IF 1.1 3区文学

Lingua Pub Date : 2024-07-22 DOI: 10.1016/j.lingua.2024.103753

Ludovica Lena

{"title":"Looking for someone: The encoding of indefinite human reference in Chinese/English aligned translation","authors":"Ludovica Lena","doi":"10.1016/j.lingua.2024.103753","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.lingua.2024.103753","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>The existential-presentational construction <em>yǒu rén</em> [exist person] is the dominant strategy for encoding indefinite human reference in Chinese. In this sense, it is functionally equivalent to the indefinite pronoun <em>someone</em>, into which it naturally translates – especially in biclausal constructions (e.g., <em>yǒu rén lái</em> [exist person come] ‘someone is coming’). However, this equivalence is not always straightforward, as in some cases the “someone” translation is unavailable (e.g., <em>yǒu rén shuō…</em> [exist person say] ‘some people say…’). Our initial hypothesis posits that the interpretation of <em>yǒu rén</em> tends towards two prototypical meanings, Entity-referring and Kind-referring, each expected to exhibit a preferred alignment in translation. Using a parallel corpus of Chinese-to-English aligned novels, the analysis confirms alignment preferences for the two prototypes, in which the meaning of the referring expression (e.g., “someone” vs. “some people”) interacts with tense marking, specifically the nonpresent tense, and the co-occurrence of locatives in the aligned sentence, in bringing out Entity-referring interpretations. Additionally, findings indicate that preverbal subjects dominate in the aligned dataset, primarily due to the prevalence of biclausal constructions in the source subcorpus. It is argued that <em>yǒu rén</em> constructions are invariably anchored, either to spatiotemporal variables or to generic sets of entities. Despite their diversity, the situations they depict offer favorable contexts for the acceptance of discourse-new indefinite subjects in English. This also suggests, more broadly, that anchoring might in fact be the fundamental property of structures encoding indefinite human reference, not only in Chinese <em>yǒu rén</em> constructions but potentially across languages.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":47955,"journal":{"name":"Lingua","volume":"308 ","pages":"Article 103753"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2024-07-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141786197","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

Morphosyntactic variation in spoken English in Dominica 多米尼克英语口语中的形态句法变异

IF 1.1 3区文学

Lingua Pub Date : 2024-07-19 DOI: 10.1016/j.lingua.2024.103777

Dagmar Deuber , Véronique Lacoste

{"title":"Morphosyntactic variation in spoken English in Dominica","authors":"Dagmar Deuber , Véronique Lacoste","doi":"10.1016/j.lingua.2024.103777","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.lingua.2024.103777","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>In the anglophone Caribbean, varieties of English typically coexist with English-based Creoles in a continuum of sociolinguistic variation. In the small Eastern Caribbean island of Dominica, English has historically coexisted with a French-based Creole. Only in recent decades has a major shift towards Dominican English Creole (DEC) occurred. This study investigates morphosyntactic variation in spoken English based on speech data from interviews conducted at two Dominican secondary schools. A cline is found where the teachers incorporate DEC features least into their speech, while the students from one of the schools use these and other non-standard morphosyntactic features the most. Furthermore, different features seem to be associated with DEC to different degrees, another finding which supports the notion of a continuum. The absence of stylistic uses of DEC morphosyntactic features can be attributed to the interview situation. At the same time, given limited recognition and identification with DEC, stylistic uses in connection with the expression of identity in discourse are not necessarily expected. The further development of variation in spoken English in Dominica in connection with the ongoing language shift will merit further investigation.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":47955,"journal":{"name":"Lingua","volume":"308 ","pages":"Article 103777"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2024-07-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0024384124001062/pdfft?md5=bdc670813f63bacc737826b293ec6def&pid=1-s2.0-S0024384124001062-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141728689","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}

引用次数: 0

Unraveling the logical status of sentential relative clauses in English: Constructing a multifunctional framework 解读英语中句式相对从句的逻辑地位：构建多功能框架

IF 1.1 3区文学

Lingua Pub Date : 2024-07-16 DOI: 10.1016/j.lingua.2024.103775

Qi Liao, Chenguang Chang

{"title":"Unraveling the logical status of sentential relative clauses in English: Constructing a multifunctional framework","authors":"Qi Liao, Chenguang Chang","doi":"10.1016/j.lingua.2024.103775","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.lingua.2024.103775","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Sentential relative clauses (hereafter SRCs) resemble comment adverbial clauses and can be paraphrased as <em>and</em>-coordinate equivalents. This study unravels the logical status of SRCs in English from a multifunctional perspective under the framework of systemic functional linguistics, with a view to revealing their distinguishing features in tactic (traditionally grammatical) and logico-semantic (traditionally semantic) relations. A review of relevant literature reveals that as researchers have been using varied formal criteria in examining their logical status, there is great controversy over whether SRCs are hypotactic elaborating clauses or paratactic extending clauses. Therefore, a multifunctional framework is constructed to ascertain the defining criteria: the taxis of an SRC is dependent on its status of speech function in discourse, and the logico-semantic relations on its experiential semantics in a wider discourse context. With extensive attested examples analyzed, we conclude that tactically, textual SRCs stand in a paratactic relation to their initiating clauses, while experiential SRCs stand in a hypotactic relation to their dominant clauses, and that logico-semantically, textual SRCs tend to enhance their initiating clauses along the textual line, while experiential SRCs expand their dominant clauses by elaboration, extension and enhancement along both the textual and experiential lines.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":47955,"journal":{"name":"Lingua","volume":"308 ","pages":"Article 103775"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2024-07-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0024384124001049/pdfft?md5=970e7326490080936d1793af74ea1701&pid=1-s2.0-S0024384124001049-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141639140","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}

引用次数: 0

The impact of directionality on interpreters’ syntactic processing: Insights from syntactic dependency relation measures 方向性对口译员句法处理的影响：句法依存关系测量的启示

IF 1.1 3区文学

Lingua Pub Date : 2024-07-11 DOI: 10.1016/j.lingua.2024.103778

Han Xu, Kanglong Liu

{"title":"The impact of directionality on interpreters’ syntactic processing: Insights from syntactic dependency relation measures","authors":"Han Xu, Kanglong Liu","doi":"10.1016/j.lingua.2024.103778","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2024.103778","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>This study investigates the impact of interpreting direction on interpreters’ syntactic processing strategies, utilizing a bidirectional parallel corpus from UN Security Council meetings of Chinese-English simultaneous interpretations and their original speeches. Two syntactic measures of dependency, namely, dependency distance and dependency direction, are used to examine the syntactic complexity and typological characteristics of interpreted speech in comparison to that of non-interpreted speech in the target language, to reflect how interpreters process sentences. The study showed that when interpreters worked from L2 to L1, they employed less complex syntactic structures, indicating a tendency towards simplification, while such a pattern was not observed in the opposite direction. Additionally, interpreters were found to adjust the word order of interpreted speech in both directions to produce an idiomatic rendition. These findings suggest that when professional interpreters prepare adequately, the constraint of directionality on their cognitive capability appears to be limited. Language pair-related factors, including the influence of the source language and the normative requirement to comply with target language conventions, tended to have a greater impact on how they processed sentences in both directions.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":47955,"journal":{"name":"Lingua","volume":"308 ","pages":"Article 103778"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2024-07-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141594449","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

Past inflection around the world: A cross-variety analysis of New Englishes 世界各地的过去拐点：新英格兰语的跨语言分析

IF 1.1 3区文学

Lingua Pub Date : 2024-07-06 DOI: 10.1016/j.lingua.2024.103776

Stephanie Hackert, Catherine Laliberté, Diana Wengler

{"title":"Past inflection around the world: A cross-variety analysis of New Englishes","authors":"Stephanie Hackert, Catherine Laliberté, Diana Wengler","doi":"10.1016/j.lingua.2024.103776","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2024.103776","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>In this paper, we investigate variable past inflection in four New Englishes. Our data are drawn from the conversational parts of the Hong Kong, India, Jamaica, and Philippine subcomponents of the International Corpus of English. We investigate the entire range of language-internal factors that have been found to influence non-obligatory past marking in varieties of English. This includes morpho-phonological verb class, lexical aspect, grammatical aspect, marker persistence, the presence or absence of a temporal adverbial, and, for consonant-final regular verbs, preceding and following phonological environment. We also consider verb frequency, which has received only scant attention in past inflection research so far. Employing both mixed-effects regression and random forests, we argue that, despite inter-variety differences, there is a core grammar of past inflection, which is constrained by general structural and cognitive phenomena such as grammatical aspect and marker persistence, with frequency also exerting an important and consistent effect. This has implications for debates about universals vs. substrate influence or creole effects in morphosyntactic variation in English.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":47955,"journal":{"name":"Lingua","volume":"307 ","pages":"Article 103776"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2024-07-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0024384124001050/pdfft?md5=05bacb9e334f58a84a9537da7a9eb773&pid=1-s2.0-S0024384124001050-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141596189","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}

引用次数: 0

Allophonic variation and its consequences: A lexical decision study on words in German 异音变化及其后果：德语词汇决策研究

IF 1.1 3区文学

Lingua Pub Date : 2024-06-20 DOI: 10.1016/j.lingua.2024.103700

Paula Orzechowska , Richard Wiese

{"title":"Allophonic variation and its consequences: A lexical decision study on <qu> words in German","authors":"Paula Orzechowska , Richard Wiese","doi":"10.1016/j.lingua.2024.103700","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2024.103700","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>German onsets allow a consonant cluster spelt <qu>, as in <em>Qualm</em> 'fume'. While it has been traditionally assumed that this orthographic form corresponds to a sequence of a plosive /k/ followed by a voiced fricative /v/, closer examination of the cluster demonstrates free variation between the consonant sequences of [kv], [kf] and [kʋ]. In each case, the second member of the cluster differs in terms of voicing (voiceless [f] <em>vs.</em> voiced [v ʋ]) or the manner of articulation (fricatives [f v] <em>vs.</em> approximant [ʋ]). Given that the three clusters are allophones of a single phoneme sequence, we tested whether any of the allophones facilitates word recognition, and if so, which one. On the basis of a lexical decision experiment, reaction times as well as correctness rates were analysed in relation to three variables; (a) cluster variants ([kv <em>vs.</em> kf <em>vs.</em> kʋ]), (b) word existence (real <em>vs.</em> nonce), and (c) the quality of the following vowel (front [i e] <em>vs.</em> back [a o]). The results of the study show systematic differences in the perception of real words and nonce words as well as in the perception of the three cluster variants. In particular, we report on the interactions between the factors studied.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":47955,"journal":{"name":"Lingua","volume":"307 ","pages":"Article 103700"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2024-06-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141429047","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

Romanian double definites: The view from demonstratives 罗马尼亚语的双重定语：从指示词看问题

IF 1.1 3区文学

Lingua Pub Date : 2024-06-19 DOI: 10.1016/j.lingua.2024.103728

Ion Giurgea

{"title":"Romanian double definites: The view from demonstratives","authors":"Ion Giurgea","doi":"10.1016/j.lingua.2024.103728","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2024.103728","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Double definiteness is always optional in Romanian, and this raises the issue of its semantic contribution. Based on a corpus study, I argue that the semantic import of double definiteness is familiarity, understood as the presence, in the common ground, of a referent characterized as the maximal element satisfying the complex N∧A property (where A is the denotation of the modifier and N the denotation of the NP). The corpus study also shows that the use of double definiteness is register-dependent, occurring more frequently in texts that make us of older forms (poetry, religious texts, fairy tales), where it may be used purely as a stylistic feature or to facilitate a non-restrictive reading. I compare Romanian double definites with recognitional (or evocative) demonstratives (which also involve familiarity) and with the bleached demonstratives licensed by relative clauses, arguing that double definites differ from both. I propose a semantic analysis of demonstratives that is meant to capture the property that recognitional demonstratives share with anaphoric and deictic demonstratives but not with double definites: salience. As for the ‘bleached’ demonstratives licensed by relative clauses, they differ from double definites in that they lack familiarity. Nevertheless, the syntax of double definites resembles that of demonstratives in that it involves an additional functional layer immediately below the definite Determiner.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":47955,"journal":{"name":"Lingua","volume":"307 ","pages":"Article 103728"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2024-06-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141429046","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 acceptability study of triadic constructions in Hong Kong Cantonese 香港粤语中三元组结构的可接受性研究

IF 1.1 3区文学

Lingua Pub Date : 2024-06-11 DOI: 10.1016/j.lingua.2024.103749

Angel Man-Shan Tong , Albert Lee

引用次数: 0

Active and passive syntax of Czech deverbal and deadjectival nouns 捷克语去动词和死形容词名词的主动和被动句法

IF 1.1 3区文学

Lingua Pub Date : 2024-06-08 DOI: 10.1016/j.lingua.2024.103686

{"title":"Active and passive syntax of Czech deverbal and deadjectival nouns","authors":"","doi":"10.1016/j.lingua.2024.103686","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.lingua.2024.103686","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Both Czech deverbal and deadjectival nouns are often endowed with valency, but they differ significantly in how they reflect active and passive constructions of their motivating predicates: while deverbal nouns derived from transitive verbs may display both active and passive syntax, deadjectival nouns (even those indirectly motivated by a transitive verb) typically only allow either the active or the passive syntax, not both. This notable difference results from the syntactic behavior of the verbs and adjectives from which the nouns are directly derived, and from the way the nouns reflect the syntactic behavior. Unlike verbal constructions, adjectival syntactic structures are predetermined to arrange arguments of the adjectives by adopting either the active or the passive syntax of their base predicates, not both. Typically, this depends on the derivational type the adjectives represent. Valency structures of nouns directly derived from adjectives adhere to morphosyntactic rules that determine the syntactic representation and forms of the adnominal arguments, which results in preserving either the active or the passive syntax of the base adjective. Following the classification of adjectival derivational types, Czech deadjectival nouns are categorized according to the typical syntax (active or passive) used.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":47955,"journal":{"name":"Lingua","volume":"307 ","pages":"Article 103686"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2024-06-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0024384124000159/pdfft?md5=66bdb93aab1b6661f43e464d7a5cd35d&pid=1-s2.0-S0024384124000159-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141391072","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}

引用次数: 0

Verbal effect on the processing of complement coercion: Distinguishing between aspectual verbs and psych verbs 动词对补语强制处理的影响：区分方面动词和心理动词

IF 1.1 3区文学

Lingua Pub Date : 2024-05-27 DOI: 10.1016/j.lingua.2024.103754

Wenting Xue , Meichun Liu , Stephen Politzer-Ahles , Ovid Jyh-Lang Tzeng

{"title":"Verbal effect on the processing of complement coercion: Distinguishing between aspectual verbs and psych verbs","authors":"Wenting Xue , Meichun Liu , Stephen Politzer-Ahles , Ovid Jyh-Lang Tzeng","doi":"10.1016/j.lingua.2024.103754","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2024.103754","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>This study examined whether entity-denoting complements of <em>psych verbs</em> and <em>aspectual verbs</em> engender identical processing profiles. Previous literature has suggested that both verb types require an event-denoting complement and “coerce” an underspecified event sense when combined with an entity-denoting complement. The present study, including three norming tests and a self-paced reading experiment, recorded reading times of Mandarin Chinese speakers on entity complements preceded by three types of verbs: <em>aspectual verbs</em>, which require an eventive complement; <em>psych verbs</em>, which are subject to debate recently on their complement constraints; and <em>control verbs</em>, which select an entity complement, as represented in <em>zuòjiākāishǐ/xiǎngshòu/zhuànxiězhè-běn xiǎoshuō</em> “The author started/enjoyed/ wrote the novel.” It is found that the entity complements following aspectual verbs elicited longer reading times than those following psych and control verbs, particularly at the two words immediately after the complement. The results confirm the processing cost yielded by complement coercion, and more importantly, contribute evidence to constrain the mechanism of complement coercion to aspectual verbs only.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":47955,"journal":{"name":"Lingua","volume":"306 ","pages":"Article 103754"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2024-05-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141156345","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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