bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Clustering a translational corpus
Authors: Ke Shih-Wen
Published: March 2014

This chapter describes the various clustering techniques and document processing methods one can use to discover information about similarities found in translational corpora. Two types of clustering techniques, namely hierarchical clustering and partitioning clustering, and their variations are discussed and applied to a sample of the TK-NHH Translatørkorpus corpus consisting of 71 translated documents on 4 different topics. The results show that these clustering techniques are capable of differentiating translations accepted by experts from those rejected, suggesting that these accepted translations share a high degree of similarity and perhaps resemble an ideal translation of the original text.
A Corpus study of early English translations of Cao Xueqin’s Hongloumeng
Authors: Ji Meng , Oakes Michael P.
Published: March 2014

This paper investigates the stylistic profiles of the early English translations of Cao Xueqin’s masterwork Hongloumeng (The Story of the Stone or Dream of the Red Chamber 1791), by Bowra (1868–70), Joly (1892–3), and Giles (1885). Through a detailed comparison of early English translations of the Chinese novel, this paper demonstrates how a set of bivariate statistics, commonly used for the comparison of corpora, can be applied in translation studies. Our corpus study uncovered a number of textual phenomena that have been rarely discussed before. We found that while the use of functional expressions such as conjunctions and genitives is significantly higher in Bowra’s earlier translation than in Joly’s later version, the use of determiners is more frequent in Joly’s translation when compared to his predecessor’s work. A closer look at such contrastive textual patterns led to the identification of an important feature of Joly’s later translation, i.e. an enhanced use of English idiomatic expressions and phrases in his attempt at developing an idiosyncratic style of his own.
Determining translation invariant characteristics of James Joyce’s Dubliners
Authors: M. Patton Jon , Can Fazli
Published: March 2014

We provide a comparative stylometric analysis of the Dubliners stories of James Joyce by using its original and Murat Belge’s Turkish translation. We divide the stories into four categories as suggested by Belge and investigate the success of automatic classification by using discriminant analysis with various style markers. We show that different style markers show different categorization success rates and most of the style markers provide better classification rates in English. We also investigate the sentence, token and type length in both languages. We show that sentence lengths are linearly mapped from English to Turkish, type and token length distribution follow the Poisson distribution in both languages, and the related relative frequency curves provide us with an invariant between the original text and the translation.
The great mystery of the (almost) invisible translator
Authors: Rybicki Jan
Published: March 2014

Machine-learning stylometric distance methods based on most-frequent-word frequencies are well-accepted and successful in authorship attribution. This study investigates the results of one of these methods, Burrows’s Delta, when applied to translations. Basing the empirical results on a number of corpora of literary translations, it shows that, except for some few highly adaptative translations, Delta usually fails to identify the translator and identifies the author of the original instead.
Translation and scientific terminology
Authors: Ji Meng
Published: March 2014

The establishment of a working scientific language was instrumental in the construction of China’s early modern scientific identity, as a result of its increasing engagement with Western scientific concepts and idea sets. The current study aims to offer a corpus-based investigation of representative early Chinese scientific translations from a range of Western languages including English, French and Dutch. This corpus-based study examines the complex historical process of the cross-cultural and cross-linguistic scientific exchange between China, Japan and the West in the late nineteenth century. Through the quantitative corpus analysis, this study identified important patterns in the development of key linguistic features of an emerging scientific language system in modern Chinese, for example, token length and functional particles. The insights gained through the use of exploratory statistical techniques point to useful directions for future research in corpus-based translation studies.
The games translators play
Authors: Sotov Alexandre
Published: March 2014

This chapter applies tools of corpus linguistics and game theory to an aligned parallel corpus of ancient Indian cultic poetry, the Ṛgveda, and its translations in German and Russian (ca. 690,000 tokens in total). The research analyses the relationship between translators’ choice preferences in rendering ambiguous Vedic terms, using such techniques as transcription and explicitation, and the source text content. The latter is represented as two translation constraints, one dealing with content uniqueness (measured by the number of hapaxes) and another with context (text location). Translators apply lexical adjustment if the amount of information available to them is low and there is a perceived necessity to explain the meaning of a key word. When the degree of ambiguity of the source text cannot be estimated, often the case with uniquely attested lexis, individual translation choices aggregate to a coherent strategy, which results in complementarity between the translations.
Multivariate analyses of affix productivity in translated English
Authors: Jenset Gard B. , McGillivray Barbara
Published: March 2014

The productivity and use of derivational affixes in translated English is studied by means of three multivariate techniques: factor analysis, principal component analysis, and correspondence analysis. We argue that principal component analysis and correspondence analysis are the techniques best suited for corpus linguistics by demonstrating how they can offer insights about the interaction between translation-specific features, stylistic factors and affix use in translated English.
Collocations, lexical bundles and SciE-Lex
Authors: Laso Natalia Judith , Salazar Danica
Published: March 2014

This chapter provides an overview of studies on multiword units of meaning that have made an impact on the creation of SciE-Lex (see Verdaguer et al. this volume). We discuss a variety of statistical, phraseological and rhetorical approaches to collocation, as well as the notion of lexical bundle (Biber et al. 1999). We also expound on the complementarity of these approaches and highlight the need for combining a range of research methods in the study of multiword units of meaning, especially if they are to be used in the development of practical instruments that can help non-native users of a language increase their phraseological competence.
As described below
Authors: Ventura Aaron
Published: March 2014

This case study aims to investigate the relevance, as well as the use, of the lexical verb describe in scientific research articles, so as to determine the degree of importance of such a guiding verb within this type of discourse and within the scientific process itself. A detailed exploration of the complementation patterns is also made so as to give account of the environment in which such a verb tends to appear. This linguistic information asserts that in most cases the structure formed by the verb describe and its patterns serve to locate the reader, either spatially or temporally. This guiding function becomes essential for the reader of the scientific paper since it helps him/her process the information provided adequately. Furthermore, a comparison between the use of describe on the one hand, and some delexicalised verbs of ‘receiving’ and ‘giving’ followed by the nominal form description, on the other, is made, showing thereby a clear-cut preference for the use of the verbal form.
Negation in biomedical English
Authors: Laso Natalia Judith , Comelles Elisabet , Verdaguer Isabel
Published: March 2014

It seems intuitively certain that in scientific articles, affirmative clauses far surpass negative clauses. Thus, it is reasonable to assume that there are few negative sentences in this type of written discourse. The aim of this article is to analyse negative polarity in biomedical English. By linking discourse analysis and corpus linguistics, it studies how negative polarity and the scope of negation in combination with discourse connectors can bring about systematic patterns in biomedical discourse. The analysis of the context, position in the clause and text distribution of some adjectives that appear in the negative in the data under analysis reveals how different rhetorical devices, such as hedging and polarity, contribute to the rhetorical weight of the multiword expressions selected in this study.
Frames, constructions, and metaphors in Spanish FrameNet
Authors: Subirats Carlos
Published: March 2014

In this article, I outline the fundamental aspects of how frame semantics is applied to lexical analysis in the Spanish FrameNet project (SFN). To this end, I describe the process of semantic annotation in SFN and the software tools we use, and how we have used our annotated sentences as a training corpus to implement automatic semantic-role labelling for Spanish. I then describe our initial forays into the study of Spanish grammatical constructions, in which we are integrating frame semantics into syntactic analysis. Finally, I discuss SFN’s procedure for annotating metaphors and show how frame semantics can be used to analyse their emergent meanings.
Developing corpus interoperability for phonetic investigation of learner corpora
Authors: Ballier Nicolas , Martin Philippe
Published: March 2014

Although automatic analysis and computer-aided annotation tools are being developed, spoken learner corpora are still smaller and less numerous than written learner corpora. This chapter gives a critical overview of some of the phonetic research questions addressed by spoken learner corpora in relation to their annotation schemes and software. Some of their annotation schemes and guidelines are presented and assessed. Corpus design and tools are discussed in relation to some two of the challenges of spoken learner corpora: comparability of data and the potential contribution to prosodic modeling. It is argued that reusability of annotated spoken data and critical statistics should be the real order of the day.
Criterial feature extraction using parallel learner corpora and machine learning
Authors: Tono Yukio
Published: March 2014

This study reports on a new approach in semi-automatic error annotation and criterial feature extraction from learner corpora. Parallel learner corpora, a set of original learner writings and their proofread counterparts, were processed using edit distance to automatically identify surface taxonomy errors, which were then statistically analysed to produce language features which serve as criterial for a particular language proficiency level. Two case studies will report on different statistical and machine learning techniques; a clustering technique called variability-based neighbour clustering and ensemble learning called random forest. The results of the two case studies show that using edit distance over parallel learner corpora is a promising direction for annotating a large quantity of learner data with minimum manual annotation work, and both statistical techniques were found to be effective in identifying criterial features from learner corpora. Some theoretical and methodological issues are discussed for further research.
Phonological acquisition in the French-English interlanguage
Authors: Meli Adrien
Published: March 2014

This paper aims at providing insight into the sort of information that different protocols and elicitation methods may yield on the properties of the French-English interlanguage, and into how accurately the data found is predicted by known Second Language Acquisition (SLA) theoretical frameworks. Models such as Flege’s Speech Learning Model or Best’s Perceptual Assimilation Model make various predictions on phonemic acquisition based on phonological structural symmetries – or absence thereof – between the source language and the target language. However, this preliminary study of the acquisition of /ɪ/-/iː/, /ʊ/-/uː/ and /θ/-/ð/ argues that these assumptions fail to predict differences in learning patterns between sets of phonemes pertaining to the same cross-language structure (e.g. English /ɪ/-/iː/ and /ʊ/-/uː/, corresponding to French /i/ and /u/ respectively) and calls for including parameters such as phonotactics, L2- specific frequency of occurrence and lexical contrast in model predictions. The material used consists in subsets of first-year, third-year and fourth-year students of English recorded as part of an examination for the completion of their courses.
A corpus-based comparison of syntactic complexity in NNS and NS university students’ writing
Authors: Ai Haiyang , Lu Xiaofei
Published: March 2014

This paper reports on a corpus-based comparison of syntactic complexity in NNS and NS university students’ writing. We analysed 600 essays from the Written English Corpus of Chinese Learners and the Louvain Corpus of Native English Essays using 10 syntactic complexity measures to investigate whether and the extent to which NNS and NS university students’ writing differs with respect to length of production unit, amount of subordination, amount of coordination, and degree of phrasal sophistication. Results showed significant differences in all four dimensions of syntactic complexity between the writing of NNS students at both low and high proficiency levels and that of NS students. This gap calls for the design of pedagogical interventions to enhance NNS university students’ syntactic development.
Statistical tests for the analysis of learner corpus data
Authors: Gries Stefan Th.
Published: March 2014

This paper is an overview of several basic statistical tools in corpus-based SLA research. I first discuss a few issues relevant to the analysis of learner corpus data. Then, I illustrate a few widespread quantitative techniques and statistical visualizations and exemplify them on the basis of corpus data on the genitive alternation – the of-genitive vs. the s-genitive from German learners and native speakers of English. The statistical methods discussed include a test for differences between frequencies (the chi-squared test), tests for differences between means/medians (the U-test), and a more advanced multifactorial extension, binary logistic regression.
Chapter 4. An examination of the effects of input, aptitude, and motivation on the language proficiency of missionaries mearning Japanese as a second language
Authors: Larson-Hall Jenifer , Dewey Dan
Published: March 2014

This study examines the language proficiency, aptitude and motivation of 44 English-speaking missionary learners of Japanese as a second language. Proficiency was tested using an oral proficiency interview and elicited imitation. Motivational data were collected through questionnaires and analyzed using Dörnyei’s (2005) system. Aptitude tests included the MLAT4, Meara’s (2005) Llama B and Llama F, and French’s (2003) non-word repetition test. Proficiency was found to be most heavily dependent on time spent in country up to 11 months. In regression analyses, input was found to play the largest role in explaining variance on the proficiency measures (30–40%), while motivational factors of the L2 experience and the ideal L2 self along with aptitude were roughly equally important (explaining 9–16% of the variance).
Chapter 8. Savings in the relearning of mission vocabulary
Authors: Hansen Lynne , McKinney Sterling Melanie , Umeda Yukako
Published: March 2014

This chapter extends the line of research which has recently applied the savings paradigm from cognitive psychology to vocabulary relearning. L2 data from 304 returned missionaries from Japan and Korea provide evidence of the strongest savings effect yet reported in studies of lexical reactivation. The extent of the savings advantage appears to decline over time (with age a confounding factor), and relates significantly to current vocabulary size. No significant gender effects in savings are evident, but unexpected differences between the L2 Japanese and L2 Korean subgroups are reported in both lexical maintenance and savings accessibility. Substantial Matthew Effects in both data sets help elucidate sources of individual differences in vocabulary learning and relearning.
Chapter 9. What counts in the retention of numeral classifiers in Japanese and Chinese?
Authors: Hansen Lynne , Chen Yunglin
Published: March 2014

This study compares L2 acquisition and attrition sequences of the syntax and semantics of numeral classifier systems in light of considerations of markedness, frequency, and the regression hypothesis. In classifier data elicited from adult learners and attriters of two unrelated languages, Japanese and Chinese, both exhibit in the attrition of syntax and semantics, a regression of the acquisition sequence. An implicational semantic scale, the Numeral Classifer Accessibility Hierarchy, coinciding closely with the relative frequencies of the classifiers in input, is examined as a path of least resistance for the learning and loss of the semantic systems.
Chapter 10. Syntactic attrition in L2 Japanese missionary language
Authors: Russell Robert A.
Published: March 2014

This paper briefly reviews earlier studies of lexical and syntactic attrition among 20 English-native-speaking L2 Japanese subjects over a two-year period following their return to the U.S. after nearly two years’ intensive, informal acquisition in Japan. The paper then examines changes that occurred over an additional 10-year period of disuse of JSL by some of the same subjects, in particle usage, syntactic complexity, and syntactic variety. Findings include significant evidence of a likely long-term, positive effect of post-return formal instruction upon the retention of oral production skills, particularly in the number of clauses per T-Unit (a measure of syntactic complexity) and in the number of different types of subordinate clauses used (a measure of syntactic variety).
Chapter 11. The measurement of oral fluency in mission languages
Authors: Hansen Lynne , Gardner James , Pollard James , Rowe Joshua , Tsukayama Junko
Published: March 2014

This chapter reports a study of the L2 oral fluency of missionaries who were learning Japanese in Japan and of returnees from the same population back in the United States. Hesitation phenomena in their oral narratives were measured, and related to measures of their second language proficiency. Drawing upon this work and upon previous applications of ASR technology to oral testing, we subsequently developed a computerized instrument for the measurement of temporality in speech including an algorithm for applications in language assessment. We compare its automated measurement of our Japanese data with the manual measurement done in the original study. In conclusion, we suggest potential research and language testing applications.
Phonological variation in Catalan and Alemannic from a typological perspective
Authors: Caro Reina Javier
Published: March 2014

Typological research has been mainly based on standard written varieties. Only in recent years has there been a growing interest in studying cross-linguistic variation in regional and social non-standard varieties (e.g. Kortmann 2004). While morphology and syntax have been the focus of these cross-linguistic studies, phonological aspects have not been fully explored, partly because previous approaches to phonological typology have concentrated primarily on phoneme inventories (e.g. Maddieson 1984). The aim of this paper is to show how phonological variation in closely-related standard and non-standard varieties may be explained in terms of typological features. For that purpose, the typology of syllable and word languages will be applied to Catalan and Alemannic dialects. The focus will lie on how traditional dialect classifications can be accounted for on the basis of this typology.
‘Standard usage’
Authors: Deppermann Arnulf , Kleiner Stefan , Knöbl Ralf
Published: March 2014

‘Standard language’ is a contested concept, ideologically, empirically and theoretically. This is particularly true for a language such as German, where the standardization of the spoken language was based on the written standard and was established with respect to a communicative situation, i.e. public speech on stage (Bühnenaussprache), which most speakers never come across. As a consequence, the norms of the oral standard exhibit many features which are infrequent in the everyday speech even of educated speakers.This paper discusses ways to arrive at a more realistic conception of (spoken) standard German, which will be termed ‘standard usage’. It must be founded on empirical observations of speakers’ linguistic choices in everyday situations. Arguments in favor of a corpus-based notion of standard have to consider sociolinguistic, political, and didactic concerns. We report on the design of a large study of linguistic variation conducted at the Institute for the German Language (project “Variation in Spoken German”, Variation des gesprochenen Deutsch) with the aim of arriving at a representative picture of ‘standard usage’ in contemporary German. It systematically takes into account both diatopic variation covering the multi-national space in which German is an official language, and diastratic variation in terms of varying degrees of formality. Results of the study of phonetic and morphosyntactic variation are discussed. At least for German, a corpus-based notion of ‘standard usage’ inevitably includes some degree of pluralism concerning areal variation, and it needs to do justice to register-based variation as well.
A variationist approach to syntactic change
Authors: Håkansson David
Published: March 2014

This article focuses on word order in subordinate clauses in the history of Swedish, mainly Old Swedish (c. 1225–1526) and Early Modern Swedish (1526–1732). In Old Swedish, subordinate clauses could have the same word order as main clauses with respect to the internal order between the finite verb and a sentence adverbial. This marks a clear contrast to Modern Swedish with its particular subordinate clause word order marked by the pre-finite placement of the sentence adverbial. By using variationist methods this article takes a sociolinguistic approach to syntactic change, arguing that the word order variation in subordinate clauses in the history of Swedish has to be explained in two different ways. During 1225–1450 the modern word order is restricted to subordinate clauses with pronominal subjects, and as long as the modern word order is restricted to clauses with pronominal subjects it is argued that the variation between old and modern subordinate clause word order can be described as a micro-variation in a system with obligatory verb movement and different subject positions. In Late Old Swedish, however, the modern subordinate clause word order started to occur also with non-pronominal subjects. The possibility of using the modern subordinate clause word order pattern independently of the subject type cannot be accounted for within one system with obligatory verb movement but instead reflects a macro-variation between two coexisting systems (with or without verb movement). During Early Modern Swedish one of these systems became predominant, and it is argued that this change is dependent on the sociolinguistic situation in 17th-century Sweden.
The sociophonology and sociophonetics of Scottish Standard English (r)
Authors: Schützler Ole
Published: March 2014

This paper inspects the variability of (r) in non-linking coda positions (e.g. in the words car, far, and art) in Scottish Standard English (SSE), accepting the three variants [ɾ], [ɹ], and Ø. Interviews with 27 middle-class speakers were conducted, eliciting three styles (careful speech, reading passage, and word list). Following a discussion of previous research on (r) in SSE and an explanation of the conditional hierarchical logistic regression model applied to the data, results are presented with a focus on social and stylistic factors. It appears that female speakers are more likely to vocalise /r/, and older speakers are more likely to use the more traditional tapped variant [ɾ]. Thus, quasi-phonological variation correlates with gender, and phonetic variation correlates with age. Moreover, contact with Southern Standard British English (SSBE) also increases the rates of (r)-vocalisation. In word list style, all speakers are less likely to vocalise (r), but there are significant differences between social groups in this respect: especially young men’s accents are almost categorically rhotic in word list style.
Stance and code-switching
Authors: Smith-Christmas Cassie
Published: March 2014

The concept of ‘stance,’ which is the means by which speakers position themselves in terms of the discourse and interlocutor(s), has gained attention in recent sociolinguistic literature. This paper demonstrates the value of using stance as an explicit analytic construct in examining rapid language alternation; in this case, the code-switching of first generation (50+ years) Gaelic-English bilinguals in an extended family on the Isles of Skye and Harris, Scotland. It uses a micro-interactional approach in looking at how code-switching occurs in concert with overt displays of epistemic and affective stance-taking and concludes that speakers use code-switching as a means to explicitly highlight certain stances. It further posits that facets of these interactions, such frequent occurrences of communicative trouble, necessitate the overt reification of particular stances and that to accomplish this task, these bilinguals draw on one of their most powerful communicative strategies: code-switching.
The case of [nən]
Authors: Ziegler Evelyn
Published: March 2014

In recent years a new form has emerged in the paradigm of the indefinite article, the so-called “extended short form” nen (Vogel 2006) as in: Ich hab’ nen Mann gesehen. As little is known about the origin of this form (when was it used first, by whom, and in what contexts?), this paper will trace the history of nen using several corpora of colloquial German that cover language use in the 1960s, 1970s and 2000s (Pfeffer-Corpus, Freiburger-Corpus, Dialogstrukturen-Corpus, Emergency-Call-Corpus). Quantitative analyses reveal distinct patterns of variation, which indicate a language change that originated among young speakers in the 1990s. Furthermore, the findings show that the norms of colloquial German have clearly changed during the last 50 years. Explicit forms, which dominated language use in the 1960s and 1970s have been replaced by short forms (including the “extended short form” nen). It can be concluded that standard norm awareness was high in the 1960s, whereas today speakers exhibit low norm awareness and evaluate colloquial, supra-regional variants positively, even in formal contexts.
Breaking of self-narrative as a means of reorientation?
Authors: Hänninen Vilma , Koski-Jännes Anja
Published: March 2014

Autobiographical texts written by “ordinary people” usually relate the life of the author in a more or less linear, chronological order. In narrative psychology, a coherent self-narrative is often celebrated as psychologically “good”. We suggest that sometimes incoherence may be functional. The chapter focuses on a short autobiographical text written by a middle-aged female artist “Anna” about her attempts to quit drinking and smoking. Anna’s text does not proceed chronologically but mostly making loops backwards in time. No links of cause and effect are narratively constructed. The flow of narration is repeatedly broken by ironic remarks questioning the narrator’s ability to see her real motives. We suggest that the author’s intent is to create an anti-narrative which would help her find a personally convincing new self-narrative. Breaking the conventional narrative structure serves as a psychological means to leave the past behind and yet to avoid premature commitment to a new self-narrative.
“There is no fear in my lexicon” vs. “You are not normal if you won’t be scared”
Authors: Perez Alison Stern , Tobin Yishai , Sagy Shifra
Published: March 2014

Bus drivers in Israel have coped with decades of stress, fear, and the constant threat of terror. This paper summarizes a qualitative analysis of the form and content of narratives told by Israeli bus drivers who directly experienced a terror attack. A preliminary discourse and semiotic analysis of a case study is presented here as representative of a ‘broken’ narrative, as reflected in what initially appear as internal contradictions in both form and content. The non-random distribution of personal pronouns is analyzed, and hypotheses are postulated regarding the meaning of the interviewee’s communicative strategies in telling his narrative and coping with his lived experience. In particular, the interviewee makes openly conflicted statements regarding his sense of fear and willingness to admit being scared, while using the first-person and both gendered second-person pronouns in a uniquely patterned manner that also reflects this ambivalence. A careful analysis of these seeming contradictions, inconsistencies, and ‘broken’ narrative patterns leads to the ultimate suggestion that certain messages in individual discourse can reveal the narrator’s feelings and attitudes about the surrounding hegemonic social discourse. In the case of Israeli bus drivers, this discourse facilitates a collective sense of obligation to act and cope resiliently, and discourages ‘less acceptable’ reactions.
Beyond narrative
Authors: Andrews Molly
Published: March 2014

This chapter will explore the limits and possibilities of narratives in which individuals turn to language to communicate the inexpressibility of experiences they have endured. The central dilemma for many survivors of trauma is that they must tell their stories, and yet their stories cannot be told. Traumatic experiences often defy understanding. Testimony of those who have survived can be marked by what is not there: coherence, structure, meaning, comprehensibility. The actual emplotment of trauma testimony into conventional narrative configurations — contained in time- transforms them into something which they are not: experiences which are endowed with a particular wholeness, which occurred in the past, and which have now ended. The paper concludes with a discussion of the relationship between language and silence in traumatic testimony.
Many more than two of us
Authors: Larrain Veronica
Published: March 2014

This chapter deals with the way that students in a workshop to introduce narrative constructionist research questioned the ways in which a series of stories of their own creation were produced. Four main issues made up the deconstruction of the prevailing discourses present in the positions of speech and writing: writing as a threat to the authenticity of speech; narrative coherence as an element which legitimates various forms of being; tensions in the reconstruction of the real-life experiences with the “appropriate” meaning; and a textual politics which promotes a unbroken reading of the experience of the Other. From the deconstructive process emerged a model of the narrative inquirer as a person who tells a story from a non-institutionalized point of view which allows other to tell their own.
Chapter 7. “Indefinite, sketchy, but not entirely obliterated”
Authors: Frey Büchel Nicole
Published: March 2014

Jeffrey Eugenides’s epic novel Middlesex raises the overarching questions of how a comprehensive understanding of selfhood can be gained and to what extent the construction of a coherent identity by means of language is possible. In his attempt to make conclusive sense of his self, Cal, the intersexual narrator and protagonist of the novel, takes refuge in the idea that constructing a narrative identity will lead to self-coherence. While this wish for unity is understandable from a psychological perspective, a poststructuralist approach to Middlesex shows that Cal’s endeavour to fix selfhood in narrative ironically results in making it even more indeterminate. Narratives continually and inevitably communicate with pre-existing texts which results in the constant deferral of their final meaning, and narratives are revealed to be incapable of providing a definite selfhood. Middlesex shows that the primary aim is not the achievement of a coherent self but rather the constructive process of telling the narrative. The novel thus reformulates the concept of narrative identity in terms of constant, ultimately open-ended performance.
Chapter 8. Creative confession
Authors: Worthington Kim
Published: March 2014

This essay explores the act of self-authorising confession represented in Ian McEwan’s Atonement, and the ethical considerations that are raised in consequence. Drawing on the work of Peter Brooks, J. M. Coetzee, Jacques Derrida and Emmanuel Levinas (and others) I argue that in Atonement McEwan points up the impossibility of attaining either truth or self-forgiveness via acts of (confessional) self-writing. McEwan’s probing portrayal of the limitations of individual perspective result in ethical insights that extend beyond the realm of (fiction) writing and cut to the heart of interpersonal engagement. He invites readers to recognised the extent to which even our most empathetic attempts to imagine the interiority of others are always, and inevitably, acts of authoritative appropriation. At the same time, however, McEwan encourages recognition of the limits and consequences of (self) authority; he suggests the ongoing need, of the self-narrating self, for the re-cognition of (reading) others. Briony, the novel’s protagonist and narrator, ultimately realises the impossibility of herself writing the forgiveness she desires and acknowledges the authority of the others who will finally write her in their (retrospective) readings.
Chapter 9. The queer self and the snares of heteronormativity
Authors: Kilian Eveline
Published: March 2014

This paper focuses on queer subjects as heteronormativity’s marginalized others and the consequences of this subject position for autobiographical structures and queer concepts of time. My literary examples are Quentin Crisp’s life writings, notably his autobiography The Naked Civil Servant, and with the help of Judith Butler’s theory of subject formation as well as recent queer theories on negativity and failure (Lee Edelman, Judith Halberstam), I show how Crisp expressly inhabits the position of the abject, of negativity, and develops a lifestyle of failure, which he is able to turn into a success later in his life.
Chapter 10. Confessional poetry
Authors: Brunner Eva
Published: March 2014

This paper addresses identity construction in confessional poetry and explores three poems by Anne Sexton in closer detail. It shows that identity in lyrical texts can be discussed more poignantly by using the concept of narrative identity. A close reading of the three poems reveals three different self-concepts, the possibility of multiple selves, and the notion of permanent self-actualization through narrative. Furthermore, this paper suggests that narrative identity theory concentrates too much on conventional narratological frames such as narrative coherence. The reading of lyric poetry extends the narratological settings especially with respect to time. Therefore, this paper suggests that analyzing narrative identity in literary texts contributes to our general understanding of narrative identity. In addition, it draws attention to the connection between identity and emotion. It shows that lyric poetry evokes emotions not only through narrative, but also with the help of non-narrative devices. As a result, the paper demonstrates that emotions influence the identity-process and challenge a purely rational understanding of narrative identity.
Travelling with narrative
Authors: Eakin Paul John
Published: March 2014

Definition of narrative is endlessly contested: Can a single term embrace not only literary but also social and somatic meanings? Matti Hyvärinen demonstrates the difficulty of doing so when he surveys the tangled history of narrative as a concept in recent decades, identifying two opposing views, one mono-disciplinary in the case of “literary narratology” and the other multi-disciplinary in the case of “narrative-turn theory.” Testing this model against my own concern with autobiography, I recognize that I have traversed both of these narrative fields, one after the other. Both approaches to narrative are required to capture the complexity of our experience of selfhood and our attempts to express it. Rather than choosing between the narratology and narrative-turn camps that Hyvärinen describes, I opt instead for a unified field theory.
Philosophical underpinnings of the narrative turn in theory and fiction
Authors: Meretoja Hanna
Published: March 2014

I argue here that the narrative turn does not pertain only to theoretical discourse but is a broader cultural phenomenon, particularly perceptible in twentieth-century French literature but not exclusive to it. It is characterized by acknowledging not only the cognitive but also the existential relevance of narrative for our being in the world; I hence propose conceptualizing it as a shift towards a hermeneutically-oriented understanding of narrative’s ontological significance and of subjectivity as being constituted in a process of narrative interpretation that takes shape in a dialogical relation to socio-culturally mediated models of sense-making. By analyzing the epistemological, ontological and ethical aspects of this turn, I attempt to provide an overview of its main philosophical dimensions
Fact and fiction
Authors: Brockmeier Jens
Published: March 2014

Building on an unified approach to literary and the everyday, written and oral (or otherwise performed) narrative, this chapter gets its bearings from a hermeneutic notion of narrative as a psychologically fundamental practice of human meaning construction, a practice that cuts across the putative divide between fiction and nonfiction. The argument put forward is that at the base of both literary and everyday processes of narrative meaning construction we find the same interpretive operations. These fundamental processes of human understanding and intersubjectivity are less shaped by epistemological or even ontological distinctions such as “fact” and “fiction” but first of all by a shared cultural canon of narrative conventions. To explore this argument in the contexts of narratological and philosophical discussions, I examine a slightly unusual narrative – unfolded in a letter by a person who considers suicide – in light of the narrative hermeneutics outlined in this chapter
Broken or unnatural?
Authors: Iversen Stefan
Published: March 2014

The question of what Dorrit Cohn famously called the distinction of fiction holds a peculiar place, occasionally taking center stage, but mostly lying dormant in or beyond the margins of the discussions of narrative study. What difference does it make whether a narrative is fictive or not? Recently, scholars in different subfields of narrative study have reaffirmed earlier claims that even though fictive and non-fictive narratives can be said, on one level, to serve fairly dissimilar cultural functions, on other levels they exhibit similarities that are more fundamental than these differences with regard to their status as narratives. The article sets out to question this position. Comparing and elaborating on results from unnatural narratology and from work done on non-coherent or broken narratives, the article aims at bringing forth what are argued to be important and in some cases incommensurable differences between the invitations offered by non-conventional narrative forms in fiction and in non-fiction. The cases are Jonathan Littell’s The Kindly Ones (2009) and interview-sessions with former inmates of German concentration camps.
“Unnatural” narratives?
Authors: Mildorf Jarmila
Published: March 2014

This chapter explores second-person narration in literary and conversational storytelling, contesting the view that you-narration is a purely literary phenomenon. On a theoretical level, the chapter questions some of the tenets proposed by “unnatural narratology,” a newly emerging camp in the so-called “postclassical narratologies.” In contrast to unnatural narratology, which assigns a special status to literary narratives and calls for more literary-specific methodological tools, this chapter argues in favour of a more integrative approach ranging across various disciplines interested in narrative research.
Broken stories
Authors: Korhonen Kuisma
Published: March 2014

This chapter addresses how concepts of narrative and narration have been used in theories of cultural trauma. My point of departure is an article by Wulf Kansteiner and Harald Weilnböck, where they criticize the concept of cultural trauma or what they call the paradigm of “deconstructive trauma discourse.” They argue that this paradigm not only misuses the concept of psychological trauma by adapting it to a cultural realm, but also refuses to recognize the significance of narratives in trauma therapy. I will challenge their criticism by taking a closer look at how the concept of cultural trauma has been defined and used in cultural studies. I will also argue that the theories of cultural trauma recognize the significance of narration as a process, although they criticize certain types of narratives or closed narrative form. Within this discussion I intend to shed light on how the concept of narrative has travelled and is used in the discussions focusing on cultural trauma.
Narrative self-making during dinnertime conversations in Chinese immigrant families
Authors: Koh Jessie Bee Kim , Wang Qi
Published: March 2014

Narrative self-making at dinnertime was examined in Chinese immigrant families, with European American families serving as a comparison group. Based on Bruner’s (1986, 1990) “dual landscapes” theoretical framework, we analyzed memory conversations at dinnertime in five Chinese immigrant and seven European American families with preschool-aged children. Chinese immigrant families engaged in lengthier dinner conversations than did European American families. Chinese immigrant and European American parents further differed in the way they narrated information pertaining to the landscape of actions (e.g., people involved, child’s actions, others’ actions) and landscape of consciousness (e.g., child’s internal states, others’ internal states). As Chinese immigrant parents continue to uphold values from the culture-of-origin while adopting the values of the host culture, they narrated information that would socialize their children towards the development of a bicultural self. On the other hand, in accordance with their cultural values, European American parents narrated information that would socialize their children towards the development of an independent self. Dinnertime thus functions as an important socialization context for narrative self-making to construct a cultured self.
The linguistic encoding of placement and removal events in Jahai
Authors: Burenhult Niclas
Published: March 2014

This paper explores the linguistic encoding of placement and removal events in Jahai (Austroasiatic, Malay Peninsula) on the basis of descriptions from a video elicitation task. It outlines the structural characteristics of the descriptions and isolates semantically a set of situation types that find expression in lexical opposites: (1) putting/taking, (2) inserting/extracting, (3) dressing/undressing, and (4) placing/removing one’s body parts. All involve deliberate and controlled placing/removing of a solid Figure object in relation to a Ground which is not a human recipient. However, they differ as to the identity of and physical relationship between Figure and Ground. The data also provide evidence of variation in how semantic roles are mapped onto syntactic constituents: in most situation types, Agent, Figure and Ground associate with particular constituent NPs, but some placement events are described with semantically specialised verbs encoding the Figure and even the Ground.
“She from bookshelf take-descend-come the box”
Authors: Chen Jidong
Published: March 2014

This paper investigates the lexical semantics of placement verbs in Mandarin. The majority of Mandarin placement verbs are directional verb compounds (e.g., na2-xia4-lai2 ‘take-descend-come’). They are composed of two or three verbs in a fixed order, each encoding certain semantic components of placement events. The first verb usually conveys object manipulation and the second and the third verbs indicate the Path of motion, including Deixis. The first verb, typically encoding object manipulation, can be semantically general or specific: two general verbs, fang4 ‘put’ and na2 ‘take’, have large but constrained extensional categories, and a number of specific verbs are used based on the Manner of manipulation of the Figure object, the relationship between and the physical properties of Figure and Ground, intentionality of the Agent, and the type of instrument.
To ‘put’ or to ‘take’?
Authors: Brown Penelope
Published: March 2014

This paper examines the verbs and other spatial vocabulary used for describing events of ‘putting’ and ‘taking’ in Tzeltal (Mayan). I discuss the semantics of different ‘put’ and ‘take’ verbs, the constructions they occur in, and the extensional patterns of verbs used in ‘put’ (Goal-oriented) vs. ‘take’ (Source-oriented) descriptions. A relatively limited role for semantically general verbs was found. Instead, Tzeltal is a ‘multiverb language’ with many different verbs usable to predicate ‘put’ and ‘take’ events, with verb choice largely determined by the shape, orientation, and resulting disposition of the Figure and Ground objects. The asymmetry that has been observed in other languages, with Goal-oriented ‘put’ verbs more finely distinguished lexically than Source-oriented ‘take’ verbs, is also apparent in Tzeltal.
The encoding of placement and removal events in ǂĀkhoe Haiǁom
Authors: Rapold Christian J.
Published: March 2014

This paper explores the semantics of placement and removal verbs in Ākhoe Haiom based on event descriptions elicited with a set of video stimuli. After a brief sketch of the morphosyntax of placement/removal constructions in Ākhoe Haiom, four situation types are identified semantically that cover both placement and removal events. The language exhibits a clear tendency to make more fine-grained semantic distinctions in placement verbs, as opposed to semantically more general removal verbs.
Placement and removal events in Basque and Spanish
Authors: Ibarretxe-Antuñano Iraide
Published: March 2014

This paper examines how placement and removal events are lexicalised and conceptualised in Basque and Peninsular Spanish. After a brief description of the main linguistic devices employed for the coding of these types of events, the paper discusses how speakers of the two languages choose to talk about these events. Finally, the paper focuses on two aspects that seem to be crucial in the description of these events (1) the role of force dynamics: both languages distinguish between different degrees of force, causality, and intentionality, and (2) the influence of the verb-framed lexicalisation pattern. Data come from six Basque and ten Peninsular Spanish native speakers.