Language Sciences最新文献

{"title":"The use of please in the expression of (im)politeness in the language of London teenagers and adults","authors":"Paloma Núñez Pertejo,&nbsp;Ignacio M. Palacios Martínez","doi":"10.1016/j.langsci.2024.101703","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.langsci.2024.101703","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper explores the expression of (im)politeness in the language of teenagers and adults, looking specifically at cases of so-called ‘pragmatic reversal’ (Mazzon, 2017; Fedriani, 2019), in which a politeness marker is used with a confrontational meaning to threaten face. We focus on the use of <em>please</em>, traditionally a courtesy marker, in contexts where it expresses either positive or negative (im)politeness (Culpeper, 2011; Leech, 2014; Aijmer, 2015; Taylor, 2016), drawing on data from the <em>London English Corpus</em> and the spoken component of the <em>British National Corpus 2014</em>. Our analysis of teen talk suggests that <em>please</em> is sometimes used by adolescent speakers when there is a clear mismatch between polite and impolite formulae (e.g., ‘What's that shitty thing <em>please</em>?’). Such processes of pragmatic reversal seem to contribute to harmonious relationships among teenagers, consolidating mutual bonds, which is of key importance during the teen years, in that the discourse of these young speakers is governed by socio-pragmatic norms which differ markedly from those of adults. The paper concludes by noting the significant role of speaker age in the study of (im)politeness, and hence the need to address this issue both in terms of definitions of (im)politeness theory and in the application of these to real data.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51592,"journal":{"name":"Language Sciences","volume":"108 ","pages":"Article 101703"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2025-01-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143171006","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Rhythm as an integration principle for modeling speech-action intersemiosis in classroom interaction: a social semiotic perspective","authors":"Xiaoqin Wu","doi":"10.1016/j.langsci.2024.101704","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.langsci.2024.101704","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>A continuing challenge for scholars working with multimodal educational research is to devise theoretical and methodological tools that can effectively navigate the complexity and emergent meaning when different semiotic resources interact. This paper demonstrates how rhythm, as an integration principle, coordinates the interaction of speech and embodied action in classroom settings at multi-scalar temporalities. Transcription designs are also devised to capture and visualize the patterns of multimodal rhythmic interaction. Drawing on a social semiotic theorization of rhythm, the paper conducts nuanced multimodal analyses of video data documenting teacher-student embodied interaction. The paper first reports four types of multimodal rhythmic patterns in classroom interaction, showcasing how rhythms coordinate across participants and semiotic resources. It then demonstrates how the tempo of the speech rhythmically structures the embodied actions at different time scales, resulting in multimodal synchronies that are semantically motivated. Finally, the paper reveals that the multiple actions in a pedagogic practice, while themselves rhythmical, may not always be rhythmically integrated with speech. The paper contributes to existing studies of speech-action interplay by developing theoretical and methodological tools to capture and visualize their interactions. Observations developed in this paper can also potentially inform pedagogic practices that involve the co-deployment of speech and embodied action.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51592,"journal":{"name":"Language Sciences","volume":"108 ","pages":"Article 101704"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2024-12-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143171010","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Linguistic relativity from an enactive perspective: the entanglement of language and cognition","authors":"Ulises Rodríguez Jordá ,&nbsp;Ezequiel A. Di Paolo","doi":"10.1016/j.langsci.2024.101702","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.langsci.2024.101702","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We seek to relate the fields of linguistic relativity (LR) and the enactive approach in cognitive science. We distinguish contemporary research on LR, starting after the mid-1990s, from earlier approaches to the field. Current studies are characterised by a nuanced methodology rooted in the psycholinguistics tradition. While improving on earlier research, they also move away from philosophically oriented discussions about the relation between language and cognition and focus instead on experimentally testing relativistic effects for specific cognitive domains. We claim that this procedure retains some fundamental assumptions from classical cognitive science, precisely those that are challenged by an enactive perspective. These include a commitment to the modularity of mind and a computational understanding of the interactions between cognitive domains. We contend that contemporary LR research is, in fact, compatible with these classical cognitivist ideas, despite superficial points of tension. We then survey recent post-cognitivist approaches to language in cognitive science and explore ways in which LR and the enactive framework could be mutually enriched. Whereas the structural or categorial aspects of language are central for LR research, these are usually downplayed in post-cognitivist approaches, often influenced by the integrationist distinction between first-order linguistic practices and second-order constructs. We advance a specifically enactive perspective that seeks to preserve the systematic features of language while also integrating them within a dynamical understanding of the relation between language and cognition at multiple timescales.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51592,"journal":{"name":"Language Sciences","volume":"108 ","pages":"Article 101702"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2024-12-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143171011","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Unravelling the competing dynamics of Chinese causative markers shi 使, ling 令, jiao1 叫 and jiao2 教: A diachronic analysis","authors":"Xiaoyu Tian ,&nbsp;Dirk Speelman ,&nbsp;Weiwei Zhang","doi":"10.1016/j.langsci.2024.101701","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.langsci.2024.101701","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This study uses multinomial logistic regression models and mixed-effects binomial logistic models to examine the factors influencing the choice of Chinese causative markers <em>shi</em> 使 (‘make’), <em>ling</em> 令 (‘make’), <em>jiao1</em> 叫 (‘let’) and <em>jiao2</em> 教 (‘let’) from the 14th to the 20th century. The analyses uncover the complex competing dynamics among these alternative ways to express causation. Specifically, our examination reveals an overlap of contextual features between <em>jiao1</em> and <em>jiao2</em>, which is likely to have contributed to the decline of the latter as a causative marker in contemporary Chinese. In contrast, <em>ling</em> exhibits a distinct usage pattern characterized by [<em>ling</em> + <em>ren</em> (‘people/person’) + emotion] constructions, presumably allowing it to maintain a stable presence despite its lower frequency compared to the widely used marker, <em>shi</em>. We address the challenges of model convergence and model selection by synthesizing consistent outcomes from multiple logistic regression models, thereby providing a comprehensive understanding of the examined data.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51592,"journal":{"name":"Language Sciences","volume":"108 ","pages":"Article 101701"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2024-12-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143171009","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"More to gesture than meets the (analyst's) eye? Querying the problem of online gestural loss from applied linguistics and psychotherapy perspectives","authors":"Simon Harrison","doi":"10.1016/j.langsci.2024.101692","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.langsci.2024.101692","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>When our social and professional spoken language activities become mediated by a screen technology, such as videoconferencing platforms, what happens to gesture? Out of the various research domains that have contended with this question, two are juxtaposed in this paper. Applied linguistics and psychotherapy differ as to the purpose of their field's speaking activities and the motivations of their practitioners, yet their professional activities share an emphasis on language, communication, participation, intersubjectivity, relational asymmetries, and ability or skill. Both domains are deeply concerned with the meaningful situation of being with others. They devote considerable attention to gesture, yet do so through different conceptual and methodological lenses, making their divergent conclusions about online gesture valuable to compare. Where applied linguists are finding gestural ‘loss’, ‘impossibility’, ‘absence’, and near ‘non-existence’, psychotherapists find not only negatives but also gestural ‘amplification’, ‘increase’, ‘closeness’, ‘enhancement’ and ‘overload’. This paper explores the different disciplinary lenses at play, asking what is meant by gesture and its criteria for online loss (or amplification) within and across these different domains of research.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51592,"journal":{"name":"Language Sciences","volume":"108 ","pages":"Article 101692"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2024-12-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143171008","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Naming multiplicity: Taíno ecolinguistics and naming conventions, and implications for language reclamation and decolonizing environmental relationalities","authors":"Jonathan James Fisk","doi":"10.1016/j.langsci.2024.101693","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.langsci.2024.101693","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>After centuries of genocide and colonization, there is a burgeoning Taíno resurgence movement in Puerto Rico and the diaspora coinciding with mounting calls for the decolonization of the islands. Within the increasingly popular current of reconnecting with Taíno culture as an alternative to present colonial lifeways, there is considerable interest in learning Taíno language, although it remains unclear how to reclaim such a sleeping language in contemporary times. Likewise, people on the islands are recognizing the social-ecological importance of returning to more traditional, intimate relations with the lands. Addressing both of these interests within the Taíno resurgence movement, this study focuses on naming dynamics for the environment within Taíno language as a way to reveal details about ancestral relations with and conceptions of the environment (environmental relationalities). This project uses the recorded pre-colonial Taíno lexicon for the biotic environment to explore Taíno language ontologies and ideologies in relation to pre-colonial biocultural systems. By focusing on naming multiplicity – the degree to which individual taxa have multiple names associated with them – this paper explores how various aspects of Taíno biocultural systems relate to Taíno naming conventions, and what those trends reveal about the underlying language ontologies and ideologies. The Taíno lexicon shows an overall trend towards naming multiplicity when compared to Linnaean classifications, with greater biocultural intimacy and functionality being associated with higher naming multiplicity. These results indicate the importance of Taíno language reclamation efforts not just reviving the Taíno lexicon as it was recorded, but also operationalizing the language ideology of naming multiplicity and giving further name to the environment around us. Furthermore, cultivating intimate relations with the land will be integral for guiding naming practices within such efforts toward Taíno language reclamation and decolonizing our environmental relationalities.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51592,"journal":{"name":"Language Sciences","volume":"108 ","pages":"Article 101693"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2024-12-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143171005","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Grammaticalization of prosodic configurations? The case of evidential interrogative in Spanish","authors":"Fernando Bermúdez","doi":"10.1016/j.langsci.2024.101691","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.langsci.2024.101691","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This study investigates how prosodic evidentials (i. e. evidential markers constituted solely by prosodic configurations, regardless of their lexical and grammatical content) can emerge and develop. This is exemplified by a type of interrogative intonation used to convey assertions presented as shared knowledge, a prosodic configuration that we call <em>evidential interrogative</em>. The conclusion drawn is that prosodic configurations marking evidential meaning develop analogously to lexical or morphological evidentials, thus undergoing a process comparable to grammaticalization (Traugott, 2003; Narrog and Heine, 2021). This entails a reconsideration of grammaticalization as a broader form of linguistic change, encompassing not only lexical items and constructions but also, for instance, prosodic configurations.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51592,"journal":{"name":"Language Sciences","volume":"108 ","pages":"Article 101691"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2024-11-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142745510","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Dependency distance minimization in discourse structure: universality and individuality compared with that in syntactic structure","authors":"Wenhe Feng ,&nbsp;Hanguang Zhang ,&nbsp;Yi Yang","doi":"10.1016/j.langsci.2024.101689","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.langsci.2024.101689","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Dependency distance (DD) traditionally refers to the linear distance between two related words in the dependency structure of a sentence (i.e., syntactic-DD). Based on this concept, previous studies have found that language follows a universal rule of DD minimization (DDM), which states that short DDs occur more frequently than long DDs. But if the DDM as a structural rule is universal, does it extend to other levels of language structure? If so, are there any individualities at different levels? This paper proposes the concept of discourse-DD, i.e., the linear distance between two related clauses in a text, to investigate whether the DDM exists at the discourse level. We present a statistical study of discourse-DD using a discourse dependency corpus and compare the statistical results with the syntactic structure. The results show that discourse structure does indeed show the DDM tendency, and even more strongly than syntactic structure. The reasons for this may be that discourse patterns are more flexible than syntactic patterns and clause functions are more dynamic than word functions, and in this case, a stronger DDM is required for discourse comprehension. This paper also explores how linguistic factors such as discourse length, complex sentences, and connectives influence discourse-DDM. The paper deepens the research on DDM of language.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51592,"journal":{"name":"Language Sciences","volume":"107 ","pages":"Article 101689"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2024-11-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142653622","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"A study of visual path expressions in Mandarin Chinese from the perspective of motion event typology","authors":"Sai MA ,&nbsp;Michael Barlow","doi":"10.1016/j.langsci.2024.101690","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.langsci.2024.101690","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Much attention has been paid to the typology of motion event expressions, and a recent focus is on whether the lexicalization pattern of motion event expressions is associated with other factors, such as event and construction types. This study made use of a Mandarin corpus to explore the extent to which the lexicalization pattern and associated linguistic features of motion event expressions transfer to one type of fictive motion event expressions, i.e., visual path expressions. Three types of visual path expressions were focused on, including the ones involving visual paths from the Experiencer to the Experienced entity with the person as the subject (Human-experiencer-subject visual paths), the ones of the same direction but with the eye-associated entity as the subject (Eye-experiencer-subject visual paths), and the ones from the Experienced entity to the Experiencer (Stimulus-subject visual paths). The results show that, in Mandarin, both Human-experiencer-subject and Stimulus-subject visual path expressions inherit the lexicalization pattern and associated linguistic features from motion event expressions, whereas Eye-experiencer-subject visual path expressions do not and they follow the pattern seen in a verb-framed language. Our results suggest that the lexicalization pattern of motion event expressions is associated with event and construction types.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51592,"journal":{"name":"Language Sciences","volume":"107 ","pages":"Article 101690"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2024-11-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142593671","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The etymology of opaque place names based on a cognitive and interdisciplinary method","authors":"Núria Garcia-Quera","doi":"10.1016/j.langsci.2024.101688","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.langsci.2024.101688","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The method to study the etymology of opaque place names (we don't know what they mean) has been the same since the nineteenth century and, according to our research, it presents some weak phases of research process. For that reason, we have designed and experimented with a different methodology, with a cognitive and geographical approach. The initial objective was not to know the language in which the opaque toponyms were created, but what they referred to.</div><div>Based on the principles of corpus linguistics, a corpus of 180 Pyrenean population toponyms was first constructed, along with quotations of them in medieval documents. In total there were 464 toponyms in the corpus. Next, each toponym was associated with its morphological (all possible segmentations of the place name) and geographic variables (the elements of the landscape where the settlement is located). Finally, the statistical filters made it possible to relate the 1179 segments of the opaque toponyms of the corpus to 133 elements of the landscape. Thanks to this, it was possible to reconstruct five prototypical (model from which there can be variations) old cognates (they served to form words in European languages from different affiliations) which show great antiquity because they refer to basic and versatile concepts: ‘something that is cut’, or ‘does not move’, or ‘is on top’, etc. Therefore, this linguistic archaeology research reveals that in the opaque European toponyms, considered linguistic fossils due to their permanence over time, prehistoric cognates from a common old language, possibly Proto-Indo-European, could endure.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51592,"journal":{"name":"Language Sciences","volume":"107 ","pages":"Article 101688"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2024-10-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142528412","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}