2) model guard with specific gaze direction; and (3) live sentinel. Natural observations and experiments confirmed that in high urgency situations the meerkats have enough information from the acoustic structure of the call to respond appropriately. When hearing low urgency calls that are less stimuli specific, meerkats used visual cues as an additional source of information in a few cases. This may indicate that functionally referential calls evolved to denote the location of the predator, rather than the predator type or its velocity of approach. However, when discussing this result in comparison to other functionally referential calls, such as the food associated calls and recruitment calls, this localization hypothesis does not appear to apply to the functionally referential calls in general.
Lateralization of communicative signals in nonhuman primates and the hypothesis of the gestural origin of language
Authors: Vauclair Jacques
Published: September 2007

This article argues for the gestural origins of speech and language based on the available evidence gathered in humans and nonhuman primates and especially from ape studies. The strong link between motor functions (hand use and manual gestures) and speech in humans is reviewed. The presence of asymmetrical cerebral organization in nonhuman primates along with functional asymmetries in the perception and production of vocalizations and in intentional referential gestural communication is then emphasized. The nature of primate communicatory systems is presented, and the similarities and differences between these systems and human speech are discussed. It is argued that recent findings concerning neuroanatomical asymmetries in the chimpanzee brain and the existence of both mirror neurons and lateralized use of hands and vocalizations in communication necessitate a reconsideration of the phylogenic emergence of the cerebral and behavioral prerequisites for human speech.
Experiencing contingency and agency
Authors: Nadel Jacqueline , Prepin Ken , Okanda Mako
Published: September 2007

Precursors of inferential capacities concerning self- and other- understanding may be found in the basic experience of social contingency and emotional sharing. The emergence of a sense of self- and other-agency receives special attention here, as a foundation for self-understanding. We propose that synchrony, an amodal parameter of contingent self-other relationships, should be especially involved in the development of a sense of agency. To explore this framework, we have manipulated synchrony in various ways, either by delaying mother’s response to infant’s behaviour, disorganizing mother’s internal synchrony between face and voice, freezing the partner in a still attitude, or on the contrary maximizing synchrony through imitation. We report results obtained with healthy and clinical populations that are supposed to be at the beginning of basic experiences concerning the ownership of their actions: infants of 2 months and 6 months, low-functioning children with autism and MA matched young children with Down Syndrome. Our results support the idea of a two-step process linking understanding of self to understanding of other and leading on to form the concept of human beings as universally contingent entities.
Selective looking by 12-month-olds to a temporally contingent partner
Authors: Striano Tricia , Henning Anne , Vaish Amrisha
Published: September 2007

Twelve-month-old infants interacted with two strangers in a free-play context. In the Experimental condition (n = 17), one stranger (Contingent partner) vocally responded immediately to infants’ looks towards her, whereas the other (Non-contingent partner) was yoked to the Contingent partner with a 1-, 2-, or 3-s delay. In the Control condition (n = 17), the Non-Contingent partner emitted the first vocalization and other non-contingent vocalizations during the free play session. The Contingent partner acted the same as in the Experimental condition. When a novel event occurred after the free-play session, infants looked significantly more to the Contingent partner regardless of condition. The study highlights infants’ selective looking to temporally contingent partners in novel situations.
Sensitivity to interpersonal timing at 3 and 6 months of age
Authors: Striano Tricia , Henning Anne , Stahl Daniel
Published: September 2007

Sensitivity to interpersonal timing was assessed in mother–infant interaction. In Study 1, 3-month-old infants interacted with their mothers over television and the mothers’ audio-visual presentation was either live or temporally delayed by 1 second. Infants gazed longer when the mother was presented live compared to delayed by 1 second, indicating that they detected the temporal delay. In Study 2, mothers interacted with their 3-month-old infants over television and the infants’ audio-visual presentation was either live or temporally delayed by 1 second. Mothers’ behavior was not altered by a 1-second delay in their infants’ behavior compared to a live presentation. In Study 3 and 4, the results were replicated with 6-month-old infants. Whereas infants detected the temporal delay in maternal responses, mothers likely adjusted to the delay in infant behavior. The discussion focuses on the role of interpersonal timing for detecting social contingency in dyadic and triadic communication.
Robotic pets in the lives of preschool children
Authors: Kahn Peter H. , Friedman Batya , Pérez-Granados Deanne R. , Freier Nathan G.
Published: September 2007

This study examined preschool children’s reasoning about and behavioral interactions with one of the most advanced robotic pets currently on the retail market, Sony’s robotic dog AIBO. Eighty children, equally divided between two age groups, 34–50 months and 58–74 months, participated in individual sessions with two artifacts: AIBO and a stuffed dog. Evaluation and justification results showed similarities in children’s reasoning across artifacts. In contrast, children engaged more often in apprehensive behavior and attempts at reciprocity with AIBO, and more often mistreated the stuffed dog and endowed it with animation. Discussion focuses on how robotic pets, as representative of an emerging technological genre, may be (a) blurring foundational ontological categories, and (b) impacting children’s social and moral development.
How many words can my robot learn?
Authors: Lopes Luís Seabra , Chauhan Aneesh
Published: September 2007

This paper addresses word learning for human–robot interaction. The focus is on making a robotic agent aware of its surroundings, by having it learn the names of the objects it can find. The human user, acting as instructor, can help the robotic agent ground the words used to refer to those objects. A lifelong learning system, based on one-class learning, was developed (OCLL). This system is incremental and evolves with the presentation of any new word, which acts as a class to the robot, relying on instructor feedback. A novel experimental evaluation methodology, that takes into account the open-ended nature of word learning, is proposed and applied. This methodology is based on the realization that a robot’s vocabulary will be limited by its discriminatory capacity which, in turn, depends on its sensors and perceptual capabilities. The results indicate that the robot’s representations are capable of incrementally evolving by correcting class descriptions, based on instructor feedback to classification results. In successive experiments, it was possible for the robot to learn between 6 and 12 names of real-world office objects. Although these results are comparable to those obtained by other authors, there is a need to scale-up. The limitations of the method are discussed and potential directions for improvement are pointed out.
How human infants deal with symbol grounding
Authors: Cowley Stephen J.
Published: September 2007

Taking a distributed view of language, this paper naturalizes symbol grounding. Learning to talk is traced to — not categorizing speech sounds — but events that shape the rise of human-style autonomy. On the extended symbol hypothesis, this happens as babies integrate micro-activity with slow and deliberate adult action. As they discover social norms, intrinsic motive formation enables them to reshape co-action. Because infants link affect to contingencies, dyads develop norm-referenced routines. Over time, infant doings become analysis amenable. The caregiver of a nine-month-old may, for example, prompt the baby to fetch objects. Once she concludes that the baby uses ‘words’ to understand what she says, the infant can use this belief in orienting to more abstract contingencies. New cognitive powers will develop as the baby learns to act in ways that are consistent with a caregiver’s false belief that her baby uses ‘words.’
Interaction, narrative, and drama
Authors: El-Nasr Magy Seif
Published: September 2007

Interactive narratives have been used in a variety of applications, including video games, educational games, and training simulations. Maintaining engagement within such environments is an important problem, because it affects entertainment, motivation, and presence. Performance arts theorists have discussed and formalized many techniques that increase engagement and enhance dramatic content of art productions. While constructing a narrative manually, using these techniques, is acceptable for linear media, using this approach for interactive environments results in inflexible experiences due to the unpredictability of users’ actions. Few researchers attempted to develop adaptive interactive narrative experiences. However, developing a quality interactive experience is largely an art process, and many of these adaptive techniques do not encode artistic principles. This paper presents a new interactive narrative architecture designed using a set of dramatic techniques that have been formulated based on several years of training in film and theatre.
A theory of contact situations and the study of academic interaction
Authors: Neustupny J.V.
Published: September 2007

The concept of academic competence must be viewed within the context of globalization. The intensification of cultural contact in the current historical period has contributed greatly to the recognition and evaluation of variation in academic systems and to subsequent strategies of adjustment. Contact between varying academic systems is thus being ‘managed’ in the sense in which the word is used in management theory dealing with the noting, evaluation and adjustment of deviations from norms.

Theories of contact have existed for decades in linguistics as well as in the study of communication and other disciplines, but it is time to transform them into theories of contact in interaction in general. Contact situations must be viewed not merely as situations in which processes of linguistic misunderstanding occur, but as situations in which a number of social processes, including those of power, assert themselves. One of the concepts that must be accommodated in this scheme is contact between ‘major’ and ‘minor’ academic systems. Another question is that of the assimilation of academics (or acquirers of academic systems) from ‘minor’ systems into socially strong systems. In order not to remain within the constraints of old frameworks of cultural relativism, it is necessary to work towards a theoretically-based evaluation of academic patterns.
The functions of “được” (OK; possible; can) in business communication in Vietnam
Authors: Chew Chye Lay Grace
Published: September 2007

Lexicographic evidence and oral translations of được in Vietnamese show its meanings as: “all right”, “agreed”, and “OK”. In reality, the undetermined range of probabilities in its meaning, imperceptible by non-native intuitions, are readily recognizable by natives. Not grasping what được means entails communication failures since to be told that something “can be done” induces a positive belief in English. This paper studies the meaning of được (can/OK) and compares it with chắc (là) được (probably can/OK) and chắc chắn được (certainly can/OK). It discusses the strategic and polite functions of được in business communication and shows that được is explorative as it sets the starting point for communication that could be furthered to reach a more conclusive result, explicitly lexicalized by chắc chắn được. It concludes that được is a non-committal “conflict-avoidance device” and “face-saver”. It is inconclusive that the farther the “distance” between the illocutors, the higher the degree of politeness, but supports the demand for ‘face’ over efficiency to a certain extent in the communicative style of the Vietnamese. Overall, it points to the need for long overdue analytic work on business discourse in cultural and social contexts, especially in lesser studied languages and cultures.
The search for origins
Authors: Reichl Karl
Published: September 2007

Although in some traditions (notably in India) oral epics are performed as part of a religious ritual, there is no overt ritual function of the epic in most oral traditions known today. However, even in a purely secular and seemingly non-ritual context, the performance of oral epics can have ritual dimensions. This is discussed with reference to the oral epic poetry of the Turkic peoples of Central Asia. It is argued that the performance of oral epics is a particular type of communicative event, of which the comparatively rigid act sequence can be seen as being on a par with the patterning of ritual. A second important aspect linking epic performance to ritual is that both events are meaningful in a similar way. It can be shown that in the performance of heroic epics tribal and cultural origins are explored and that hence the primary function of epic is not entertainment but the search for ethnic and cultural identity.
Triglossia and pragmatic variety choice in nineteenth-century Bruges
Authors: Vandenbussche Wim
Published: September 2007

This article deals with the roles and functions of dialect, Dutch and French for Flemish upper class writers in the 19th century.

It argues against the common opinion that the linguistic situation at that time in Flanders can be characterized by rigid dichotomies such as formal French versus informal dialectal/regional Dutch, and/or upper class French versus middle and lower class (dialectal) Dutch.

Analyses of original upper class documents from various archives in the town of Bruges lead to the assertion that the actual choices between the available linguistic resources were to a considerable extent dependent on contextual and pragmatic considerations. Examples taken from town council records, high society correspondence and election propaganda will illustrate the close link between variety choice and the wish to include/exclude certain social groups in distinct communicative settings.
Identity and semantic change
Authors: Terkourafi Marina
Published: September 2007

The quantitative and qualitative analysis of spontaneous conversational data reveals that T/V usage in Cypriot Greek (CG) is realised sometimes as a code-switch into Standard Modern Greek (SMG), and sometimes as an integral part of the Cypriot code. Moreover, a consideration of the interactional motivations underlying particular types of exchanges supports an analysis in terms of form-function reanalysis, in which the ongoing grammaticalisation of V forms is realised as the subjectification of their semantics. This analysis has important theoretical implications for the distinction between standardisation and conventionalisation, and for the question of the gradualness of semantic change.
The polysemy of mal in European Portuguese
Authors: Amaral Patrícia
Published: September 2007

In this paper I provide a diachronic analysis of the lexeme mal, and I argue that the synchronic polysemy found in contemporary European Portuguese corresponds to different stages of the semantic change of the lexeme. Principles of diachronic pragmatics and semantic change are employed to detail the development of the different meanings. Two paths are analyzed: one, leading from the negative evaluation value as a manner adverb to the more recently semanticized meaning of temporality, specifically temporal proximity of one event to another, and a second one, leading from the manner adverbial meaning to a negation adverb, which is restricted to particular constructions.
Nation-State, devolution and the parliamentary discourse of minority languages
Authors: Wilson John , Stapleton Karyn
Published: September 2007

Devolution in the UK has engendered debates about which language (or languages) should be the language of parliament in the respective regional institutions. Simultaneously, the European Union, while officially endorsing cultural and linguistic diversity, is moving towards a supranational state which operates alongside devolution and regional autonomies. In this context, the contestation of the language of parliamentary discourse can be seen as a site of power struggle and political negotiation. The present analysis focuses on a specific example of regional parliamentary discourse from Northern Ireland, in which Members debate the desirability of using Ulster-Scots and Irish, alongside English, in official House proceedings. This can be seen to operationalise “language” in specific, but interrelated, argumentative contexts: (a) as a form of agreed and formally recognised communication; (b) as a natural right, reflecting individual culture or heritage; (c) as a legal and formal right; (d) as a political symbol. These themes are discussed in terms of “nationalist” and “sovereign” state arguments, with reference to both the political context of Northern Ireland, and the processes of devolution and supranationalism, in the broader political arena.
Controversial works of art
Authors: Zembylas Tasos
Published: September 2007

Art is a public affair because its meaning is always collectively negotiated. Thus, public conflicts that are triggered by works of art are essentially political and inevitable. The analysis of these conflicts points to the effective limits of acceptability of art in a given social constellation.

The following paper investigates two types of art conflicts: (1) conflicts that, at first glance, revolve around the interpretation and the aesthetic appreciation of an artwork; and (2) conflicts that explicitly call into question the legal legitimacy of publication of an artwork.

This investigation aims to reveal the variety of contents and conditions which pre-structure public conflicts. Further, it opens a normative discussion of the current forms of dealing with such conflicts in the mass media and in the jurisdiction. Such a critical discussion is necessary, since the political quality of a society can be assessed on how it relates to its own conflicting nature.
Racializing language
Authors: Leeman Jennifer
Published: September 2007

This article builds on research on institutional language policies and practices, and on studies of the legitimization of racial categories in census data collection, in an exploration of language ideologies in the US Census. It traces the changes in language-related questions in the two centuries of decennial surveys, contextualizing them within a discussion of changing policies and patterns of immigration and nativism, as well as evolving hegemonic notions of race. It is argued that the US Census has historically used language as an index of race and as a means to racialize speakers of languages other than English, constructing them as essentially different and threatening to US cultural and national identity.
Blair’s contribution to elaborating a new ‘doctrine of international community’
Authors: Fairclough Norman
Published: September 2007

This paper examines the recent move towards a new regime of international relations and international security from a discourse analytical perspective, focusing on speeches by Tony Blair. I shall discuss how Blair has contributed to the emergence of a new hegemonic discourse of international relations and international security in speeches given between 2000 and 2003.
Critical discourse analysis as an analytic tool in considering selected, prominent features of TRC testimonies
Authors: Anthonissen Christine
Published: September 2007

This paper considers a number of salient, characterising features of the verbal mediation process that took place in the TRC hearings on gross human rights violations. This is done with reference to the methodology developed in Discourse Sociolinguistics. It considers how various participants represent a particular event, each taking the perspective from which they experienced it. It notes the differences in verbal choice, and in textual and information structure of (i.a.) a journalist who witnessed this particular instance of public police excess, of a woman involved because her home was at the scene of the confrontation between police and youngsters, of one of the commanding police officers who had been subpoenaed and thus was not a voluntary witness at the hearing, of a doctor who treated patients after the event, of a school teacher who could articulate the particular kind of protest youngsters engaged in at the time, and so on. It also highlights a particular practice of reformulating which appears to be typical of discourses that mediate past atrocities with a view to founding new and improved democratic practices.
Second language acquisition and creolization
Authors: Mather Patrick-André
Published: September 2007

There is increasing evidence that most European-lexifier plantation creoles developed over several generations, as successive waves of African slaves acquired increasingly basilectal varieties of the lexifier language, allowing shift-induced interference to play a central role in creole genesis. If in most cases the creators of creoles were adult learners of a second language, and if many of the creole features are the result of second language acquisition over several generations, the next step is to test the hypothesis and to see whether data from current case studies on second language acquisition can shed light on the gradual creolization process. This paper shows that many of the features found in French-lexifier creoles do occur in L2 French and other interlanguages, as a result of L1 transfer and other acquisition processes; examples discussed include word-order within the noun phrase, pronominal clitics, the absence of copula, reduplication, the reanalysis of articles, grammatical gender, verb movement and TMA markers. The major claim of the model of creole genesis advocated here, which can be called the ‘gradualist / second language acquisition model’, is that creole genesis does not involve any specific mental processes or strategies other than those found in ordinary second language acquisition. While in normal, successful second language acquisition, L1 transfer, relexification and reanalysis are relatively marginal in the end, they are nevertheless present, as illustrated in the examples provided here. It is the social and historical circumstances that accelerated the changes and allowed ?deviant? interlanguage structures to fossilize and to create a new language from the linguistic chaos of plantation societies.