IF 1.3 3区文学

Lingua Pub Date : 2025-08-12 DOI: 10.1016/j.lingua.2025.104023

Gong Cheng , Hai Xu , Xian Zhang

{"title":"Examining the role of relational competition and English proficiency in noun-noun compound recognition among Chinese EFL learners","authors":"Gong Cheng , Hai Xu , Xian Zhang","doi":"10.1016/j.lingua.2025.104023","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.lingua.2025.104023","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Recent findings on English L1 speakers’ visual recognition of noun-noun compounds suggest that competitive mechanisms are triggered by potential conceptual relations associated with these compounds. While relation-based semantic composition in compound processing has been found in English L2 speakers (specifically Chinese speakers), the role of relational competition remains unclear. This study employed a lexical decision task manipulating word type and relational competition to examine the processing of noun-noun compounds among 60 Chinese EFL learners at intermediate and advanced proficiency levels. Results indicate that processing speed was influenced by the conceptual relations involved in compound processing. Moreover, processing speed was closely linked to the degree of relational competition, with stronger competition leading to longer response times. In addition, English proficiency significantly influenced processing efficiency, as higher-proficiency learners responded more quickly. Furthermore, qualitative differences between the two proficiency groups emerged when both relational competition and compound frequency were considered.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47955,"journal":{"name":"Lingua","volume":"326 ","pages":"Article 104023"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2025-08-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144827038","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}

引用次数: 0

Regional pragmatic variation in the use of conventional expressions at three Spanish-speaking sites 在三个讲西班牙语的地区，传统表达用法的地区语用差异

IF 1.3 3区文学

Lingua Pub Date : 2025-08-06 DOI: 10.1016/j.lingua.2025.104021

Kathleen Bardovi-Harlig , Llorenç Comajoan-Colomé , Sabrina Mossman , Enrique Rodríguez Sánchez

{"title":"Regional pragmatic variation in the use of conventional expressions at three Spanish-speaking sites","authors":"Kathleen Bardovi-Harlig , Llorenç Comajoan-Colomé , Sabrina Mossman , Enrique Rodríguez Sánchez","doi":"10.1016/j.lingua.2025.104021","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.lingua.2025.104021","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper reports on an empirical investigation of regional pragmatic variation in the use of conventional expressions in Spanish at three sites: two in Spain (in the Barcelona and Extremadura areas) and one on the US-Mexico border (El Paso/Ciudad Juárez). Conventional expressions are multi-morphemic expressions and one type of pragmalinguistic resource. They are inherently social in nature and characterize language use within speech communities. Conventional expressions are associated with specific pragmatic situations and are the preferred expression of L1 speakers in those contexts. Data were elicited via computer-delivered oral production tasks from 107 L1 speakers of Spanish in the Barcelona (N = 38), Extremadura (N = 33), and El Paso/Ciudad Juárez (N = 36) areas. The tasks were regionally adapted so that speakers would feel that they were speaking to interlocutors from their respective speech communities. Conventional expressions were identified as occurring in at least 50% of the responses in any one community. Speakers in some sites used more conventional expressions than others. Some situations elicited the same expressions at all three sites, some show agreement at two sites, and some yield a different expression from each site. The sites show substantial overlap in expressions, although not in contexts of use (exhibiting <em>variety-preferential variation</em> rather than <em>variety-specific variation</em>).</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47955,"journal":{"name":"Lingua","volume":"326 ","pages":"Article 104021"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2025-08-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144779920","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}

引用次数: 0

An investigation of nominal copular sentences in three reading paradigms: Acceptability judgments, self-paced reading, and eye-tracking 名词常用语在可接受性判断、自定节奏阅读和眼球追踪三种阅读模式下的研究

IF 1.3 3区文学

Lingua Pub Date : 2025-07-31 DOI: 10.1016/j.lingua.2025.104019

Veronica D’Alesio , Anna Teresa Porrini , Matteo Greco , Andrea Moro

{"title":"An investigation of nominal copular sentences in three reading paradigms: Acceptability judgments, self-paced reading, and eye-tracking","authors":"Veronica D’Alesio , Anna Teresa Porrini , Matteo Greco , Andrea Moro","doi":"10.1016/j.lingua.2025.104019","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.lingua.2025.104019","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This work aims to investigate the elaboration of (nominal) copular sentences in three different experimental paradigms involving a reading task: an acceptability judgment, a self-paced reading and an eye-tracking experiment. Nominal copular sentences (NCs), such as <em>[<sub>DP1</sub> The picture of the wall] is [<sub>DP2</sub> the cause of the riot],</em> represent a challenging phenomenon for, at least, two reasons: (i) they can be distinguished in two subtypes, namely <em>canonical</em> and <em>inverse</em> NCs, related to the different order of the DPs (respectively, [DP<sub>subject</sub> <em>is DP</em><sub>predicate</sub>] in canonical form vs. [DP<sub>predicate</sub> <em>is DP</em><sub>subject</sub>] in inverse form); (ii) these two subtypes are associated with one and the same type of string [DP is DP], although their underlying structure is completely different. Our results show that no differences emerge in the off-line paradigm, i.e. in the acceptability judgments. On the other hand, the self paced-reading task and the eye-tracking experiments show an asymmetry between these two types of NCs, with higher processing costs for inverse NCs. More specifically, the DP<sub>subject</sub> is looked at more often and for longer times in inverse NCs. Moreover, when comparing the DP<sub>subject</sub> to the DP<sub>predicate</sub> in postverbal position in the eye-tracking experiment, sentence structure resulted as a good predictor for total reading time and regression path duration, even after taking into account the length and frequency of the words used. These results strongly support the hypothesis that syntactic structure is a primary factor in generating a different reading pattern between the same string of lexical types of items.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47955,"journal":{"name":"Lingua","volume":"326 ","pages":"Article 104019"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2025-07-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144749758","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}

引用次数: 0

The effects of linguistic proximity on dependency distance and dependency direction of translated English from 35 languages 语言接近度对35种语言翻译英语依赖距离和依赖方向的影响

IF 1.3 3区文学

Lingua Pub Date : 2025-07-31 DOI: 10.1016/j.lingua.2025.104020

Zhaoxia Liu

{"title":"The effects of linguistic proximity on dependency distance and dependency direction of translated English from 35 languages","authors":"Zhaoxia Liu","doi":"10.1016/j.lingua.2025.104020","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.lingua.2025.104020","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>As the “third code”, translated language differs from native language in terms of syntactic features. Translations from different source languages can exhibit syntactic variation due to the source language shining-through effect. This study investigates the impact of linguistic proximity on dependency distance and dependency direction of translated English from various source languages. A corpus of native English and translated English from 35 languages was constructed and annotated for analysis. The findings are: (1) Compared to native English, translated English from 17 languages exhibits shorter mean dependency distances (MDD), while translations from 18 languages exhibit longer MDD. Translations from 13 languages are more head-final, while translations from 22 languages are more head-initial. (2) The dependency distance of translated English correlates positively with the linguistic proximity between source language and English, while the clustering of dependency directions is associated with the linguistic proximity of source languages within language families. (3) For languages spoken in countries where English is an official language alongside the native language, the dependency distance and dependency direction of translated English are influenced more by English than by the native language. These differences arise because dependency distance reflects the cognitive demand involved in processing dependency relations, whereas dependency direction functions as a typological marker distinguishing languages.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47955,"journal":{"name":"Lingua","volume":"326 ","pages":"Article 104020"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2025-07-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144738550","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}

引用次数: 0

Placeholders in written language: The case of Japanese kō and otsu 书面语言中的占位符：日语中的kkui和otsu

IF 1.1 3区文学

Lingua Pub Date : 2025-07-25 DOI: 10.1016/j.lingua.2025.104008

Tohru Seraku

{"title":"Placeholders in written language: The case of Japanese kō and otsu","authors":"Tohru Seraku","doi":"10.1016/j.lingua.2025.104008","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.lingua.2025.104008","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>A communicator is sometimes unable or unwilling to produce a particular expression. One of the lexical resources for overcoming such word-formulation difficulties is the use of placeholders like <em>whatchamacallit</em> and <em>you-know-what</em>. Whilst recent years have seen a proliferation of research on placeholders across diverse languages, prior studies have largely focussed on spoken language, with little attention paid to their use in writing. This paper reveals that Japanese has placeholders that appear almost exclusively in written language, predominantly in legal texts. First, we describe the distributional and grammatical properties of the placeholders <em>kō</em> and <em>otsu</em> through a theory-neutral analysis of data retrieved from <em>The Balanced Corpus of Contemporary Written Japanese</em>. Second, building on this descriptive foundation, we propose a cognitive account of their semantic and pragmatic aspects within the framework of Relevance Theory. We argue that <em>kō</em> and <em>otsu</em> encode procedural meaning and demonstrate how specific interpretations, both explicit and implicit, arise from the interaction among procedural meaning, contextual assumptions, and pragmatic principles. The present work advances the scholarship of placeholders by providing the first detailed account of placeholders in written language and by developing a semantic–pragmatic integrated approach to their contextual interpretation.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47955,"journal":{"name":"Lingua","volume":"325 ","pages":"Article 104008"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2025-07-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144703949","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}

引用次数: 0

Brain activation in noun-based- and predicate-Eojeol processing during Korean visual word recognition 韩国语视觉词识别过程中名词和谓词加工的脑激活

IF 1.1 3区文学

Lingua Pub Date : 2025-07-23 DOI: 10.1016/j.lingua.2025.104018

Jeahong Kim , Sung Bum Pyun , Kichun Nam

引用次数: 0

Constructional variation, grammaticalization, and constructional network of extreme degree resultatives in Mandarin: A quantitative analysis 构变、语法化与汉语极端结果语构网的定量分析

IF 1.1 3区文学

Lingua Pub Date : 2025-07-19 DOI: 10.1016/j.lingua.2025.104017

Yuanmeng Liu , Na Liu , Fuyin Thomas Li

引用次数: 0

Cultural conceptualisations of karma in American, Indian, and Hong Kong varieties of English 美国、印度和香港英语中因果报应的文化概念

IF 1.1 3区文学

Lingua Pub Date : 2025-07-18 DOI: 10.1016/j.lingua.2025.104010

Yanyan Zhang , Ruoyan Cui

{"title":"Cultural conceptualisations of karma in American, Indian, and Hong Kong varieties of English","authors":"Yanyan Zhang , Ruoyan Cui","doi":"10.1016/j.lingua.2025.104010","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.lingua.2025.104010","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div><span>Karma</span> is commonly understood as the belief that morally relevant actions lead to proportionate consequences. By adopting a corpus-based approach, this study examines cultural conceptualisations of <span>karma</span> in American, Indian, and Hong Kong varieties of English from the perspective of Cultural Linguistics. It has been found that cultural schemas of <span>karma</span> mainly involve four themes: <span>creation</span>, <span>operation</span>, <span>effect,</span> and <span>transformation/removal</span>. In American English, <span>karma</span> typically arises from bad secular actions, results in negative secular outcomes, and is transformed or removed through secular practices. In contrast, in Indian and Hong Kong Englishes, <span>karma</span> often links spiritual actions to commensurate outcomes, operates through reincarnation, and is addressed through dharmic practices. Cultural metaphors of <span>karma</span> conceptualise it in both non-agentive and agentive terms. While non-agentive metaphors conceptualise <span>karma</span> in terms of <span>causation</span>, <span>accounting</span>, <span>journey,</span> and <span>contagion</span>, demonstrating cross-varietal similarities and differences, the agentive metaphor – <span>karma is a supernatural agent</span> <span>–</span> is almost exclusively found in American English. A diagram has been proposed to illustrate the interrelationships among the cultural schemas and metaphors of <span>karma</span>, highlighting its multifaceted, procedural, and dynamic nature. This study demonstrates the viability of a cultural-linguistic approach to studying English varieties by focusing on a specific cultural concept.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47955,"journal":{"name":"Lingua","volume":"325 ","pages":"Article 104010"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2025-07-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144662500","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}

引用次数: 0

Resolving homophonous ambiguity in Mandarin adverbs: Contextual constraints and bidirectional optimization 汉语副词同音歧义的消解：语境约束与双向优化

IF 1.1 3区文学

Lingua Pub Date : 2025-07-14 DOI: 10.1016/j.lingua.2025.104007

Yu-Ching Tseng

{"title":"Resolving homophonous ambiguity in Mandarin adverbs: Contextual constraints and bidirectional optimization","authors":"Yu-Ching Tseng","doi":"10.1016/j.lingua.2025.104007","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.lingua.2025.104007","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This study examines homophonous ambiguity in Mandarin adverbs, particularly their ability to function as speaker-oriented, subject-oriented, and manner modifiers. The ambiguity arises when an adverb can be interpreted in multiple ways within the same sentence. In neutral contexts, these interpretations can coexist without contradiction; however, when contextual information highlights conflicts between them, sentences often become semantically incoherent. By analyzing sentence acceptability ratings and interpretation consistency provided by native Mandarin speakers, the data reveal that conflicting contextual cues lead to interpretive conflict and reduced comprehensibility. The study applies Bidirectional Optimality Theory (BiOT) to model how syntactic and semantic constraints interact to produce and interpret ambiguous adverbial structures. BiOT explains how conflicting interpretations compete and how listeners resolve ambiguity by filtering out incoherent readings. The findings suggest that Mandarin speakers rely on lexico-pragmatic association, contextual expansion, and pragmatic inference to navigate ambiguity, and that speaker-oriented adverbs play a crucial role in structuring discourse. This study contributes to linguistic theory by offering a formalized approach to Mandarin adverbial modification and ambiguity resolution, highlighting the role of context and discourse in meaning selection.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47955,"journal":{"name":"Lingua","volume":"325 ","pages":"Article 104007"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2025-07-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144632596","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}

引用次数: 0

Pragmatics of second person address variation in New Zealand Sign Language 新西兰手语中第二人称称呼变化的语用学研究

IF 1.1 3区文学

Lingua Pub Date : 2025-07-11 DOI: 10.1016/j.lingua.2025.104009

Rachel McKee , Mireille Vale , George Major , Sara Pivac Alexander , Miriam Meyerhoff

{"title":"Pragmatics of second person address variation in New Zealand Sign Language","authors":"Rachel McKee , Mireille Vale , George Major , Sara Pivac Alexander , Miriam Meyerhoff","doi":"10.1016/j.lingua.2025.104009","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.lingua.2025.104009","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Expansion of contexts and purposes for the use of New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL) and the affordances of online video communication modes have led to the emergence of new genre features which have not yet been described. Focusing on contemporary online informative videotexts in NZSL, we take a variationist pragmatics lens to examining variation in second person address between index-finger and whole-hand pointing forms. Forms of address are significant in the construction of social relations between speakers and addressees, having the potential to index dimensions of status, social distance and speaker stance. This study used mixed methods to investigate the use and social indexicality of a whole-hand pronominal variant in NZSL, including analysis of its distribution and associated factors in a dataset of online videotexts and data from other genres and time periods. Metapragmatic insight of NZSL signers about contextual and social motivations for the use of whole-hand pointing address enriches our interpretation of observations in the video data. In addition to confirming that the whole-hand form of address is a modern usage, participants identified four other associations with this form: genre, mode, politeness, and Māori context. We conclude that the typical use of whole-hand address in these informative online videos is a feature re-mediated from in-person public speaking contexts, which is now associated with and replicated in the online modality of this public address genre.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47955,"journal":{"name":"Lingua","volume":"325 ","pages":"Article 104009"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2025-07-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144597441","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}

引用次数: 0

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