bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Theme unit analysis
Authors: Thomson Elizabeth A.
Published: September 2007

According to Systemic Functional Linguistic (SFL) theory the structural shape of the clause in English is determined by the three metafunctions — ideational, interpersonal and textual (Halliday 1994:179). In Japanese, the situation is similar as far as ideational (Teruya 1998) and interpersonal (Fukui 1998) meanings are concerned. With respect to the textual metafunction, however, the situation appears to be different. Due to the presence of ellipsis, both anaphoric Subject ellipsis and formal exophoric Subject ellipsis (Hasan 1996), along with the operation of clause chaining, Japanese appears to organise textually over another kind of unit, the Theme unit. This paper will explore the Theme unit as it functions to organise discourse in Japanese, offering grammatical and semantic recognition criteria within a Systemic Functional theoretical framework. Justification for the theorisation of this textual unit will be presented together with a number of examples. In Japanese, the Theme unit is the unit within which Theme and Rheme unfold. Theme is realised by first position in the Theme unit, and the Theme unit can map onto clause simplexes, complexes, clauses within a complex and across sentences (in written texts). The paper will conclude with a discussion of the function of the Theme unit and the nature or status of the Theme unit within the SFL model of language, arguing that the notion is possibly applicable to the analyses of other languages, including English.
Auxiliaries in spoken Sinhala
Authors: Hilpert Martin
Published: September 2007

This paper discusses whether there are elements in spoken Sinhala that can be appropriately labeled auxiliary verbs, adopting the framework of grammaticalization theory (Hopper and Traugott 1993). While auxiliaries are thought of as a nearly universal cross-linguistic category (Steele 1978), the term is not mentioned in standard works on Sinhala (Gair and Paolillo 1997, Gair 1998). On the basis of elicited data, it is argued that a number of elements can be fruitfully analyzed as auxiliaries, while other elements resist such a classification, and thus pose a challenge to current definitions of the term auxiliary in grammaticalization theory.
Bound person forms in ditransitive clauses revisited
Authors: Siewierska Anna , Bakker Dik
Published: September 2007

In a recent article Gensler (2003) has argued that little can be said about the ordering of bound person markers of the T(heme) and R(ecipient) relative to each other or relative to the verb stem apart from the fact that the outer markers are likely to be the result of a second-level cliticization process. We take issue with this claim and document that quite successful predictions with respect to the ordering of the T and R markers can be made on the basis of morphological alignment. Taking as our point of departure the typology of ditransitive alignment outlined in Haspelmath (2004; 2005), we show that the ordering patterns in which the R is placed closer to the verbal stem than the T are favoured in all relevant alignment types apart from the indirective, which exhibits a preference for positioning the T closer to the verbal stem than the R. These preferences for the ordering of the R and T are argued to relate directly to the frequency of use of the relative person forms and thus are seen as constituting yet another piece of evidence for the usage-based model of grammar being developed within the functional-cognitive typological paradigm (cf. e.g. Barlow & Kemmer 2000; Bybee & Hopper 2001; Tomasello 2003).
On the interaction of Linguistic Typology and Functional Grammar
Authors: Rijkhoff Jan
Published: September 2007

Research conducted within the wider theoretical framework of Dik’s Functional Grammar has resulted in important contributions to linguistic typology, and, vice versa, empirical facts from a wide variety of languages have significantly improved the theory of Functional Grammar, especially regarding its typological adequacy.

This article discusses the following contributions to Linguistic Typology: the development of a sound sampling methodology, classification of noun categories (Seinsarten), an account of (so-called) number discord, the introduction of the new grammatical category of ‘nominal aspect’, a new typology of classifiers, and a universal concerning the occurrence of adjectives as a distinct word class. Conversely it will be shown that facts from many different languages have played an important role in the development of a layered model of the noun phrase in Functional Grammar and how currently these facts are used to test hypotheses concerning parallels between NPs and clauses.
The relationship between spontaneous gestures of the hearing and American Sign Language
Authors: McClave Evelyn
Published: September 2007

This paper presents evidence of non-manual gestures in American Sign Language (ASL). The types of gestures identified are identical to non-manual, spontaneous gestures used by hearing non-signers which suggests that the gestures co-occurring with ASL signs are borrowings from hearing culture. A comparison of direct quotes in ASL with spontaneous movements of hearing non-signers suggests a history of borrowing and eventual grammaticization in ASL of features previously thought to be unique to signed languages.

The electronic edition of this article includes audio-visial data.
O clever ‘He’s streetwise.’ When gestures become quotable
Authors: Brookes Heather J.
Published: September 2007

Among urban black South Africans in the province of Gauteng, quotable gestures are a prominent feature of everyday communication. Most notable is a gesture commonly glossed as clever meaning ‘streetwise’ and ‘city slick.’ An analysis of the clever gesture in everyday communicative situations shows that it conveys a variety of meanings and functions related to the core paradigmatic meaning of ‘seeing’ and the core sociointeractional function of acceptance and inclusion. ‘Seeing’ is an important cultural value in black urban society particularly in relation to being clever. ‘Seeing’ is also the central characteristic of modern urban African identity in contrast to the ‘non-seeing’ rural, tribal, and primitive African. The clever gesture is a focused expression of this key social division within South African society. Consideration of the clever gesture in relation to its social role and the gestural repertoire suggests that key cultural concerns determine both quotable status and semantico-grammatical nature.
A body and its gestures
Authors: Streeck Jürgen
Published: September 2007

This paper is about gestures made by a car-mechanic during a single extended episode of work. Some of these gestures are recurrent and appear to be parts of a repertoire of communicative forms with which this man responds to understanding tasks that routinely occur in his work; others appear to be abstracted from instrumental actions that he has recently completed. Both types of gesture reveal the specific stance and knowledge that the body making them has acquired in its day-to-day coping, the bodys being-in-the-world. Gestures thus articulate the grasp that hands have of their life-worlds.
Some uses of the head shake
Authors: Kendon Adam
Published: September 2007

A context-of-use study is reported of the ‘head shake’. A large number of examples are described and compared, drawn from video recordings of naturally occasioned interactions in the circumstances of everyday life, made in Campania, Italy, central England and the Eastern United States. Eight different kinds of uses for the head shake are illustrated. It is concluded that the head shake is not to be understood simply as the kinesic equivalent of a unit of verbal expression. It appears as an expression in its own right which, furthermore, the speaker uses as a component in the construction of an utterance which, it seems, is so often a multimodal construction in which the different modalities of expression available are deployed by the speaker in the course of building a unit of expression according to the rhetorical needs of the interactive moment.
John Bulwer (1606–1656) and the significance of gesture in the 17th-century theories of language and cognition
Authors: Wollock Jeffrey
Published: September 2007

John Bulwer (1606–1656) published five books on the semiotics of the human body, with most attention given to gesture. His ideas on gesture have previously been studied from the standpoint of rhetorical theory, but hardly at all in relation to language and cognition. With regard to the cognitive aspects of gesture, Bulwer was a conscious disciple of Francis Bacon, who characterized gesture as a “transient hieroglyphic” in the same passage of De Augmentis Scientiarum (1605) in which he discussed the possibility of a “real character” — a sort of rationalized, non-figurative hieroglyphic intended to bypass natural language by directly symbolizing things and notions. Bulwer, however, completely ignored the real character and concentrated solely on gesture. This was in part because he retained older views on the inherent ontological harmony between man and the universe, but also because, for Bulwer the physician, the underlying neurophysiological basis of gesture confirmed it as the universal “language” of humanity. In this respect his ideas foreshadow recent scientific work on gesture, language and cognition, such as that of Lakoff, Bouvet, and Armstrong, Stokoe & Wilcox.
Gesture and language
Authors: Wilcox Sherman
Published: September 2007

In this paper I explore the role of gesture in the development of signed languages. Using data from American Sign Language, Catalan Sign Language, French Sign Language, and Italian Sign Language, as well as historical sources describing gesture in the Mediterranean region, I demonstrate that gesture enters the linguistic system via two distinct routes. In one, gesture serves as a source of lexical and grammatical morphemes in signed languages. In the second, elements become directly incorporated into signed language morphology, bypassing the lexical stage. Finally, I propose a unifying framework for understanding the gesture-language interface in signed and spoken languages.
Gesture and the communicative intention of the speaker
Authors: Melinger Alissa , Levelt Willem J.M.
Published: September 2007

This paper aims to determine whether iconic tracing gestures produced while speaking constitute part of the speaker’s communicative intention. We used a picture description task in which speakers must communicate the spatial and color information of each picture to an interlocutor. By establishing the necessary minimal content of an intended message, we determined whether speech produced with concurrent gestures is less explicit than speech without gestures. We argue that a gesture must be communicatively intended if it expresses necessary information that was nevertheless omitted from speech. We found that speakers who produced iconic gestures representing spatial relations omitted more required spatial information from their descriptions than speakers who did not gesture. These results provide evidence that speakers intend these gestures to communicate. The results have implications for the cognitive architectures that underlie the production of gesture and speech.
Human twelve-month-olds point cooperatively to share interest with and helpfully provide information for a communicative partner
Authors: Liszkowski Ulf
Published: September 2007

This paper investigates infant pointing at 12 months. Three recent experimental studies from our lab are reported and contrasted with existing accounts on infant communicative and social-cognitive abilities. The new results show that infant pointing at 12 months already is a communicative act which involves the intentional transmission of information to share interest with, or provide information for other persons. It is argued that infant pointing is an inherently social and cooperative act which is used to share psychological relations between interlocutors and environment, repairs misunderstandings in proto-conversational turn-taking, and helps others by providing information. Infant pointing builds on an understanding of others as persons with attentional states and attitudes. Findings do not support lean accounts on early infant pointing which posit that it is initially non-communicative, does not serve the function of indicating, or is purely self-centered. It is suggested to investigate the emergence of reference and the motivation to jointly engage with others also before pointing has emerged.
The rhetoric of gesture in cross-cultural perspective
Authors: Yelle Robert A.
Published: September 2007

It has often been claimed that there is a natural or universal language of gesture, one that communicates directly without words. The present essay critically scrutinizes some older efforts to recover such a natural language of gesture, including John Bulwer’s seventeenth-century Chirologia and Chironomia, and the classical South Asian systems of Natyashastra and Tantra. Although these older systems lay claim to communicate and even to represent nature directly, often by virtue of a posited iconic or mimetic relationship to nature, closer examination reveals that they signify only in terms of a conventional code. Moreover, the very effort to replace gesture with a verbal gloss held to constitute its “meaning” reveals a gap between signifier and signified that is analogous to the gap between culture and nature, as well as present and past, that these systems of gesture attempt to bridge rhetorically. These systems demonstrate, not the existence of a natural language of gesture, but rather the function of the idea of such a language in an ideology in which gesture is to nature as speech is to culture. Although the failure of such earlier systems does not vitiate modern, scientific studies of gesture, it does suggest greater circumspection regarding what may be hoped to be achieved by such studies.
Postcards from the mind
Authors: de Ruiter Jan Peter
Published: September 2007

In this paper, I compare three different assumptions about the relationship between speech, thought and gesture. These assumptions have profound consequences for theories about the representations and processing involved in gesture and speech production. I associate these assumptions with three simplified processing architectures. In the Window Architecture, gesture provides us with a ‘window into the mind’. In the Language Architecture, properties of language have an influence on gesture. In the Postcard Architecture, gesture and speech are planned by a single process to become one multimodal message. The popular Window Architecture is based on the assumption that gestures come, as it were, straight out of the mind. I argue that during the creation of overt imagistic gestures, many processes, especially those related to (a) recipient design, and (b) effects of language structure, cause an observable gesture to be very different from the original thought that it expresses. The Language Architecture and the Postcard Architecture differ from the Window Architecture in that they both incorporate a central component which plans gesture and speech together, however they differ from each other in the way they align gesture and speech. The Postcard Architecture assumes that the process creating a multimodal message involving both gesture and speech has access to the concepts that are available in speech, while the Language Architecture relies on interprocess communication to resolve potential conflicts between the content of gesture and speech.
Le destin de la théorie syntaxique de Lucien Tesnière (1893–1954)
Authors: Kabano Alphonse
Published: September 2007

A travers l’examen de la théorie syntaxique de Lucien Tesnière (1893–1954), l’article est une contribution à l’étude du façonnement et de l’expansion des concepts et des méthodes linguistiques. Tesnière reste dans l’ensemble mal connu malgré l’originalité des concepts de dépendance et de valence et le rôle qu’ils ont joué et jouent encore en syntaxe. Les raisons sont recherchées au niveau de la méthode de travail de Tesnière, du contenu de ses postulats de base et du traitement de quelques phénomènes linguistiques spécifiques. Pédagogue et confiant dans l’intuition, la théorie syntaxique de Tesnière n’a pas provoquée des débats théoriques d’envergure autour de son oeuvre, et la diffusion de cette dernière est restée fort réduite. Mais son intérêt pour le structuralisme, sa capacité de circonscription de l’objet de la syntaxe ainsi que la mise au point des concepts de dépendance et de valence valent à Tesnière d’être incontes-tablement l’initiateur d’un courant d’idées. L’article dégage les idées-clés de Tesnière et montre aussi bien leurs prolongements que, s’il y a lieu, les rectifications possibles.
Rileggendo il terzo corso di linguistica generale di Ferdinand de Saussure (1910–1911)
Authors: De Mauro Tullio
Published: September 2007

The last of the three series of lectures on general linguistics which Saussure gave in Geneva during the academic year 1910–1911 provided the editors large portions of the text of the Cours de linguistique générale. However, the editors completely modified the order of these parts in relation to the plan that Saussure had mapped out and followed inhis lectures. These changes obscured the relationships between the parts and certain fundamental ideas of his thinking. In particular, they eclipsed the role which played, for Saussure, ‘the laws which universally are at play in language’ and search he conducted along those lines. These laws also imposed important limits on the arbitrariness of the sign. In the third course, Saussure shows more than one of those limits: the necessarily systematic nature of language; the effects of phonetic change; the delimiting temporality of any language. The spacial diversity of languages finds its origin in the temporal diversification under the influence de ‘la masse parlante’. It is due to this variability of any system that, according to Saussure, we find opposition between universal laws, on the one hand, and the written languages which cover up the constant variations encountered in spoken language. As a careful philologist, Saussure could not fail to pay attention to the written languages. Still, they become, in as much as they interfere with spoken language, an element of variation.
William Stokoe and the discipline of sign language linguistics
Authors: Mcburney Susan Lloyd
Published: September 2007

The first modern linguistic analysis of a signed language was published in 1960 – William Clarence Stokoe’s (1919–2000)Sign Language Structure. Although the initial impact of Stokoe’s monograph on linguistics and education was minimal, his work formed a solid base for what was to become a new field of research: American Sign Language (ASL) Linguistics. Together with the work of those that followed (in particular Ursula Bellugi and colleagues), Stokoe’s ground-breaking work on the structure of ASL has led to an acceptance of signed languages as autonomous linguistic systems that exhibit the complex structure characteristic of all human languages.
The abandonment of extrinsic rule ordering in generative grammar
Authors: Longa Víctor M.
Published: September 2007

Extrinsic rule ordering was a device used within the Standard Theory of Generative Grammar which determined the correct order for transformations to apply. During the 1970s some linguists, led by Andreas Koutsoudas, showed how this device could be eliminated. However, the great importance of their work has never been recognised. The paper offers a recent example of such a lack of acknowledgement. Furthermore, it is argued why an accurate account of the abandonment of extrinsic rule ordering matters: it represents the first systematic achievement in constraining the strong expressive power of transformations.
Roger Bacon and Martin Joos
Authors: Thomas Margaret
Published: September 2007

Expositions of the history of western linguistics, especially those designed for a novice readership, often refer to a passage from the writings of the twelfth-century scholar Roger Bacon. That passage is conventionally interpreted as an assertion of the existence of universal grammar, framed in the terms of early medieval language science. Among generative grammarians, the text from Bacon has been construed as evidence for the longevity of a concept which Chomskyan linguistics now reformulates in modern guise. Generativists also sometimes cite another passage, in this case taken from a 1957 text by the American descriptivist Martin Joos. The quotation from Joos performs an inverse function compared to that from Bacon, in that it is taken to epitomize the anti-universalism of early twentieth-century descriptivism. As such, Joos’ words are employed to distinguish generative grammar from the intellectual context of the immediately preceding school of linguistics. There are reasons to doubt the historical accuracy of the conventional readings of both these passages. This article re-opens the question of what Bacon meant and what Joos meant, then examines how their words have been incorporated into recent generative literature. As a case study in the historical orientation of modern linguistics, I find generative theory to be less interested in understanding other cultures’ ideas about language than in using historical material to advance its own self-representation. Is this a legitimate use of the past?
Comment présenter un phonème moribond
Authors: Cuevas Manuel Bruña
Published: September 2007

During the 19th century the old palatallof French (in, e.g.,travailler, travail,fille) definitively gave way to /j/. During about the same period Spanish underwent a similar evolution, but the process of substitution of /j/ for /ʎ/ found itself in a less advanced stage than in French; indeed, certain varieties of present-day Spanish still maintain these two phonemes. Taking all the works together which during the 19th and the first half of the 20th century were addressed to the teaching of French to speakers of Spanish, the author concentrates his attention on the difficulties that the authors encountered when presenting this dying or already deceased phoneme (namely, the palatallof French) to an audience which, although it still possessed this phoneme in their own language, had begun to find it difficult to distinguish the diverse phonetic realizations that the Spanish /j/ was acquiring. As is shown in this study, the time difference in the evolution of this phenomenon of dephonologization in French and, with some delay, also in Spanish led the authors of these textbooks to misunderstandings and errors in the treatment of the disappearing or vanished former palatallof French.
Turn to the history of linguistics
Authors: Falk Julia S.
Published: September 2007

In the 1940s and 1950s, the leading proponents of American synchronic linguistics showed little interest in the history of linguistics. Some attention to historiography occurred in subfields of linguistics closest to the humanities – linguistic anthropology, historical linguistics, modern European languages – but the ‘science of language’ developed by Leonard Bloomfield and his descriptivist followers demanded autonomy from other disciplines and from the past. Increasing American contact with European linguistics during the 1950s culminated in the 1962 Ninth International Congress of Linguists in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Here Noam Chomsky presented a plenary session paper that appeared in print in four versions between 1962 and 1964, each version incorporating an increasing amount of discussion of the early 20th-century precursors to the descriptivists and a number of 17th- and 19th-century studies of language and mind. Charles Hockett responded by organizing his 1964 presidential address to the Linguistic Society of America as a history of linguistics, emphasizing periods, figures, and ideas not included in Chomsky’s work. Historiographers of the time recognized a surge of American interest in the history of linguistics beginning in the early 1960s and most attributed it largely to Chomsky’s work. Historiographic publication increased significantly among the descriptivists; at the same time it emerged among the generativists, most of whom followed Chomsky in exploring pre-20th-century philosophical ideas or reconsidering concepts and practices of the descriptivists’ forerunners. The resulting visibility and impetus to the history of linguistics contributed to the foundation upon which linguistic historiography matured in North America in the later decades of the 20th century.
Deconstructing female conventions
Authors: Rodríguez-Gil Maria E.
Published: September 2007

This paper examines Ann Fisher’s (1719–1778) most important and influential work,A New Grammar(1745?). In this grammar, the author did not follow the trend of making English grammar fit the Latin pattern, a common practice still in the eighteenth century. Instead, she wrote an English grammar based on the nature and observation of her mother tongue. Besides, she scattered throughout her grammar a wide set of teaching devices, the ‘examples of bad English’ being her most important contribution. Her innovations and her new approach to the description of English grammar were indeed welcomed by contemporary readers, since her grammar saw almost forty editions and reprints, it influenced other grammarians, for instance Thomas Spence (1750–1814), and it reached other markets, such as London. In order to understand more clearly the value of this grammar and of its author, this grammar has to be seen in the context of her life. For this reason, we will also discuss some details of her unconventional lifestyle: unconventional in the sense that she led her life in the public sphere, not happy with the prevailing idea that women should be educated for a life at home.
The evergreen story of Psammetichus’ inquiry into the origin of language
Authors: Thomas Margaret
Published: September 2007

Herodotus recounts the attempt of the pharaoh Psammetichus I to determine which among the peoples of the earth was the oldest. He isolated two children at birth, assuming that their spontaneous speech would reveal the identity of a primordial human language. Although Psammetichus’ inquiry was not explicitly designed to address linguistic issues, it has long been passed down in western reflection on language. This article reviews some of the most significant roles that the story of Psammetichus has played. The story was abundantly cited in 16th-century literature that conceptualized a first human language. It has also contributed to debate about the origin of language, especially during the mid–19th century. Moreover, the story of Psammetichus’ inquiry has been retold in discussion of language acquisition as has taken place since the 1970s. In this context, it is represented as the “ultimate language-learning experiment” (Gleitman & Newport 1995), which constitutes “an incisive bit of scientific prescience” (Rymer 1993). Enlarging on the third, most recent, context for re-telling the story, this article shows how some scholars assimilate it into modern linguistic research, while conceding that it is flawed on ethical grounds. In doing so, they often seem to make the past both inappropriately familiar (therefore less threatening), and inappropriately strange (therefore less valuable). As a result, contemporary citations of this anecdote from the distant past have the paradoxical effect of contributing to fashionable ahistoricity.
Displays in air traffic control
Authors: Ort Markus
Published: September 2007

Commercial aviation is becoming more and more important these days. From year to year there is an accelerated increase in the density of air traffic. The resulting fast growth in the flow of data between controllers and the technical systems they use, as well as that between controller and pilot, calls for new means of communication and visualization of information and interaction with it. Revised concepts for air traffic control must be applied, to deal safely with the increasing volume of traffic in the future. The main focus must be on designing an appropriate interface to support the interaction between ground and cockpit, making the communication as efficient, convenient and secure as possible. This undoubtedly goes further than just making information accessible in a digital format.

Despite the importance and complexity of the subject, interdisciplinary projects to achieve this were launched only recently. However, as time goes on, more ergonomics specialists, psychologists and designers are working in this field dominated by engineers and programmers.

So far, only a few cooperative projects have been undertaken between information designers, interaction designers and air traffic control specialists to create new interface solutions. This is all the more surprising since the structuring and visualization of this immense flow of data, the mapping of dynamic processes and the search for new means of communication constitute a highly interesting field.

There is a strong belief that only such cooperation can lead to a coherent product, if interfaces are to be developed which can unfold the potential of the new Datalink-technology. The project described in this article was undertaken at the Design Department of the University of Applied Sciences Cologne, in cooperation with engineers from the Berlin University of Technology/ Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics/ Section Flight Guidance and Transportation and IT-specialists and air traffic controllers from Skyguide (Zürich and Geneva).

After a brief summary of the general situation in air traffic control and the work that controllers do, my aim in this article is to present a feasible interface solution for the arrival/departure sector, one of the most crucial areas of air traffic control.
Designing future advanced controller displays
Authors: Kesseler Ernst , Knapen Ed
Published: September 2007

This paper describes the design of an advanced human-machine interface for well-trained, professional users, i.e. air traffic
controllers. The safety implications of their tasks, combined with the short reaction time available to the user, result in high
demands on the interface between the human and the supporting information system. The increasing demand for air traffic capacity
(which can not be accommodated by just deploying more personnel as the additional co-ordination offsets the workload reduction)
necessitates the introduction of innovative support tools to prevent human overload. Experience with the introduction of such
tools stresses the need to design their user interfaces using a ‘human-centred approach’, contrasting with the
traditional ‘technology-centred approach’.
Information for conscious choice
Authors: Karabeg Dino
Published: September 2007

Information can fulfill a new and essential purpose in our culture – serve as guidelines for making conscious choices (choices that are made with awareness of their consequences). In the article it is specified in what way the information for conscious choice can be created and what characteristics it needs to have. A model of the relationship between information and economic and political power called power structure is given and based on it the power-related obstacles to conscious choice are explained. It is shown that conscious choice may lead our preferences in a completely new direction. The so-called called two-step marketing strategy is introduced by which the information for conscious choice can be put into practice. It is argued that conscious or informed choice may create revitalizing impulses in both economy and culture.
Breaking barriers
Authors: Cronk Frank , Dacey Jill , Taugher Colleen
Published: September 2007

The purpose of this paper is threefold. We summarize our experiences in building a multi-disciplinary capstone information design course that included faculty, staff, and students from art, computer science, business, communications, sociology, music, philosophy, mathematics, and education. We discuss ways in which findings from this course have impacted our programs in the foundation studies of drawing and design. Finally, we provide specific examples of projects and best practices advice for coping with the challenges of working in a multi-disciplinary atmosphere. Our best practices advice extends to developing an information design program that is fully integrated into a larger art and design curriculum and the greater university.
Towards a semiotics of typography
Authors: van Leeuwen Theo
Published: September 2007

This article outlines a social semiotic approach to analysing the ideational, interpersonal and textual meaning potentials of letter forms, drawing on Jakobson’s distinctive feature analysis and Lakoff and Johnson’s theory of experiential metaphor. Distinctive features are recognized and applied to the analysis of examples: weight, expansion, slope, curvature, connectivity, orientation and regularity.
Toward a better understanding of PowerPoint deck design
Authors: Farkas David K.
Published: September 2007

The critical landscape surrounding PowerPoint is highly troubled. Empirical research is scarce, and commentators share little common ground and have taken highly divergent positions. Often arguments are unnuanced and flawed. This review essay identifies and discusses ten problems that have confused and hindered the study of PowerPoint. Among the problems are these: The lack of terminology for categorizing deck content; the need for a more sophisticated understanding of mediation (how PowerPoint “edits thought”) and the relationship between PowerPoint and organizational culture; the formulation of broad arguments based on a narrow set of presentation genres; the habit of regarding slides as standalone artifacts divorced from the presentation; and insufficient attention to context (the particular circumstances surrounding a presentation) including the personal style of the presenter. If we can achieve a healthier critical landscape, we will see better commentary, research studies, decks, and presentations.
Judged comprehensibility
Authors: Lucas Antonio , Arbaiza Alberto , Blanch Maria Teresa
Published: September 2007

Most urban car trips register low occupancy rates, around 1.20 passengers per car. Originated in the US in the late 1960s, High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lanes aim to improve mobility by optimizing vehicle occupancy and thus bring on an improved traffic flow, more efficient fuel economy and better environment. Madrid benefits from a 10 year-old HOV lane that has enjoyed success in terms of its functional traffic flow parameters. Variable Message Signs indicate the HOV lane availability, although the essential information is displayed via text. The study tests the judged comprehensibility of several pictograms intended for the HOV lane referent.
Comparing typefaces for airport signs
Authors: Waller Robert
Published: September 2007

This study combined three research methodologies to inform the choice of a typeface for signs at London’s Heathrow Airport. The methodologies were legibility testing, qualitative consumer research, and expert review. The study showed that, contrary to a number of expert predictions, the serifed typeface performed as well as the sans serif in legibility testing. Character width was a more significant factor in legibility, with condensed sans serif performing relatively poorly. The use of multiple methodologies led to a richer basis for decision-making: the qualitative research revealed clear genre expectations among airport users for sans serif signs; the expert reviewers raised a range of additional issues of genre, culture and context.
An interview with Information Designer: Eric Kavanagh
Authors: Carliner Saul
Published: September 2007

Eric Kavanagh, a professor of information design at the École des arts visuels at Laval University in Québec City, Canada, represents a new generation of information design researchers. Although young, he begins his academic career with a decade of practical experience behind him, and, therefore knows documents as more than artifacts of study; he has a first-hand knowledge of their production and use. This understanding of the importance of documents in everyday contexts, and in unique cultural contexts, drives Eric’s passion for information design as well as his research agenda. In this interview, Eric describes his background, his current work, his thoughts about the current state of the field and his hopes for the future.
Information Mapping
Authors: Le Pair Rob , Jansen Carel , Korzilius Hubert , van Gerdingen Jolanda , de Graaf Susanne , Visser Rentia
Published: September 2007

In a previous study, no effects were found applying Information Mapping® (IMAP) to a relatively short text. In three new experiments, we investigated whether text length and the presence or absence of typical IMAP format features would influence possible IMAP effects, and if there would be any interaction effects of the application of the IMAP method and reader characteristics. It turned out that when presented with a relatively long text, readers worked more effectively and efficiently with an IMAP version. Adding typical IMAP format features to an otherwise unaltered conventional text did not produce greater effectiveness but did result in greater efficiency and higher appreciation. No interaction effects were found of the respondents’ linguistic background and the application of the IMAP method.
Presentation media for route instructions for pedestrians in urban environments
Authors: Westendorp Piet , Wever R. , Mijksenaar Paul
Published: September 2007

GPS-based route-guidance systems are used for various types of transport, such as airplanes, boats, cars and motorbikes. Such systems have also been developed for pedestrians, focusing initially on hikers in rough terrain. Recently, some devices were developed for pedestrians in urban environments. This study focuses on the ways in which route instructions can be presented to urban pedestrians with such GPS-receivers.
Applying psychology to text design
Authors: Hartley James
Published: September 2007

In this paper I discuss the nature of psychology and the roles and skills that applied psychologists can bring to the area of text design. These skills, of course, need to be blended with those of the other members of the design team to produce effective text.
Interview.The 3rd World Water Forum: A virtual revolution in mega-conference design
Authors: Hunter Lawrie
Published: September 2007

Mr. Kenzo Hiroki was the 3rd World Water Forum Secretariat’s Vice Secretary General for Finance, Planning and General Affairs. Mr. Hiroki’s wide experience in consensus-related communication design led to his central involvement in the Forum’s communications design, notably with regard to the Virtual Water Forum, a revolutionary conception in large-scale conferencing.
Corpus Linguistics and Critical Discourse Analysis
Authors: Orpin Debbie
Published: September 2007

Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) has often proved fruitful in providing insights into the relationship between language and ideology. However, CDA is not without its critics. Constructive criticism has been offered by Stubbs, who suggests bolstering CDA by using a large corpus as the basis on which to make reliable generalisations about language use. Taking up that suggestion, this paper reports on a study of a group of words semantically related to corruption. In the study, corpus methodology is used to manipulate the data: concordances and collocational tools are used to provide semantic profiles of the words and highlight connotational differences, and to identify the geographical locations that the words refer to. It is argued that words with a noticeably negative connotation tend to be used when referring to activities that take place outside of Britain, while less negative words are used when referring to similar activities in British contexts. CDA theory is drawn on to interpret the ideological significance of the findings.
//CAN i help you //
Authors: Cheng Winnie , Warren Martin
Published: September 2007

This paper examines the use of two tones by speakers across a variety of discourse types in the Hong Kong Corpus of Spoken English (HKCSE). Specifically, it focuses on the use of the rise and rise-fall tones by speakers to assert dominance and control in different discourse types. Brazil (1997) argues that the use of the rise and the rise-fall tones is a means of exerting dominance and control at certain points in the discourse and that while conversational participants have the option to freely exchange this role throughout the discourse, in other kinds of discourse such behaviour would be seen to be usurping the role of the designated dominant speaker. The findings suggest that the choice of certain tones is determined by both the discourse type and the designated roles of the speakers, but is not confined to the native speakers or determined by gender.
Using corpora to investigate antonym acquisition
Authors: Jones Steven , Murphy M. Lynne
Published: September 2007

In this study, a purpose-built corpus, containing both child-produced and child-directed speech, is used to conduct a longitudinal examination of antonym use among children from the age of two to five years old. Previous research has tended to approach antonym acquisition using either elicitation techniques or corpora of printed adult language. In contrast, this research focuses on the speech of preschool children in naturally-occurring interactions. The discourse functions of antonymy in child-produced and child-directed language are quantified and compared with those identified in adult, written English (Jones 2002). Despite its complexity, Ancillary Antonymy is found to be most common in child-produced speech, even from the age of two, perhaps because of its particular usefulness in structuring ideas and discourse. This study presents a detailed inter-corpus comparison, assesses the discourse functions of antonymy at different stages of childhood, and discusses the correlation between antonym use in child-directed and child-produced speech.
Creating and using Web corpora
Authors: Thelwall Mike
Published: September 2007

The Web has recently been used as a corpus for linguistic investigations, often with the help of a commercial search engine. We discuss some potential problems with collecting data from commercial search engine and with using the Web as a corpus. We outline an alternative strategy for data collection, using a personal Web crawler. As a case study, the university Web sites of three nations (Australia, New Zealand and the UK) were crawled. The most frequent words were broadly consistent with non-Web written English, but with some academic-related words amongst the top 50 most frequent. It was also evident that the university Web sites contained a significant amount of non-English text, and academic Web English seems to be more future-oriented than British National Corpus written English.
French Television Talk
Authors: Labeau Emmanuelle
Published: September 2007

On the basis of a transcribed French television corpus made of two news bulletins, two chat shows and one literary programme recorded in February 2003, this paper explores the claim that passé simple (PS) may still be used in prepared oral discourse (Pfister 1974). The corpus does not provide support for that use on television, but it seems to suggest a shift from temporal to aspectual features in French television talk: a perfective presentation prevails on a past presentation. This trend would need to be confirmed by a larger television corpus, tested in other types of oral discourse and tested on written corpora.
Open-source Corpora
Authors: Sharoff Serge
Published: September 2007

The paper proposes a methodology for collecting “open-source” corpora, i.e. corpora that are automatically collected from the Internet and distributed in the form of a list of links with open-source software for recreating their full text. The result is a random snapshot of Internet pages which contain stretches of connected text in a given language. The paper discusses a methodology for acquiring such corpora, two ways of documenting them (using a set of metatextual categories and by comparison to frequency lists from existing corpora) and their function as benchmarks for comparing results of linguistic inquiry. Experiments with a variety of languages show that Internet-derived corpora can be successfully used in the absence of large representative corpora that are rare and expensive to build.
Constraints on multiple initial embedding of clauses
Authors: Karlsson Fred
Published: September 2007

The received view is that there are no constraints on clausal embedding complexity in sentences. This hypothesis will be challenged here on empirical grounds from the viewpoint of multiple initial embedding of clauses. The data come from the British National Corpus, Brown, LOB, and philological scholarship. The results extend to several other ‘Standard Average European’ (SAE) languages like Finnish, German, Latin, and Swedish. There is a precise quantitative constraint on the degree of initial clausal embedding, and that limit is two. In double initial embeddings, a qualitative constraint prescribes that typically the highest embedded clause is an if-clause. The lower embedded clause should be the sentential subject of the if-clause. Here is a real example of a maximally complex, prototypical, initial clausal embedding in mainstream SAE: [Main [Init–1 If [Init–2 what is tantamount to dictatorship …] continues in a union] it can …] (LOB). Multiple initial self-embeddings are prohibited.
Lexical Constellations: What Collocates Fail to Tell
Authors: Cantos-Gomez Pascual , Sánchez Aquilino
Published: September 2007

The aim of this paper is to shed new light on collocational analysis, reviewing the main stream of research on this issue and trying to overcome some of its intrinsic problems, such as determining the optimal span and partially explaining the reason for undesired collocates (statistically significant collocates, though lexically and semantically not related to the node word). The idea is not just to calculate significant collocates of a chosen node word or to elucidate which is the best statistical procedure to achieve this goal. The aim is to investigate the way words socialise with other words, forming complex network-like structures or units: lexical constellations. This behaviour cannot be explained solely on a grammatical and/or semantic basis or even based on the present state of the art in collocation research.
Testing the sub-test
Authors: Gries Stefan Th.
Published: September 2007

This paper pursues two objectives, one linguistic and one methodological in nature. First, it is concerned with a corpus-based analysis of the degree to which pairs of -ic/-ical adjectives (e.g. classic/classical) are synonymous. Second, it investigates whether Church et al.'s (1994) sub-test can be fruitfully applied to this phenomenon. As to the first issue, I conclude that individual -ic/-ical adjectives can be located on a continuum of semantic similarity, with some being virtually completely synonymous and others being strongly differentiated; several semantic and distributional distinctions between members of adjective pairs are pointed out on the basis of distinctive collocates. As to the second question, I demonstrate on the basis of a simulation that the sub-test is conceptually adequate, but suffers from its asymptotic approach, which is why Fisher-exact is argued to be a more adequate diagnostic.