Language Sciences最新文献

{"title":"Event structure, force dynamics and verb semantics","authors":"Peter Gärdenfors","doi":"10.1016/j.langsci.2023.101610","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langsci.2023.101610","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>This article presents a cognitive model of event structure that can be used to explain several features of the semantics of verbs. The model consists of four basic components: agent, patient, force vector and result vector. Each component is described in terms of the theory of conceptual spaces. The force vector is the cause of the result vector. Unlike other event models both the cause and the effect are included in the representation of a single event.</p><p>The model is used for two central topics. Firstly, to provide a force dynamic representation of causation. Secondly, to give a unified analysis of Aktionsart in terms of different forms of vectors, using force diagrams that are extensions of those used by Croft and others. It is then shown that the event model can be used to derive a variety of semantic features of verbs. In particular, I analyze manner-result complementarity, the ambiguity of the passive participle, and the role of goals (telicity).</p></div>","PeriodicalId":51592,"journal":{"name":"Language Sciences","volume":"102 ","pages":"Article 101610"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-12-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S038800012300075X/pdfft?md5=91a24d53b2e6e44b934631105c7076f3&pid=1-s2.0-S038800012300075X-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139038640","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":"“Introjecting” imagery: A process model of how minds and bodies are co-enacted","authors":"Michael Kimmel ,&nbsp;Stefan M. Schneider ,&nbsp;Vicky J. Fisher","doi":"10.1016/j.langsci.2023.101602","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.langsci.2023.101602","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Somatic practices frequently use imagery, typically via verbal instructions, to scaffold sensorimotor organization and experience, a phenomenon we term “introjection”. We argue that introjection is an imagery practice in which sensorimotor and conceptual aspects are co-orchestrated, suggesting the necessity of crosstalk between somatics, phenomenology, psychology, embodied-enactive cognition, and linguistic research on embodied simulation. We presently focus on the scarcely addressed details of the <em>process</em> necessary to enact instructions of a literal or metaphoric nature through the body. Based on vignettes from dance, Feldenkrais, and Taichi practice, we describe introjection as a complex form of processual sense-making, in which context-interpretive, mental, attentional and physical sub-processes recursively braid. Our analysis focuses on how mental and body-related processes progressively align, inform and augment each other. This dialectic requires emphasis on the active body, which implies that uni-directional models (concept <strong>⇒</strong> body) are inadequate and should be replaced by interactionist alternatives (concept <strong>⇔</strong> body). Furthermore, we emphasize that both the source image itself and the body are specifically conceptualized for the context through constructive operations, and both evolve through their interplay. At this level introjection employs representational operations that are embedded in enactive dynamics of a fully situated person.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":51592,"journal":{"name":"Language Sciences","volume":"102 ","pages":"Article 101602"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-12-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0388000123000670/pdfft?md5=4842bb91ae03bbd96a45ced3f52aebe8&pid=1-s2.0-S0388000123000670-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139029051","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":"Tok Pisin metalanguage: why is Sinasina Sign Language not tok (‘language’)?","authors":"Samantha Rarrick","doi":"10.1016/j.langsci.2023.101611","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.langsci.2023.101611","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Linguists recognize that sign languages are highly complex linguistic systems which meet all the criteria used to define a ‘language’. My ongoing language documentation with the Kere community in Papua New Guinea (PNG) and their local languages, Kere, and Sinasina Sign Language (SSSL), suggests that the English word ‘language’ is not a direct correlate of the Tok Pisin words <em>tok</em> or <em>tok ples</em>, as the current literature suggests. Drawing on interviews and collaboration with Kere people, I explore the culturally specific concepts and functions embedded in Tok Pisin metalanguage, focusing on differences between <em>tok, tok ples, aksen</em>, and ‘language’. Unlike spoken Kere, SSSL is <em>aksen</em>, not <em>tok</em> or <em>tok ples</em> because sociocultural functions are core to the meaning of <em>tok</em>, which only refers to spoken languages, unlike ‘language’. Understanding these differences is essential for translation and for further research with sign languages in PNG. This analysis of <em>tok, tok ples,</em> aksen, and ‘language’ also highlights the reality that ‘language’ is not a universal concept and there is a need for more research to unpack what ‘language’ means across languages and cultures.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":51592,"journal":{"name":"Language Sciences","volume":"102 ","pages":"Article 101611"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-12-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0388000123000761/pdfft?md5=3b8120ffef7ae976eb75f13589ef27ac&pid=1-s2.0-S0388000123000761-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139029011","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":"A corpus-based study of maximizer–adjective patterns in Croatian","authors":"Ivan Lacić","doi":"10.1016/j.langsci.2023.101603","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langsci.2023.101603","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Maximizers represent a subclass of degree modifiers that convey the highest degree to which a property can be carried out. This paper studies five Croatian near-synonymous maximizers (all meaning “completely, totally”), viz. <em>posve</em>, <em>potpuno</em>, <em>sasvim</em>, <em>skroz,</em> and <em>totalno</em>, as a part of &lt;maximizer + adjective&gt; construction. It is assumed here that analysed pairings act as (semi)-prefabricated units with maximizers that impose particular modes of construal. To analyse the subtle semantic differences of examined maximizers, we shall turn to the distributional hypothesis and examine contexts in which maximizers occur. Using a combination of analytical statistics (collostructional analysis) and multifactorial methods (hierarchical agglomerative cluster analysis and correspondence analysis), we aim to examine similarities (proximities) and differences (distances) between analysed constructions in order to understand intricate relationships among maximizers, fostering valuable insights into their semantics. The findings of this study provide insight into the interplay of the Croatian maximizers and adjectives.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":51592,"journal":{"name":"Language Sciences","volume":"102 ","pages":"Article 101603"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-11-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0388000123000682/pdfft?md5=15343bf3e7daff17e1342aa5f5f8a85e&pid=1-s2.0-S0388000123000682-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138436062","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":"English motion and progressive constructions, and the typological drift from bounded to unbounded discourse construal","authors":"Teresa Fanego","doi":"10.1016/j.langsci.2023.101598","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langsci.2023.101598","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Recent psycholinguistic studies have revealed an important distinction in narrative discourse between bounded and unbounded language use. Bounded language use is typical of Germanic languages other than English and involves the holistic presentation of situations, with clauses construed as self-contained units attaining a point of completion. Unbounded language use, in turn, groups events into larger complexes of roughly simultaneous events, each event of which is still open when the next one begins. This contrast between English and the other Germanic languages has been accounted for by the claim that English began its history as a bounded language, but shifted to unbounded following the decline, from the fifteenth century onwards, of the Verb-second (V2) constraint on word order. According to this hypothesis, the loss of V2 made possible the grammaticalization of the <span>be</span> progressive, a device that encourages unboundedness. The present article expands on this line of research and examines seven constructions which developed at around the same time and which together are taking English in the direction of unbounded construal; it is argued that the drift in English from a bounded to an unbounded system may have been instigated by the contact situation between Old English speakers and Old Norse speakers in the Danelaw area.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":51592,"journal":{"name":"Language Sciences","volume":"101 ","pages":"Article 101598"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-11-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0388000123000633/pdfft?md5=0efbf78111479c65b3cc84205e6aab46&pid=1-s2.0-S0388000123000633-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"92090825","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":"Exploring the role of first language in ecological awareness and communication across Pakistan: A mixed method study","authors":"Muhammad Shaban Rafi ,&nbsp;Rebecca Kanak Fox","doi":"10.1016/j.langsci.2023.101599","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langsci.2023.101599","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>The present study proposes a linguistic habitat that may evoke people's first language (L1) to support a better understanding of current environmental catastrophes and address one pathway to support solution finding. A purposive participant sample consisted of 25 undergraduate students majoring in linguistics was selected to provide input regarding how their first language (Balochi, Balti, Pashto, Punjabi, and Sindhi) might approach ecological problems and consider its role in promoting ecosolidarity. While considering the epistemological perspectives offered by ecolinguistics, the qualitative data were analyzed to determine linguistic resources (words and structures) employed by the participants to describe aspects of the environmental crisis. As an element of the analysis, findings were also explored through quantitative percentages of representation. Findings revealed that while describing the natural environment in Urdu and English, the two official, and dominant languages of Pakistan, the participants often borrowed words and used structures that did not connect directly to first language terminology. This situation not only may result in misunderstandings and misinterpretation of subsequent actions for change, but it also suggests that multiple world voices as native speaker tongues may not have played an integral role in messaging to a broad population of speakers across Pakistan. The study suggests that purposeful, ecological language planning and the application of ecological content to local languages should be part of the ecological dialogue because they have the potential to promote deeper understanding at individual and collective societal levels.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":51592,"journal":{"name":"Language Sciences","volume":"101 ","pages":"Article 101599"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0388000123000645/pdfft?md5=424851da6c820373ee84c6a6c0610d44&pid=1-s2.0-S0388000123000645-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"92005342","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":"The practice of metaphor in conversation: an ecological integrational approach","authors":"Catherine Read","doi":"10.1016/j.langsci.2023.101588","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langsci.2023.101588","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>In this study an integrational linguistic approach to metaphor is used in the context of an ecological psychology study of novel metaphor creation by adults in a structured conversation setting. This paper forms an example of the proposed complementarity of integrational linguistics (Harris, 1981) and ecological psychology (Gibson, 1979; Jones and Read, 2023) by providing a study of novel metaphor that eschews the traditional “coded carrier of message” assumptions about language, as well as the traditional “knowledge is mental representation” assumptions of representationalist cognitive psychology. Instead, novel metaphor is presented as the sine qua non of the creation of signs in the process of communication, and that creation is proposed to be founded on the perception of invariants across different naturally occurring kinds of objects and events (cf., Read &amp; Szokolszky, 2016). The practice of metaphor is taken as a special case of <em>perceptually guided kinematic semiology</em>. This study describes the practice of metaphor by adults in a structured experimental situation designed to present metaphoric resemblance and to encourage the practice of metaphor with guiding verbal instructions. Such a study allows explication of the integrational method as applied to structured conversational settings. Although the conversation and context were designed to draw attention to metaphoric resemblance and to encourage verbal metaphor, not everyone practiced metaphor, showing that the practice is not determined by context. When metaphor was created, the form often mirrored the perceptual invariants available to the perceiver, i.e., motion or stationary resemblances. No one created exactly the same metaphor even in this consistent context, which emphasizes the creative aspect of metaphor as a prototype of sign creation, with its core properties of novelty, enhanced interest and noticeableness. I make the following central points: communicating by creating and integrating signs is the foundation of language; metaphor is the prototype of the creation of signs, the creation of novel metaphor in conversation is a practice that enhances communication, even in structured experimental settings; and conversation can be studied as the ongoing process of sign integration, that is, as perceptually guided kinematic semiology. The current study shows that metaphor as a practice in conversation is closely coordinated with the perception of metaphoric resemblance and the request to talk about objects and events that are alike metaphorically. Finally, it is argued that direct perception is the best approach on which to found an account of metaphor in communication.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":51592,"journal":{"name":"Language Sciences","volume":"101 ","pages":"Article 101588"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0388000123000530/pdfft?md5=1cc8f2abfa79816201fe503a85ab269e&pid=1-s2.0-S0388000123000530-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"92090824","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":"Multimodal dairy cow–human interaction in an intensive farming context","authors":"Leonie Cornips ,&nbsp;Marjo van Koppen","doi":"10.1016/j.langsci.2023.101587","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langsci.2023.101587","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>In our consideration of how to decentre an anthropocentric view in linguistics, we will address the following research question: how do dairy cows and humans imbue their interspecies interaction as a semiotic resource with meaning that makes sense for both species under specific social conditions (Jørgensen, 2008:167). We address the question by using a social-interactional approach informed by conversation analysis (CA) (Goodwin, 2017, Mondada, 2016, 2018; Mondémé, 2021), which enables us to examine what the dairy cow makes relevant in the sequential organisation when interacting with a human.</p><p>We show that the dairy cows make gaze important in their interaction. Gaze alone is sufficient to mobilize human interlocutor response, and gaze withdrawal by the human should take place for a successful communication (case-study 1 versus study 2). The case-studies of dairy cow–human interactions show that these interactions include much more than (human) sounds and (human) signs only: language is taken as languaging, as a social practice, embedded in a multimodal interactional exchange (Levinson and Holler 2014) that includes nonhuman animals as well. This also implies that linguists should therefore look beyond ‘sound’ and ‘sign’.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":51592,"journal":{"name":"Language Sciences","volume":"101 ","pages":"Article 101587"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-10-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71774817","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":"On the place and role of ‘discourse’ in the Functional Discourse Grammar model. The interface between language system and language use","authors":"Francis Cornish","doi":"10.1016/j.langsci.2023.101584","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langsci.2023.101584","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Mackenzie (2020) is a defense of the position adopted by the architects of the standard model of Functional Discourse Grammar (FDG): namely that the model cannot (and even could never) be considered a ‘grammar of discourse’. The article examines the arguments given for rejecting the ‘discourse’ dimension from the FDG model, proposes an independent account of discourse, and suggests a means of dovetailing it within a model of the wider utterance context. On the one hand, the author's arguments are in the main valid: for ‘discourse’, as characterized in section 3, is not a formal, clearly delineated object amenable to systematic treatment within a grammatical model of a given language. Yet on the other, it is arguable that even the presence of the term ‘discourse’ in the model's name is not <em>in fine</em> justified. Notwithstanding, in order to include the ‘discourse dimension’ (section 3), it is argued that the Core FDG model could be integrated with a broader model of the utterance context involved. This would enable it to account more adequately, for example, for the ways in which indexical reference, the lexicon and adjectival modification operate in actual texts. In turn, it would influence certain of the other characterizations independently assigned within the Core model.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":51592,"journal":{"name":"Language Sciences","volume":"100 ","pages":"Article 101584"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-10-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49888671","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 cognitive psychological distinctions between levels of meaning","authors":"Abduwali Rahman ,&nbsp;Zhenqian Liu","doi":"10.1016/j.langsci.2023.101583","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langsci.2023.101583","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>This study is an attempt to investigate the psychological reality and cognitive priority of three layers of linguistic meaning—what is said, impliciture, and implicature. According to the literal-first serial processing model, what is said is psychologically real and is required to draw an impliciture and/or implicature. By contrast, the impliciture-by-default processing model argues that there is psychological reality for impliciture and implicature but not for what is said, and that impliciture has cognitive priority over the other two levels. Finally, the parallel processing model does not make a strong assumption about the temporal order of interpretation. A mouse-tracking experiment in a listening comprehension task was designed to test the predictions of the three accounts. It examined how participants grasp the three levels of meaning in two tests, one in which a preferred interpretation of an utterance (either with what is said, impliciture or implicature) is confirmed and another where this interpretation is negated. Results show that participants were consciously aware of each of the three meanings in both tests. Their comprehension was more accurate and faster when they were prompted for what is said and implicitures compared to implicatures in the confirmation test. But they were delayed in processing time for implicitures in the negation test. Furthermore, they exhibited different comprehension patterns across different impliciture and implicature types. Thus, the current study provides mixed evidence for the existing theories of linguistic meaning by failing to find strong support for any of them. By showing how to integrate the three traditional models, this study suggests a way forward that what is said has psychological reality and impliciture has a special cognitive status depending on the context and yet that pragmatic inferences may vary in degree across utterance types.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":51592,"journal":{"name":"Language Sciences","volume":"100 ","pages":"Article 101583"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-09-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49888673","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}