IF 0.9

Languages Pub Date : 2023-12-31 DOI: 10.3390/languages9010018

M. Sokolova, Mikhael Levandovski

{"title":"Relative Clause Processing and Attachment Resolution across Languages: Tatar–Russian–English Trilinguals","authors":"M. Sokolova, Mikhael Levandovski","doi":"10.3390/languages9010018","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3390/languages9010018","url":null,"abstract":"The study investigates psycholinguistic mechanisms of sentence parsing and ambiguity resolution by balanced Tatar–Russian bilinguals who learnt English as their additional language. We check the parser’s sensitivity to the selectional properties of the matrix verb and/or social conventions in processing and attachment resolution of ambiguous relative clauses (RCs). We chose English and Russian because they have a documented preference for low attachment (LA) and high attachment (HA), respectively, and Tatar, as we have found out in earlier work, has no attachment ambiguity. We conducted a self-paced reading task in English and Russian which returned 61% HA in Russian, 49% HA in English. It was followed by a pen-and-paper translation task. The translation post-test checked whether an attachment preference demonstrated in either English or Russian showed in RC translations into Tatar. The results return an 80% preference for LA in English–Tatar translations and 61% in Russian–Tatar translations. Both syntactic information and world knowledge influence online RC processing in Russian and English. Therefore, the multilingual parser incorporates information from multiple sources in either L1 or Ln processing. The parser may favor LA as a default parsing option while maintaining sensitivity to individual grammars (Russian), where this preference should be overridden.","PeriodicalId":52329,"journal":{"name":"Languages","volume":"93 21","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2023-12-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139131881","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Nominal Possession in Contact Spanish Spoken by Mapudungun/Spanish Bilinguals 马普敦贡语/西班牙语双语者所讲的接触西班牙语中的名词拥有量

IF 0.9

Languages Pub Date : 2023-12-29 DOI: 10.3390/languages9010017

Aldo Olate, Ricardo Pineda

{"title":"Nominal Possession in Contact Spanish Spoken by Mapudungun/Spanish Bilinguals","authors":"Aldo Olate, Ricardo Pineda","doi":"10.3390/languages9010017","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3390/languages9010017","url":null,"abstract":"Possession has been scarcely studied in the variety of Spanish in contact with Mapudungun and in Chilean Spanish. In this contribution, we analyze the nominal possessive constructions found in a corpus of interviews with speakers from five communities: three Mapudungun–Spanish bilingual communities from the Araucanía Region, one Spanish monolingual rural community from the Bío Bío Region, and one Spanish monolingual urban community from the Araucanía Region. The possessive constructions found in the contact Spanish, rural Spanish, and urban Spanish varieties are analyzed and compared to describe the domain of possession and to propose some possible explanations from the perspective of language contact theory for the case of the Spanish spoken by bilinguals. From the corpus of transcribed interviews, nominal possessive constructions were selected, classified, described, and compared. Double possession with restrictive relative clauses, and unstressed possessive pronouns plus a prepositional phrase with genitive/specific value, showed a limited frequency of occurrence. These constructions are analyzed using the Code-Copying framework. This perspective accounts for the observed equivalencies between both languages in contact and the constructions emerging in the bilinguals’ speech. This work contributes to the documentation of the variety and, more generally, to the description of the expression of possession in the Latin American contact varieties of Spanish.","PeriodicalId":52329,"journal":{"name":"Languages","volume":"6 2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2023-12-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139148164","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Levels of Variation in Subordinates of Immediate Succession in Current Spanish 当前西班牙语直接继承下级的差异水平

IF 0.9

Languages Pub Date : 2023-12-28 DOI: 10.3390/languages9010016

Avel·lina Suñer Gratacós

{"title":"Levels of Variation in Subordinates of Immediate Succession in Current Spanish","authors":"Avel·lina Suñer Gratacós","doi":"10.3390/languages9010016","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3390/languages9010016","url":null,"abstract":"In this paper, I analyze, from a compositional perspective, the relevant features to construct the interpretation of immediate succession between a subordinate event and the event that takes place in the main sentence. Among all the components involved in the construction of the meaning of immediate succession, I focus particularly on the subordinators, which present a mosaic of variation in current Spanish. The key ideas that can be derived from the data analysis are the following. First: subordinators of immediate succession are the loci of variation of temporal subordinates. Second: a subordinator of immediate succession is a “linguistic variable” that can be syntactically materialized in different forms by applying general rules that do not change the meaning, although sometimes they do change the grammatical category. Third: in the diachronic evolution of Spanish, several patterns of internal structure have emerged for immediate succession subordinators. However, most of them have ceased to be productive, although some subordinators that were coined with these patterns have survived as fossils in the current language. Fourth: the only productive pattern in the present language can be reduced to the Adv (immediacy) + que scheme, which goes back to Late Latin.","PeriodicalId":52329,"journal":{"name":"Languages","volume":"74 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2023-12-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139151911","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

In the Echoes of Guarani: Exploring the Intonation of Statements in Paraguayan Spanish 瓜拉尼语的回声：探索巴拉圭西班牙语中的语句语调

IF 0.9

Languages Pub Date : 2023-12-25 DOI: 10.3390/languages9010012

Andrea Pešková

{"title":"In the Echoes of Guarani: Exploring the Intonation of Statements in Paraguayan Spanish","authors":"Andrea Pešková","doi":"10.3390/languages9010012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3390/languages9010012","url":null,"abstract":"This explorative study examines intonation contours in neutral and non-neutral statements of Paraguayan Spanish, a variety shaped by extensive contact with Guarani, a co-official language of Paraguay. Paraguayan Spanish displays both lexical and syntactic borrowings from Guarani, along with innovative intonation patterns not found in other Spanish varieties. Previous but still limited research on yes/no and wh-questions in this variety suggests the emergence of a unique intonational system, possibly of a hybrid nature, in both Spanish monolinguals and Spanish–Guarani bilinguals. To date, no comprehensive description of intonation patterns in Paraguayan Spanish statements exists. The present study addresses this gap by analyzing data obtained through a Discourse Completion Task, covering broad-focus statements, contrastive focus, exclamatives, and statements of the obvious. Data were collected in 2014 from two monolingual speakers, eleven bilingual Spanish-dominant speakers, and eight bilingual Guarani-dominant speakers. The intonation is formalized using the Autosegmental–Metrical model of intonational phonology and the Spanish Tones and Break Indices labeling system. The findings reveal three main realizations of nuclear accents (L+H*, H+L*, and innovative >H+L*) in neutral and non-neutral declarative sentences, lengthening of syllables, diverse syntactical strategies, and lexical borrowings. The study contributes to the understanding of a lesser-studied Spanish variety and offers insights into theoretical aspects of contact linguistics.","PeriodicalId":52329,"journal":{"name":"Languages","volume":"46 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2023-12-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139159536","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Diverging Grammaticalization Patterns across Spanish Varieties: The Case of perdón in Mexican and Peninsular Spanish 不同西班牙语变体之间的语法化模式差异：墨西哥和半岛西班牙语中 perdón 的情况

IF 0.9

Languages Pub Date : 2023-12-25 DOI: 10.3390/languages9010013

Marlies Jansegers, Chantal Melis, Jennie Elenor Arrington Báez

引用次数: 0

The Language of Deception: Applying Findings on Opinion Spam to Legal and Forensic Discourses 欺骗的语言：将有关垃圾邮件的研究成果应用于法律和法医论述

IF 0.9

Languages Pub Date : 2023-12-22 DOI: 10.3390/languages9010010

Alibek Jakupov, Julien Longhi, B. Zeddini

{"title":"The Language of Deception: Applying Findings on Opinion Spam to Legal and Forensic Discourses","authors":"Alibek Jakupov, Julien Longhi, B. Zeddini","doi":"10.3390/languages9010010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3390/languages9010010","url":null,"abstract":"Digital forensic investigations are becoming increasingly crucial in criminal investigations and civil litigations, especially in cases of corporate espionage and intellectual property theft as more communication occurs online via e-mail and social media. Deceptive opinion spam analysis is an emerging field of research that aims to detect and identify fraudulent reviews, comments, and other forms of deceptive online content. In this paper, we explore how the findings from this field may be relevant to forensic investigation, particularly the features that capture stylistic patterns and sentiments, which are psychologically relevant aspects of truthful and deceptive language. To assess these features’ utility, we demonstrate the potential of our proposed approach using the real-world dataset from the Enron Email Corpus. Our findings suggest that deceptive opinion spam analysis may be a valuable tool for forensic investigators and legal professionals looking to identify and analyze deceptive behavior in online communication. By incorporating these techniques into their investigative and legal strategies, professionals can improve the accuracy and reliability of their findings, leading to more effective and just outcomes.","PeriodicalId":52329,"journal":{"name":"Languages","volume":"1 6","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2023-12-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138944589","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

AAiMLL: Acquisition Advantages in MultiLingual Learners: The Case of the Multilingual Child AAiMLL：多语言学习者的习得优势：多语儿童案例

IF 0.9

Languages Pub Date : 2023-12-21 DOI: 10.3390/languages9010008

Natascha Müller

{"title":"AAiMLL: Acquisition Advantages in MultiLingual Learners: The Case of the Multilingual Child","authors":"Natascha Müller","doi":"10.3390/languages9010008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3390/languages9010008","url":null,"abstract":"Cognitive science has demonstrated that multilinguals (including children) show a cognitive advantage over monolinguals. Linguistics has provided evidence that multilinguals (including children) are able to successfully separate their lexicons and grammars and negotiate multilingual environments. Apart from these achievements, linguistics has generally failed to demonstrate a multilingual advantage related to the multilingual’s linguistic proficiency. The present article summarizes the current literature, which shows that there are first indications of an acceleration effect in multilingual children. This effect is discernable if the languages radically differ, if the child uses a ‘weak’ language (often a minority language), if the child acquires more than two languages from birth, and if contact with the language exhibiting the acceleration effect is delayed until kindergarten age. This kind of acceleration effect represents an explanation gap under current theorizing in cognitive science and linguistics, and calls for a new language acquisition theory, a best-of-breed solution for further research in language acquisition. AAiMLL (Acquisition Advantages in MultiLingual Learners) combines cognitive and linguistic aspects with a threshold theory. It is claimed here that the multilingual child learns from two cognitive acquisition strategies. One is fed by grammatical features, and requires the child to (re-)use already acquired knowledge by generalizing to new domains. The other strategy enables the child to consider rejected alternatives of earlier decisions in one language, for use in the other language. An acceleration effect related to the multilingual’s linguistic proficiency is indicative of the success of both strategies. The success of the strategies is argued to be related to a threshold of language usage from a quantitative or a qualitative perspective.","PeriodicalId":52329,"journal":{"name":"Languages","volume":"32 6","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2023-12-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138948517","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

The Effect of Congruency and Frequency of Exposures on the Learning of L2 Binomials 同质性和接触频率对学习二级二项式的影响

IF 0.9

Languages Pub Date : 2023-12-21 DOI: 10.3390/languages9010009

Abdulaziz Altamimi, Kathy Conklin

{"title":"The Effect of Congruency and Frequency of Exposures on the Learning of L2 Binomials","authors":"Abdulaziz Altamimi, Kathy Conklin","doi":"10.3390/languages9010009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3390/languages9010009","url":null,"abstract":"Although extensive research has been carried out on opaque formulaic language where the meaning is not the sum of the individual words (i.e., idioms and many collocations), it is still not clear how cross-language congruency and frequency of exposure influence the learning of transparent formulaic language in an L2. In the current study, self-paced reading along with offline word order recognition tasks were used to investigate the role of cross-language congruency and the frequency of exposure on the learning and processing of fully transparent binomials. In the self-paced reading, Arabic second language learners of English and native English speakers encountered three types of binomial phrases either two or five times in English texts: English-only binomials, Arabic-only binomials that were translated into English, and congruent binomials (acceptable in English and Arabic). A subsequent offline task revealed that both native and non-native speakers developed knowledge of the ‘correct’ order of binomials (i.e., fish and chips, not chips and fish) after only two exposures in the self-paced reading. Native speakers were more accurate on congruent and English-only items than Arabic-only items, while non-natives speakers exhibited no differences in accuracy across the binomial types. The offline task showed that native speakers responded faster to congruent and English-only items than Arabic-only, and non-native speakers responded faster to congruent items than English-only and Arabic-only. The frequency of exposure had no effect, with no difference in response times and accuracy between two and five exposures.","PeriodicalId":52329,"journal":{"name":"Languages","volume":"14 2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2023-12-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138948297","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Absence of Clausal Islands in Shupamem 舒帕梅姆》中没有分句岛

IF 0.9

Languages Pub Date : 2023-12-21 DOI: 10.3390/languages9010007

Hagay Schurr, Jason Kandybowicz, Abdoulaye Laziz Nchare, Tysean Bucknor, Xiaomeng Ma, Magdalena Markowska, Armando Tapia

{"title":"Absence of Clausal Islands in Shupamem","authors":"Hagay Schurr, Jason Kandybowicz, Abdoulaye Laziz Nchare, Tysean Bucknor, Xiaomeng Ma, Magdalena Markowska, Armando Tapia","doi":"10.3390/languages9010007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3390/languages9010007","url":null,"abstract":"Decades-long research on islands has led to the conclusion that island constraints are candidates for language universals. A recent surge in research on islandhood in African languages has revealed some would-be island configurations that are transparent for A¯- dependency formation. In this article, we show that in Shupamem, all clausal configurations expected to have the status of opaque island domains fail to block the formation of long-distance A¯- dependencies involving object ex situ focus. In support of the claim that A¯- movement has occurred in such cases, we rely on evidence from three wh- movement diagnostics (weak crossover effects, reconstruction phenomena and quantifier float). Furthermore, we show that non-movement dependencies across purported island boundaries in the language are also possible through the licensing of “island”-internal negative concord items by external non-local negators. We conclude that clausal island effects fail to materialize in Shupamem ex situ focus constructions and negative concord item-licensing domains. Based on an exploratory typological survey of islands in African languages, we indicate a trend toward varying degrees of island permeability in the area, concluding that while Shupamem is not an isolated example, it features one of the most permissive grammars known to date in this respect.","PeriodicalId":52329,"journal":{"name":"Languages","volume":"13 2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2023-12-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138951459","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Marching towards Contrast: The Case of ao passo que in Portuguese 走向对比：葡萄牙语中的 ao passo que 案例

IF 0.9

Languages Pub Date : 2023-12-20 DOI: 10.3390/languages9010006

Manuel Delicado Cantero, Patrícia Amaral

引用次数: 0

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