TeangaPub Date : 2019-08-27DOI: 10.35903/teanga.v21i0.173
Michael McCarthy, R. Carter
{"title":"This that and the other: Multi-word clusters in spoken English as visible patterns of interaction","authors":"Michael McCarthy, R. Carter","doi":"10.35903/teanga.v21i0.173","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.35903/teanga.v21i0.173","url":null,"abstract":"This paper investigates multi-word strings automatically retrieved from a 5-million-word corpus of conversational English from Britain and Ireland. Many such strings have neither syntactic nor semantic integrity, for example at the, it was a, what do you. However, many strings display pragmatic integrity, encoding interactive functions such as hedging, vagueness, discourse marking, etc. Examples include and that sort of thing, you know, a couple of. We identify the most common pragmatically integrated clusters and discuss their functions, and compare their frequency with single words, illustrating that many clusters are more frequent than single words accepted as belonging to the core vocabulary of English. The clusters also contrast with the low frequency of opaque idiomatic expressions. High-frequency clusters raise issues around the distinction between lexis and grammar, and support a synthetic view of language production and storage, with implications for the understanding of notions such as fluency and idiomaticity.","PeriodicalId":36036,"journal":{"name":"Teanga","volume":"118 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-08-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77922310","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
TeangaPub Date : 2019-08-27DOI: 10.35903/teanga.v21i0.177
Angela Chambers, Victoria Kelly
{"title":"Semi-specialized corpora of written French as a resource in language teaching and learning","authors":"Angela Chambers, Victoria Kelly","doi":"10.35903/teanga.v21i0.177","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.35903/teanga.v21i0.177","url":null,"abstract":"This study is based on data provided by a corpus 1,144,668 words of contemporary written standard French of a semi-specialized nature, consisting of journalistic texts relating to the introduction of the Euro. The aim is to investigate the potential of a corpus such as this as a resource for language teachers and learners in an area such as French for business, where competence in the expression of quantitative may be required. Through an analysis of the verbs and prepositions used in conjunction with the percentage symbol, the aim is twofold: firstly to show how the information obtained from the corpus can complement the contribution of the grammar and the coursebook, providing a resource with a variety of examples of actual use; and secondly to raise the question of how information such as this can be made available to teachers and learners in an environment which fosters inductive learning and learner autonomy.","PeriodicalId":36036,"journal":{"name":"Teanga","volume":"46 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-08-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"72943244","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
TeangaPub Date : 2019-08-27DOI: 10.35903/teanga.v21i0.176
M. Childs
{"title":"Spoken and written ellipsis in (and not in) the experience of adult literacy learners","authors":"M. Childs","doi":"10.35903/teanga.v21i0.176","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.35903/teanga.v21i0.176","url":null,"abstract":"Interference from spoken language can hinder adult learners’ reading, so it is helpful for tutors to be aware of differences between spoken and written syntax. Study of the incidence of ellipsis in two adult learners’ conversational language demonstrates the absence of most forms of coordination and subordination ellipsis typical of writing, and the frequent omission of subordinators, including the total absence of that relatives from one informant’s corpus. Examples of typically spoken situational ellipsis draw attention to the different locus of reference (situational or textual) in spoken and written ellipsis, and therefore the different strategy of interpretation required in reading. It is also shown that the use and non-use of ellipsis often have communicative functions in the dialogues that reflect linguistic skills rather than sloppiness or incompetence. Implications for tuition are suggested.","PeriodicalId":36036,"journal":{"name":"Teanga","volume":"102 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-08-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80603422","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
TeangaPub Date : 2019-08-27DOI: 10.35903/teanga.v21i0.169
Fiona Farr, A. O’Keefe
{"title":"Introduction: corpora, varieties, and the language classroom","authors":"Fiona Farr, A. O’Keefe","doi":"10.35903/teanga.v21i0.169","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.35903/teanga.v21i0.169","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":36036,"journal":{"name":"Teanga","volume":"84 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-08-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89028380","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
TeangaPub Date : 2019-08-27DOI: 10.35903/teanga.v21i0.178
Brian Clancy
{"title":"The exchange in family discourse","authors":"Brian Clancy","doi":"10.35903/teanga.v21i0.178","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.35903/teanga.v21i0.178","url":null,"abstract":"The intimate genre of family discourse has traditionally posed problems for linguists because of the difficulty in collecting the data and the intimate nature of the genre. For obvious reasons, people view family life as intensely private and so are unwilling to allow linguists to intrude upon it. This, to a certain extent, would explain the paucity of directly relevant material available. This paper is an attempt to address this lacuna, and perhaps more ambitiously, to provide openings for further study. The paper analyses the structure of the exchange in family discourse in an Irish context. A traditional model of conversational exchange is applied to the data but is seen as unsuitable for the analysis due to factors particular to family talk. However, later work in the area of the exchange brings into relief a clear exchange structure in this discourse, which, on the surface, appears dense and chaotic.","PeriodicalId":36036,"journal":{"name":"Teanga","volume":"28 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-08-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84926737","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
TeangaPub Date : 2019-07-17DOI: 10.35903/TEANGA.V22I0.154
María Palma Fahey
{"title":"Understanding idioms and idiomatic expressions in context: a look at idioms found in an Irish soap opera","authors":"María Palma Fahey","doi":"10.35903/TEANGA.V22I0.154","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.35903/TEANGA.V22I0.154","url":null,"abstract":"This paper looks at idioms drawn from a corpus of soap opera and compares their communicative functions to those performed by idioms in corpora of naturally-occurring conversation. In this study soap opera data is validated as a suitable tool for demonstrating the role that idioms play in spoken interaction. Soap operas, as well as other media genres, try to convey a believable linguistic world, exploiting idioms and providing contexts in which the pragmatic functions of idioms can be understood and analysed. This paper suggests that the analysis of idioms found in soap opera can contribute to the increase of knowledge and understanding concerning the communicative functions that idioms have in conversation. The data used in this study is drawn from the corpora of naturally-occurring conversation --- the Limerick Corpus of Irish English (LCIE) and the Cambridge and Nottingham Corpus of Discourse in English (CANCODE) --- and a corpus of the Irish soap opera, Fair City.","PeriodicalId":36036,"journal":{"name":"Teanga","volume":"22 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-07-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81943947","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
TeangaPub Date : 2019-07-17DOI: 10.35903/TEANGA.V22I0.157
D. Lasagabaster, M. O. Laoire
{"title":"Attitudes towards trilingualism: a comparison between the Basque and Irish contexts","authors":"D. Lasagabaster, M. O. Laoire","doi":"10.35903/TEANGA.V22I0.157","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.35903/TEANGA.V22I0.157","url":null,"abstract":"This paper aims to examine attitudes towards trilingualism by focusing on the minority language (Basque in Basque Country and Irish in Ireland) and the L3 (English in the Basque Country and French, Spanish, or German in Ireland). The participants are 1,087 Basque university students and 250 Irish third-level students. By using the same questionnaire--- based on Baker (1992) ---both in the Basque Country and Ireland, the research aims to explore attitudes in two contexts which share some similarities while at the same time retaining their own sociolinguistic features. Thus, it is expected that the level of proficiency in the minority language will exert a clearly positive impact on attitudes to Irish and Basque. Similarly, it is hypothesized that different attitudes to the L3 will be shown in both contexts for different sociolinguistic reasons.","PeriodicalId":36036,"journal":{"name":"Teanga","volume":"9 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-07-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77361697","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
TeangaPub Date : 2019-07-17DOI: 10.35903/TEANGA.V22I0.153
E. Mckendry, N. Purdy
{"title":"The position of German in the Northern Ireland curriculum","authors":"E. Mckendry, N. Purdy","doi":"10.35903/TEANGA.V22I0.153","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.35903/TEANGA.V22I0.153","url":null,"abstract":"This paper aims to assess the current position of German in Northern Ireland schools. Anecdotal evidence and recent research (Neil, Phipps, and Mallon 1999, 2000) prompted a study to determine if German really is in decline in Northern Ireland, why this might be the case, and what, if anything, can be done to secure the future of the language in schools, particularly in the context of the current curricular review, which contains potentially challenging proposals for German and languages in general.","PeriodicalId":36036,"journal":{"name":"Teanga","volume":"172 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-07-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82939607","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
TeangaPub Date : 2019-07-17DOI: 10.35903/TEANGA.V22I0.148
Tríona Hourigan, Liam Murray
{"title":"Investigating the pedagogical environments of paper-based and online media","authors":"Tríona Hourigan, Liam Murray","doi":"10.35903/TEANGA.V22I0.148","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.35903/TEANGA.V22I0.148","url":null,"abstract":"The investigation of both paper-based and virtual pedagogical environments allows us to reflect upon the diverse range of material available to the language learning community today. In this paper, the significance of the cultural component in language learning will be discussed firstly, highlighting its crucial role with regard to the promotion of tolerance and understanding between diverse cultures. Secondly, a number of FLE (Français Langue Erangère) manuals will be analysed in terms of the transmission of cultural data. The study will then conclude with an examination of examples of online environments which reflect an alternative medium for the acquisition of information on the target language and culture.","PeriodicalId":36036,"journal":{"name":"Teanga","volume":"111 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-07-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79214494","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
TeangaPub Date : 2019-07-17DOI: 10.35903/TEANGA.V22I0.156
Bernadette O’Rourke
{"title":"¿Falas galego?: The effects of socio-political change on language attitudes and use in the Galician sociolinguistic context","authors":"Bernadette O’Rourke","doi":"10.35903/TEANGA.V22I0.156","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.35903/TEANGA.V22I0.156","url":null,"abstract":"Over the past two decades, much discussion in sociolinguistics and the sociology of language has centred on concerns over the survival prospects of lesser-used or minority languages. The aim of the research being reported on here was to shed light on one such language case --- Galician, spoken in the Autonomous Community of Galicia in the northwestern part of the Iberian Peninsula. Of Spain’s officially recognized regional languages, Galician, known to its speakers as ‘galego’, shows greatest numerical strength within its own territorial region. According to census results, an overwhelming majority of the Galician population report an ability to speak the language and sociolinguistic surveys reveal that Galician is the habitual language of over two-thirds of the population. However, despite its apparent strength in numerical terms, as the following pages will show, a closer analysis of the Galician sociolinguistic context highlights a more precarious future for the language.","PeriodicalId":36036,"journal":{"name":"Teanga","volume":"8 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-07-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89777000","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}