LinguaPub Date : 2025-03-27DOI: 10.1016/j.lingua.2025.103934
Zhuolun Li , Lei Lei
{"title":"Deciphering cross-genre dynamics: Testing the Law of Abbreviation and the Meaning-Frequency Law in Chinese across genres","authors":"Zhuolun Li , Lei Lei","doi":"10.1016/j.lingua.2025.103934","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.lingua.2025.103934","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The study examined the applicability of two linguistic laws, i.e., the Law of Abbreviation and the Meaning-Frequency Law, in Chinese across four text genres. Linear mixed-effects models were employed to explore the genre-mediated effects on the two laws. The results confirmed the validity of both laws at the character level in Chinese while also demonstrating significant genre-specific variations. The effect of genre on the relationships among character length, polysemy, and frequency was particularly pronounced in less formal genres. Additionally, across all genres, character polysemy consistently exhibited a stronger effect on character frequency than character length. The results were discussed from several perspectives, including the underlying mechanisms of the two laws (i.e., the principle of least effort and the lexical synergetic system theory), trade-offs between communication accuracy versus efficiency across genres, and the differing impacts on communication costs of character polysemy and character length. Implications of the study are also discussed for researchers interested in Zipfian laws across languages.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47955,"journal":{"name":"Lingua","volume":"320 ","pages":"Article 103934"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2025-03-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143715462","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
LinguaPub Date : 2025-03-20DOI: 10.1016/j.lingua.2025.103928
Robert M. McKenzie , Kristofor McCarty , Mimi Huang
{"title":"Implicit and explicit linguistic biases: The influence of social dominance orientation (SDO) upon hierarchical language attitudes","authors":"Robert M. McKenzie , Kristofor McCarty , Mimi Huang","doi":"10.1016/j.lingua.2025.103928","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.lingua.2025.103928","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Research indicates that various social factors can predict language attitudes. However, although social dominance orientation (SDO), the individual’s preference for societal hierarchies, has been found to determine evaluations of a range of social groups and socially meaningful topics, its role in predicting more deeply embedded implicit attitudes in conjunction with more deliberative explicit attitudes towards specific language varieties and their speakers is currently unknown. The present research examined the effect of SDO upon English nationals’ (<em>N</em> = 306) explicit and implicit evaluations of phonological variants indexical of (i) Northern English speech and (ii) Southern English speech in England on competence (Study 1) and warmth (Study 2) dimensions. Regression analysis, controlling for demographic variables, demonstrated that high-SDO predicted negative explicit competence and warmth attitudes towards Northern English speech. Conversely, SDO did not determine self-report Southern English speech evaluations. Likewise, SDO did not predict implicit competence or warmth attitudes. The study findings are discussed in relation to the methodological and theoretical value for (socio)linguists of incorporating SDO measures into research investigating language attitudes at different levels of evaluational awareness.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47955,"journal":{"name":"Lingua","volume":"319 ","pages":"Article 103928"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2025-03-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143685796","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
LinguaPub Date : 2025-03-13DOI: 10.1016/j.lingua.2025.103921
Simin Zhou , Tianlin Wang , Miao Yu , Xiujuan Shi
{"title":"The role of phonetic radical information in compound character recognition during sentence reading","authors":"Simin Zhou , Tianlin Wang , Miao Yu , Xiujuan Shi","doi":"10.1016/j.lingua.2025.103921","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.lingua.2025.103921","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The role of phonology in Chinese character recognition has been a subject of ongoing debate. While evidence suggests that phonetic radicals play a significant role in compound character recognition, previous studies have often mixed phonological and orthographic information associated with radicals. To address this limitation, two eye-tracking experiments were conducted to further investigate the role of phonetic radical phonology and the time course of its influence on character recognition. In Experiment 1, we employed an error disruption paradigm to explore the role of phonology in Chinese character recognition. The results revealed that, for regular target characters, the total reading time was shorter in the phonologically similar substitute condition compared to the unrelated condition. The findings suggest that phonological information facilitates Chinese character recognition, but only in the late processing stages. In Experiment 2, the gaze-contingent boundary paradigm was utilized to investigate how phonetic radical information influences the recognition of compound characters. Results showed that, regardless of a character’s regularity, the single fixation duration, first fixation duration, and gaze duration were all shorter in the phonologically similar condition than in the unrelated condition. The findings suggest that phonetic radical phonology consistently facilitates the processing of Chinese characters, both in the early and late stages. This study offers new insights into the phonological processing of Chinese characters, particularly highlighting the crucial role of radicals in decoding word meanings and emphasizing the importance of sub-lexical processing in reading comprehension.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47955,"journal":{"name":"Lingua","volume":"319 ","pages":"Article 103921"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2025-03-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143619422","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
LinguaPub Date : 2025-03-06DOI: 10.1016/j.lingua.2025.103913
Arum Park
{"title":"An empirical study on parameters affecting the recoverability of deictic null subjects in Korean","authors":"Arum Park","doi":"10.1016/j.lingua.2025.103913","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.lingua.2025.103913","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Korean is a null subject language, allowing the omission of overt subjects in sentences. Within the framework of principle and parameter theory, Korean null subjects have traditionally been explained by the topic-drop parameter, which assumes that omitted subjects are recovered through topic chains linking them to an explicit discourse topic. However, this mechanism alone is insufficient to account for deictic null subjects, which primarily refer to the speaker or addressee and do not require a previously introduced topic. This study empirically and systematically evaluates the contribution of linguistic parameters within verbal complexes in resolving Korean deictic null subjects. A total of 208 heuristic rules were developed, integrating various morpho-syntactic and lexical features, and were incorporated into a unified null subject resolution system—the first attempt to comprehensively assess multiple parameters within a single system. The system was tested on 15,883 predicates containing null subjects, measuring the impact of each parameter in recovering discourse participant-referents. The system successfully identified 86% of discourse participant-related null subjects, achieving an accuracy rate of 99%. Additionally, an analysis of individual rule performance highlighted the crucial role of verbal suffixes in identifying and restoring deictic null subjects. These findings underscore the significance of explicit linguistic features in verbal complexes for the recoverability of deictic null subjects in Korean, particularly those linked to discourse participants.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47955,"journal":{"name":"Lingua","volume":"319 ","pages":"Article 103913"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2025-03-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143561773","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
LinguaPub Date : 2025-02-28DOI: 10.1016/j.lingua.2025.103911
Hai Hu , Aini Li , Yina Patterson , Jiahui Huang , Chien-Jer Charles Lin
{"title":"Bilingual influences and sources of variability in acceptability judgments: A case study of Chinese","authors":"Hai Hu , Aini Li , Yina Patterson , Jiahui Huang , Chien-Jer Charles Lin","doi":"10.1016/j.lingua.2025.103911","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.lingua.2025.103911","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The replicability of grammaticality judgments forms the foundation of data quality in linguistic research. Previous work has mostly focused on judgments from ideal “native speakers,” disregarding speakers of different language backgrounds. This study examines whether acceptability judgments in Chinese can be replicated by linguistically diverse native speakers, “monodialectal” and “multidialectal” speakers of Chinese, and then explores how various factors influence such judgments. First, we obtained a representative dataset by randomly sampling 337 minimal pairs from 68 journal articles on Chinese syntax from the past decade. Then, two groups of participants—monolingual Mandarin speakers from Beijing and Mandarin-Cantonese bilinguals from Guangzhou—completed an acceptability rating task (Experiment 1). Two forced-choice experiments (Experiments 2 and 3) were conducted to further examine the unreplicated pairs from Experiment 1. The results of these three experiments showed a convergence rate of 92% between our participants and the syntacticians who authored the examples. Importantly, the language backgrounds of the participants and the authoring syntacticians were not found to play a role in acceptability judgments, whereas sentence length and the language of the journals did. The multilingual status of Cantonese-Mandarin bilinguals has a subtle but limited influence on judgments in Mandarin Chinese. We argue that the reliance on a monolingual “ideal” native speaker for eliciting judgments may have been overemphasized in linguistic research.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47955,"journal":{"name":"Lingua","volume":"318 ","pages":"Article 103911"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2025-02-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143520052","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
LinguaPub Date : 2025-02-27DOI: 10.1016/j.lingua.2025.103903
Kwang-sup Kim
{"title":"On Korean progressive/perfect constructions","authors":"Kwang-sup Kim","doi":"10.1016/j.lingua.2025.103903","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.lingua.2025.103903","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>It is well-known that the <em>−ko iss-</em> form in Korean is ambiguous, being interpreted as either a progressive reading or a resultant state reading. The primary claim of this article is that <em>−ko iss-</em> is, in fact, six-way ambiguous. This ambiguity arises from the interplay of three factors: the ambiguity of <em>−ko</em>, the ambiguity of <em>iss-</em>, and the optional presence of the light verb <em>v*</em>. The morpheme <em>−ko</em> is ambiguous between ‘simultaneous’ (<em>+Simul</em>) and ‘non-simultaneous’ (<em>−Simul</em>) readings. When used as an aspect marker, <em>−ko<sub>[+Simul]</sub></em> denotes the in-progress state of an event, while <em>−ko<sub>[−Simul]</sub></em> indicates either a resultant state or a continuative state of the event or state. Meanwhile, <em>iss-</em> can be interpreted either as a raising predicate or as a control predicate. Furthermore, the <em>−ko iss-</em> form can optionally co-occur with the light verb <em>v*</em>. Given these ambiguities, there are theoretically eight possible <em>−ko iss-</em> constructions. However, this article shows that only six of these are attested, as some combinations result in pragmatic anomaly. In accounting for the −<em>ko iss</em>- form, this article demonstrates that Korean progressive and perfect constructions share a striking similarity with their English counterparts, as both rely on the same underlying mechanism.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47955,"journal":{"name":"Lingua","volume":"318 ","pages":"Article 103903"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2025-02-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143511253","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
LinguaPub Date : 2025-02-25DOI: 10.1016/j.lingua.2025.103912
Beomil Kang , Sun-Hee Lee
{"title":"Formulaic expressions in Korean academic discourse: A corpus-based combinatoric morphemic analysis","authors":"Beomil Kang , Sun-Hee Lee","doi":"10.1016/j.lingua.2025.103912","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.lingua.2025.103912","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This study introduces a corpus-based investigation of formulaic expressions in Korean academic discourse, employing a refined morphemic analysis designed for agglutinative properties of Korean. In the corpus analysis, dynamic discourse functions of formulaic sequences in Korean academic prose and formal conversation are explored while determining distinct register-based properties. Over the past thirty years, various corpus-based studies have rigorously examined recurrent formulaic expressions (so-called lexical bundles or multi-word expressions) in English, Spanish, etc. In contrast, there have been few studies in an agglutinative language like Korean with intricate morphosyntactic dependencies. By implementing pre-processing of allomorphs and unnecessary morphological units and lemmatization of predicate endings, the new combinatoric morphemic analysis provides substantial lists of lexico-grammatical patterns with accurate frequency information. This methodological template paves the way for further research into formulaic units in other agglutinative languages like Japanese, Turkish, and beyond. Three types of corpora have been used: a written corpus (2000 academic journal papers), a spoken corpus of formal conversation and a balanced reference corpus (3 million words). The result affirms high productivity and dynamic linguistic functions of Korean formulaic expressions in academic discourse, which indicates their utility as a valuable resource for exploring the process of second language learning and pedagogy.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47955,"journal":{"name":"Lingua","volume":"318 ","pages":"Article 103912"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2025-02-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143487828","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
LinguaPub Date : 2025-02-20DOI: 10.1016/j.lingua.2025.103898
Teresa Quesada , Cristóbal Lozano
{"title":"Bidirectionality in bilingualism? Asymmetry in L1 Spanish-L2 English vs. L1 English-L2 Spanish bilinguals","authors":"Teresa Quesada , Cristóbal Lozano","doi":"10.1016/j.lingua.2025.103898","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.lingua.2025.103898","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Anaphora Resolution (AR) is a complex phenomenon at the syntax-discourse interface, which is problematic in the acquisition of an L2. Previous studies show that late sequential bilinguals (i.e., adult L2 learners) with different language pairs accept and produce more explicit referring expressions (REs) than pragmatically required. This can be accounted for by the Pragmatic Principles Violation Hypothesis (PPVH), which claims that L2 learners violate the Informativeness/Economy Principle more frequently than the Manner/Clarity Principle, which results in L2 learners being more redundant than ambiguous. Crucially, it is not known to what extent this redundancy strategy is modulated by L2 learners’ language pair and proficiency level. This study investigates whether the acquisition of AR is asymmetrical by comparing two mirror-image language pairs (L1 Spanish-L2 English vs. L1 English-L2 Spanish) across proficiency levels (A2-C2) under the same methodological conditions. We used two equally-designed and comparable corpora (COREFL and CEDEL2) and manually annotated the anaphoric written production of L2 learners plus two monolingual (English and Spanish) control groups (N = 138) using the same annotation scheme. The results not only confirmed the redundancy strategy previously reported, but, importantly, revealed that the acquisition of anaphora resolution is asymmetrical between language pairs and across development. These findings are captured by proposing an updated version of the PPVH, the PPVH2, which paves the way for new studies on bilingualism at the syntax-discourse/pragmatics interface.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47955,"journal":{"name":"Lingua","volume":"317 ","pages":"Article 103898"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2025-02-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143445166","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
LinguaPub Date : 2025-02-19DOI: 10.1016/j.lingua.2025.103900
Haibo Jia , Junying Liang
{"title":"Sequential patterns of lexical categories in Chinese–English interpreting: Insights into linguistic and cognitive constraints","authors":"Haibo Jia , Junying Liang","doi":"10.1016/j.lingua.2025.103900","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.lingua.2025.103900","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Previous research has investigated lexical category distribution across different modes of interpreting, but the structural relationships within lexical categories that underpin grammatical and semantic information remain unexplored. To address this gap, this study employed part-of-speech (POS) distance, a metric quantifying the linear distance between a POS unit and its next repetition, to analyze the structural patterns within lexical categories across a corpus of consecutive interpreting (CI) and simultaneous interpreting (SI). The analyses included descriptive statistics and inferential functional modeling of POS distances using the Zipf–Alekseev (ZA) model. The results revealed significant, mode-specific discrepancies and irregularities in the sequential organization of lexical categories, alongside overarching regularities shared by CI and SI. Notably, CI is characterized by a sparser distribution of short-distance POS repetitions and a lower value of parameter <em>b</em> in the ZA model. These patterns persisted when potential confounders were accounted for. The results were interpreted in light of the linguistic and processing constraints involved in these interpreting modes. The findings exemplify how language production operates dynamically through the interplay among linguistic, cognitive, and contextual constraints. This study also offers methodological insights relevant to various aspects of linguistic studies.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47955,"journal":{"name":"Lingua","volume":"317 ","pages":"Article 103900"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2025-02-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143437999","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
LinguaPub Date : 2025-02-18DOI: 10.1016/j.lingua.2025.103901
Víctor Garre-León
{"title":"Perceptions of impoliteness in Twitter interactions: Evidence from Spanish Heritage speakers","authors":"Víctor Garre-León","doi":"10.1016/j.lingua.2025.103901","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.lingua.2025.103901","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This study investigates U.S. Spanish Heritage speakers’ perceptions of impoliteness in the Twitter feed of the Academia Mexicana de la Lengua. By combining first- and second-order approaches to (im)politeness, I argue that heritage speakers’ perceptions of impoliteness must be studied at the individual level to understand their expectations of how particular behaviors should occur in digital communication settings. I collected 28 reactive tweets representing either on-record or off-record impoliteness strategies. Using a five-point scale survey, 20 participant-evaluators rated the impoliteness of each tweet and provided metapragmatic comments to support their ratings. A mixed-methods analysis of the data revealed commonalities within groups regarding politeness norms (e.g., on-record strategies) and highlighted heritage speakers’ varying levels of tolerance to impoliteness in this medium. This variation revealed participants’ orientations and expectations at the individual level, especially when confronting off-record impoliteness. Focusing on Spanish Heritage speakers, the findings suggest that analyses of perceptions of politeness norms in social media interactions must incorporate both lay understandings and researchers’ conceptualizations to reflect expectations of impoliteness at the individual level, which are likely influenced by community norms.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47955,"journal":{"name":"Lingua","volume":"317 ","pages":"Article 103901"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2025-02-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143438000","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}