A large body of psycholinguistic research demonstrates that both language processing and language acquisition are sensitive to the distributions of linguistic constructions in usage. Here we investigate how statistical distributions at different linguistic levels – morphological and lexical (Experiments 1 and 2), and phrasal (Experiment 2) – contribute to the ease with which morphosyntax is processed and produced by second language learners. We analyze Chinese ESL learners’ knowledge of four English inflectional morphemes:-ed,-ing, and third-person-son verbs, and plural-son (...) nouns. In Elicited Imitation Tasks, participants listened to length- and difficulty-matched sentences each containing one target morpheme and typed the whole sentence as accurately as they could after a short delay. Experiment 1 investigated lexical and morphemic levels, testing the hypotheses that a morpheme is expected to be more easily processed when it is (1) highlyavailable(i.e., occurring in frequent word-forms), and (2) highlyreliable(i.e., occurring in lemma words that are consistently conjugated in the form containing this morpheme). Thirty sentences were made for each morpheme, divided into three Availability-Reliability Distribution (ARD) groups on the basis of corpus analysis in the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA;Davies, 2008-): 10 target words high in availability, 10 high in reliability, and 10 low in both reliability and availability. Responses were scored on whether the target morpheme was accurately reproduced given the provision of the correct lemma. A generalized linear mixed-effects logit model (GLMM) revealed fixed effects of morpheme type, availability, and reliability on the accuracy of morpheme provision. There were no effects of lemma frequency. Experiment 2 successfully replicated these results and extended the investigation to explore phrasal formulaicity by manipulating the frequency of the four-word strings in which the morpheme was embedded. GLMMs replicated the effects of word-form availability and reliability and additionally revealed independentphrase-superiority effectswhere morphemes were better reproduced in contexts of higher string-frequency. Taken together, these findings demonstrate that morpheme acquisition reflects the distributional properties of learners’ experience and the mappings therein between lexis, morphology, phraseology, and semantics. These conclusions support an emergentist view of the statistical symbolic learning of morphology where language acquisition involves the satisfaction of competing constraints across multiple grain-sizes of units. (shrink)

The purpose of this study is to examine the mission and education of the Korean Orthodox Church in the process of migration and settlement of Koreans in the Primorsky Krai from the 1860s to the 1910s and to discuss the historical background and sociocultural significance of it. This study summarizes the history of Korean maritime migrants in chronological order in the late 19th century. In this study, Russian, Russian-Korean bilingual and Korean translation used by the Russian Orthodox Church were discussed. (...) At the time of the 19th century, the Russian Orthodox Church was the ideological background of the ruling Russian emigration. The Russian orthodox education that Koreans received was the first Western-style education acceptance of Koreans. The Orthodox Church conducted missions and education for Koreans through Russian language education, Korean-Russian bilingual education, and Korean-speaking Korean missions. Koreans accepted sophistication for survival and adjustment in Russia, or spiritual influence, and expressed enthusiasm for education. Russian Orthodox was bilingual, reflecting the dialect used by Koreans in Russia, and standard Korean of Seoul area. Although the educational environment was poor and the political situation was always changing rapidly, the role of the Orthodox Church was great in that it provided opportunities for Koreans to play an active role in the Primorsky Krai by finding out the talents of Koreans through education and by knowing their potentials themselves. (shrink)

Repetitions (takrārs), which in the dictionary means ‘the repetition of something one after the other and its renewal in terms of wording and meaning’, are one of the most basic stylistic, address and textual structure features of the Qur’ān and at the same time one of the structural problems that have troubled the commentators. Repetitive nouns, verbs and letters in many verses, as well as sentences and phrases that sound like rhymes are of this kind. Although some of the benefits (...) of repetitions in the Qur’ān have been described in our tradition, it has also been stated by some that this is tiresome for a good and faṣīh word, far from any benefit, one of the disasters and defects of words that do not correspond to a mūciz word. At the same time, it has also been suggested that this is one of the things that indicate the corruption and weakness of the Qur’ānic naẓm and the existence of confusion in its naẓm. For this reason, literary scholars, linguists and commentators have considered the absence of repetition in phrases as one of the conditions of its feṣāhat (eloquence). In addition to all these, some in our tradition have treated these repetitive expressions not as a problem, but as a divine, transcendental style, and have sought a wisdom, a literary wit and a secret related to meaning. On the contrary, some have argued that the Qur’ān was revealed in the patterns of language use of the Arabs of that period, that the divine meaning and message was formed according to the speech patterns and styles of their words, advice and addresses, that the similarities of the patterns repeated in the Qur’ān were also found in their poetry, and for this reason, they associated the repetitions with the customs and habits of language use and literary tastes of the Arabs of the Hijāz region in daily speech and types of literature. Therefore, as some scholars in our tradition have argued, are these repetitions really a defect of expression, an artistic beauty? or structures that the Arabs of the nuzūl period did not know, were not familiar with, and did not hear, and that contain various subtleties of meaning? or on the contrary, are these expression patterns that were present and well-known in daily speech patterns and uses, in the literary genres of the Arabs of that day, and that were formed and manifested within the framework of their linguistic customs and traditions and literary tastes? İn this article, within the framework of these questions and problems, the relationship of the repetitions in the Qur’ān with the language usage customs, literary tastes, and linguistic cultural anthropological structures of the Arabs of the period of its revelation is examined. Therefore, as a result of this research, which is thought to be different from the existing academic studies, original and authentic, and the literature review method is used, ıt is clearly understood that the repetitions in the Qur’ān are ‘expressive structures related to the literary tastes, linguistic customs and traditions of the Arabs of the nuzūl period’ in terms of address/textual structure. (shrink)

In this volume Nick C. Ellis, Ute Römer, and Matthew Brook O’Donnell present a view of language as a complex adaptive system that is learned, both in first and second language contexts, through usage. In a series of research studies, they analyze Verb-Argument Constructions (VACs) in language learning, processing, and use. Drawing on diverse epistemological and methodological perspectives, they convincingly demonstrate that language emerges in the development of both mother tongue and additional languages out of (...) multiple experiences of meaning-making following general principles of learning relating to frequency, contingency, and semantic prototypicality. They draw implications from this work that will be of value to students and scholars from a wide range of disciplinary interests in language and learning. (shrink)

Two of the main theoretical approaches to the evolution of language are biolinguistics and usage-based approaches. Both are often conceptualized as belonging to seemingly irreconcilable “camps.” Biolinguistic approaches assume that the ability to acquire language is based on a language-specific genetic foundation. Usage-based approaches, on the other hand, stress the importance of domain-general cognitive capacities, social cognition, and interaction. However, there have been a number of recent developments in both paradigms which suggest that biolinguistic and usage-based approaches (...) are actually moving closer together. For example, theoretical advancements such as evo-devo and complex adaptive system theory have gained traction in the language sciences, leading to changed conceptions of issues like the relative influence of “nature” and “nurture.” In this paper, we outline points of convergence between current minimalist biolinguistic and usage-based approaches regarding four contentious issues: (1) modularity and domain specificity; (2) innateness and development; (3) cultural and biological evolution; and (4) knowledge of language and its description. We show that across both paradigms, researchers have come to increasingly embrace more complex views of these issues. They also have come to appreciate the view that biological and cultural evolution are closely intertwined, which lead to an increased amount of common ground between minimalist biolinguistics and usage-based approaches. (shrink)

This paper uses computational experiments to explore the role of exposure in the emergence of construction grammars. While usage-based grammars are hypothesized to depend on a learner’s exposure to actual language use, the mechanisms of such exposure have only been studied in a few constructions in isolation. This paper experiments with (i) the growth rate of the constructicon, (ii) the convergence rate of grammars exposed to independent registers, and (iii) the rate at which constructions are forgotten when they have (...) not been recently observed. These experiments show that the lexicon grows more quickly than the grammar and that the growth rate of the grammar is not dependent on the growth rate of the lexicon. At the same time, register-specific grammars converge onto more similar constructions as the amount of exposure increases. This means that the influence of specific registers becomes less important as exposure increases. Finally, the rate at which constructions are forgotten when they have not been recently observed mirrors the growth rate of the constructicon. This paper thus presents a computational model of usage-based grammar that includes both the emergence and the unentrenchment of constructions. (shrink)

Colour word usage within languages follows the same ordering as that proposed by Berlin and Kay between languages. This provides additional validation and support for Berlin and Kay's schema.

Containment and support have traditionally been assumed to represent universal conceptual foundations for spatial terms. This assumption can be challenged, however: English in and on are applied across a surprisingly broad range of exemplars, and comparable terms in other languages show significant variation in their application. We propose that the broad domains of both containment and support have internal structure that reflects different subtypes, that this structure is reflected in basic spatial term usage across languages, and that it (...) constrains children's spatial term learning. Using a newly developed battery, we asked how adults and 4-year-old children speaking English or Greek distribute basic spatial terms across subtypes of containment and support. We found that containment showed similar distributions of basic terms across subtypes among all groups while support showed such similarity only among adults, with striking differences between children learning English versus Greek. We conclude that the two domains differ considerably in the learning problems they present, and that learning in and on is remarkably complex. Together, our results point to the need for a more nuanced view of spatial term learning. (shrink)

Whorf and Wittgenstein are perhaps the most famous names in linguistics and philosophy associated with the assumption that language plays a decisive role in shaping our view of reality. After a critical discussion of Whorf's linguistic relativity principle I conclude that it is not language as a system, but the use of language according to the rules of language games which connects language thought and world view, especially if some particular usage becomes the commonly accepted (...) norm. This traditional norm also enters argumentative discourse in the form of background assumptions occuring in the premises of arguments. Thus, traditional points of view and prevailing ideologies in a society, even if challenged in discussions, can become reinforced and stabilized. This is illustrated with a critical analysis of the role and function of tautological utterances in argumentative discourse, which only apparently are compelling means of argumentation. (shrink)

The issue of hate speech is widely present in the Balkan Peninsula and although it has a serious impact in inter-ethnic and inter-religious relations, it has never been addressed properly by the academia or the judicial systems. This paper aims to outline the main principles that define hate speech from the linguistic and legal perspective. Throughout the paper several international cases of hate speech are cited along with the measures that western European countries take in order to minimize the level (...) of stereotypes and public discrimination. In the second part, the paper brings examples from degrading hate speech cases coming from public figures in Macedonia. In addition, a few comparative cases from the international practice have been cited in order to perceive if an egalitarian society is possible in Macedonia from the aspect of language usage without the hatred constituents by aiming to develop an acceptable public discourse for all. (shrink)

In the generative tradition, the language faculty has been shrinking—perhaps to include only the mechanism of recursion. This paper argues that even this view of the language faculty is too expansive. We first argue that a language faculty is difficult to reconcile with evolutionary considerations. We then focus on recursion as a detailed case study, arguing that our ability to process recursive structure does not rely on recursion as a property of the grammar, but instead emerges gradually (...) by piggybacking on domain-general sequence learning abilities. Evidence from genetics, comparative work on non-human primates, and cognitive neuroscience suggests that humans have evolved complex sequence learning skills, which were subsequently pressed into service to accommodate language. Constraints on sequence learning therefore have played an important role in shaping the cultural evolution of linguistic structure, including our limited abilities for processing recursive structure. Finally, we re-evaluate some of the key considerations that have often been taken to require the postulation of a language faculty. (shrink)

Meta-languages are vital to the development and usage of formal systems, and yet the nature of meta-languages and associated notions require clarification. Here we attempt to provide a clear definition of the requirements for a language to be a meta-language, together with consideration of issues of proof theory, model theory and interpreters for such a language.

Awjila Berber is a highly endangered Berber variety spoken in eastern Libya. The minimal material available on it reveals that the language is in some respects very archaic and in others grammatically unique, and as such is of particular comparative and historical interest. Fieldwork has been impossible for decades due to the political situation. Recently, however, several inhabitants of Awjila have set up a Facebook group Ašal=ənnax (“our village”), posting largely in Awjili. Analysis of this partly conversational corpus makes (...) it possible to extend our knowledge of the language, yielding unattested words and constructions. Examination of its grammatical features also reveals that these posters’ usage is heavily influenced by Arabic, showing language attrition absent from earlier data; even subject-verb agreement has been extensively reworked. In both respects, this study casts light upon the uses and limits of social media as a source of linguistic material. (shrink)

The relationship between language and consciousness has been debated since ancient times, but the details have never been fully articulated. Certainly, there are animals that possess the same essential auditory and vocal systems as humans, but acquiring language is seemingly uniquely human. In this essay, we investigate the relationship between language and consciousness by demonstrating how language usage implies the self-awareness of the user. We show that the self-awareness faculty encompasses the language faculty and how (...) this self-awareness, that is uniquely human, enables us to create social realities through utilizing the social character of the language. We conclude that it is self-awareness that empowers humans to form collective intentionality and to structure societies. Establishing the relationship between self-awareness, language and society sheds light on connections between philosophy of mind, philosophy of language and philosophy of society. (shrink)

Human languages, such as French, Cantonese or American Sign Language, are socio- cultural entities. Knowledge of them (`competence') is acquired by exposure to the ap- propriate environment. Languages are maintained and transmitted by acts of speaking and writing; and this is also the means by which languages evolve. The utterances of one generation are processed by their children to form mental grammars, which in some sense summarize, or generalize over, the children's linguistic experiences. These grammars are (...) the basis for the production of a new avalanche of utterances to which the next generation in its turn is subjected. (This picture is simplified, of course, as generations overlap.) Languages inhabit two distinct and separate modes of existence, which have been called (by Chomsky, 1986) `E-Language' and `I-Language'. E-language is the external observable behaviour --- utterances and inscriptions and manifestations of their meanings. E-language is regarded by some as so chaotic and subject to the vicissitudes of everyday human life as to be a poor candidate for systematic study. (E-Language corresponds to what Chomsky, in earlier terminology, called `performance'.) Out of this blooming buzzing confusion the individual child distils an order internal to the mind; the child constructs a coherent systematic set of rules mapping meanings onto forms. This set of rules is the child's I-Language (where `I' is for `internal'). No two individuals' I-Languages have to be the same, although those of people living in the same community will overlap very significantly. But there will usually be at least some slight difference between the I-language features prevalent in one generation and those prevalent in the next. This is the stuff of language evolution, in the sense of the historical development of individual languages, such as Swedish, Navaho or Zulu. (shrink)

Corruption has traversed all lengths and breadth of the Nigerian nation. The corrupt practice is mostly ornamented with language. The present study aims to ascertain the linguistic codings used to mask corruption in educational, civil service, political and social settings. Data for the study were collected from notable online newspaper and media sources, which include: _The Vanguard, The Guardian, The Punch, This Day, The Nation, The Premium, Sahara Reporters, Naira land_ and others published between 2015 and 2021. The data (...) from online sources were complemented by focused group discussions, unstructured interviews and participant’s observation method. The study adopted a qualitative research design and a random sampling method in selecting a total of hundred respondents from the five states that make up the southeast zone in Nigeria. The paper anchored its analyses on the conceptual model of Sapir-Whorf relativity framework and the analyses were done using interpretative textual analysis model. Findings from the study reveal that using words, phrases and expressions which are reflected in coinages, code-mixing, reduplication, metonymy, metaphor, slang, borrowing, pidginization, lexical reversals and creative usages to mask corruption have far-reaching effects on national development. The paper recommends that in considering the fight against corruption, the government should pay attention to the linguistic embellishments that act as the lifeline of the negative practice. (shrink)

Die Beiträge dieses Buches untersuchen die Vielfalt der Herangehensweisen an die diversen Erscheinungsformen von Sprache, an das Wort und die Wortsemantik sowie an den Gebrauch von Sprache. Der Band enthält Arbeiten, die linguistische Fragestellungen zu sprachsystematischen Aspekten der Wort-, Satz-, Text- und Diskursebene behandeln sowie Perspektiven eröffnen, um diverse Aspekte von Sprache in einem über diese Domänen hinausgehenden Rahmen zu betrachten. Die Beiträger diskutieren Fragen der lexikalischen Semantik, Pragmalinguistik, Morphologie und der Lexikographie. Das Buch setzt seine Schwerpunkte neben der Wortsemantik (...) auf die Eingebundenheit lexikalischer Bedeutungen in registerspezifische Diskursmuster, öffentliche, interpersonelle und geschäftlich-beruflich orientierte Diskurse. (shrink)

The study tested how the use of positive- (e.g. beautiful) and negative-valenced (e.g. horrible) words in natural language and its change in time affects the severity of depression and anxiety symptoms among depressed and non-depressed individuals. This longitudinal mixed methods study (N = 40 participants, n = 1440 narratives) with three measurements within a year showed that at the between-person level the use of negative-valenced words was strongly associated with the increase in anxiety and depression symptoms over time while (...) the use of positive-valenced words was slightly associated with the decrease in anxiety and depression symptom. These effects were not supported for within-person level (i.e. changes in word usage). No significant differences were observed in the effects between depressed and non-depressed groups. Summing up, the overall use of positive- and negative-valenced words (particularly negative-valenced words) had a stronger effect on the severity of psychopathological symptoms than their change over time. The results were discussed in the context of natural language processing and its application in diagnosing depression and anxiety symptoms. (shrink)

This paper examines from a special perspective the problem of methodological limita­tions of the computational approach in the philosophy of mind and empirical sciences. The main goal is to consistently substantiate the dependence of philosophical “metaphori­cal dictionaries” on advances in the field of computer science, historical contexts of epis­temology, formal and methodological limitations of algorithmic and computational proce­dures. The key idea is that despite the success of computational models in empirical re­search, their conceptual level does not allow us to correctly (...) formulate the question of the ontology of consciousness. Computationalism in philosophical theories of con­sciousness is presented as a practice of word usage, which posits systems of consistent descriptions of the information properties of consciousness and cognitive processes within the framework of certain methodological rules. The limitations of the computa­tional approach are associated with the lack of a scientific theory of subjectivity, the fun­damental irreducibility of external properties of consciousness to internal states, and fun­damental restrictions on the completeness and consistency of computer mathematics. A classification of several anti-computational programs has been carried out. The article discusses various limitations of computational approaches, such as: the complexity of for­malizing nonlinear and hidden processes, the dependence of emotions and intuition on the situational context and individual differences, the difficulty of predicting the emerg­ing properties of autonomous and autopoietic systems, and the limitations associated with non-standard computational processes of quantum and dynamic phenomena. A special role is given to the problem of set-theoretic reductive realism within the framework of mathe­matical structuralism and some aspects of p-adic number systems as a possible alternative to a “universal language” for the computational philosophy of consciousness. (shrink)

Abstract“Force dynamics” refers to a previously neglected semantic category—how entities interact with respect to force. This category includes such concepts as: the exertion of force, resistance to such exertion and the overcoming of such resistance, blockage of a force and the removal of such blockage, and so forth. Force dynamics is a generalization over the traditional linguistic notion of “causative”: it analyzes “causing” into finer primitives and sets it naturally within a framework that also includes “letting,”“hindering,”“helping,” and still further notions. (...) Force dynamics, moreover, appears to be the semantic category that uniquely characterizes the grammatical category of modals, in both their basic and epistemic usages. In addition, on the basis of force dynamic parameters, numerous lexical items fall into systematic semantic patterns, and there exhibit parallelisms between physical and psychosocial reference. Further, from research on the relation of semantic structure to general cognitive structure, it appears that the concepts of force interaction that are encoded within language closely parallel concepts that appear both in early science and in naive physics and psychology. Overall, force dynamics thus emerges as a fundamental notional system that structures conceptual material pertaining to force interaction in a common way across a linguistic range: the physical, psychological, social, inferential, discourse, and mental-model domains of reference and conception. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 9.2 (2002) 131-136 [Access article in PDF] Language, Logic, and Recovery:A Commentary on van Staden Paul Falzer and Larry Davidson Keywords: analytic philosophy, experience, Frege, ordinary language, psychosis, psychotherapy. VAN STADEN'S PAPER, "Linguistic Markers of Recovery," takes on a formidable task. As he explains it, findings from a previously conducted empirical study suggest that recovery from a psychiatric condition can be predicted by (...) certain patterns of first person pronoun usage. His current paper explains how these patterns follow the mathematical logic of Gottlob Frege. van Staden's attempt to systematize the link between language and treatment outcome shows promise. We want to support his effort by raising a few caveats about the application of foundational systems in psychiatry and psychology, particularly the advisability of employing a logical system to explain recovery from mental illness. Along the way, we will be identifying related issues that the author may elect to take up in his future work.van Staden's proposal is inspired by Frege's logical system, but the paper is, at the very least, an innovative adaptation. There are various points where we are left to wonder just how much of this proposal is really Frege's. Nevertheless, the genesis of van Staden's ideas is so dependent that one would expect a fuller account of Frege's pivotal role in the development of modern logic, how his work precipitated what is known commonly as the linguistic turn, and why a logical system that was so well received when first articulated was eclipsed so quickly by Russell's Principia (1963) and Wittgenstein's Tractatus. (1981) These issues can be addressed separately and perhaps they should, because lacking an account of how Frege's philosophy developed and evolved makes the presentation appear somewhat sketchy and incomplete.Frege is portrayed in philosophical lore as the founder of modern logic and a pioneer of the movement that later became known as analytic philosophy. Dummett (1991) regards Frege's Foundations of Arithmetic (1968) as analytical philosophy's first work (p. 111). According to Quine (1955), "All modern logic owes an incalculable debt to Frege. If anyone can be singled out as the founder of mathematical logic, it is by all odds he" (p. 158). Rorty (1967) notes that analytic philosophy's tack of construing philosophical questions as turning on language use and construction challenges the entire tradition, from Parmenides forward. However, the challenge reaches fruition not in Frege, but in works of Moore, Wittgenstein, and Austin. Rather than [End Page 131] sharing the limelight with the great analytic philosophers, Frege has become somewhat of a peripheral figure, whose contribution is usually portrayed as transitional. In some respects, analytic philosophy was moving against Frege's, and later, Russell's logical systems as it was concomitantly countering the various strands of idealism expounded principally by Bradley and McTaggart (see Hacker 1996, 5-12). Almost from the outset, Fregean logic was caught in a cross fire, and the author is obligated to tell us why we should be attending to the pristine version and not the more fully developed approaches that came soon after.Such a justification undoubtedly would begin with the dictum most central to Frege's philosophical thought, that propositions are primary. For Kemp (1998), this declaration carries two interrelated implications: Logical propositions are the real bearers of truth and falsity, and reasoning is a movement from one judgment to another (see p. 218). Frege posits that propositions are independent of mind, grammar, and language use. Knowledge and cognition are embodied in, but do not predicate, judgment. Frege adamantly rejects the notion that philosophical concepts are grounded in psychological phenomena, such as perception, sense impression, and some traditional accounts of meaning. This is the doctrine known as psychologism, and Frege abjures the suggestion that psychology can contain the sciences or adjudicate their findings (Frege 1956; for a discussion of this doctrine, see Notturno 1989; Davidson 1988; Davidson and Cosgrove 1991). The dictum that propositions are primary dispels the commonly held idea that reasoning begins with perception and proceeds... (shrink)

The language specificity of modern media texts and the aspects of studying it in the courses ‘Language and style of modern mass media‘ and ‘Modern mediatext‘ are considered in the article. The language specificity of contemporary media texts is connected, on the one hand, with the subjectivization of the text, enforcement of personality, democratization and with the increase of proportion of a foreign word, intertexuality, intellectualization of the text on the other hand. Subjectivization of the text is (...) connected with the personality enforcement, is determined by the influence of social processes - freedom of speech declaration - and demonstrates itself in the actualization of the author, in a high level of evaluation, emotionality, abundance of metatextual means. Democratization in the modern mass media texts shows itself in the joint functioning of means of different styles: bookish, substandard, jargon. Intertextuality is opposed to the excessive subjectivization of the text and demonstrates itself in the increased usage of foreign words, it is realized with the help of precedent phenomena. Intellectualization shows itself in the active usage of the means of indirect communication by the journalists: tropes, wordplay. Unnecessarily liberal usage of language means for the expressive-evaluating and wordplay on purposes is often contiguous to speech aggression. Consequently studying modern media texts allows students to not only detect and characterize the main features of the modern mass media language and style, structural-semantic peculiarities of a modern mediatext, but also to give its socio-ethical evaluation. (shrink)

This is the first systematic analysis of Aristotle's concept of lexis. Ana Kotarcic argues that it should be approached on three interconnected levels: the first dealing with language as a system, the second with actual language usage, into which sociolinguistic factors come into play, and the third with prescriptions for the kind of language to be used in poetic and rhetorical compositions. She introduces ideas and concepts from classics and modern linguistics into the analysis alongside the philosophical (...) approaches which have prevailed until now. The results reveal that Aristotle's ideas on lexis are complex, well-developed and intimately connected to many other fundamental concepts in his works, such as aretē, energeia, ēthos, logos, mimēsis, pathos, phantasia and technē. A major component of his thought is therefore illuminated comprehensively for the first time. (shrink)

Täglich verwenden wir Ausdrücke, mit denen wir etwas anderes meinen, als wir sagen. Wir ersetzen Unaussprechliches, wir bleiben höflich, und manche suchen unangenehme Wahrheiten oder ihre tatsächlichen Absichten zu verschleiern. Solche verhüllenden Ausdrücke wurden schon in der Antike als Euphemismen bezeichnet. Ihr Gegenteil, meist krasse Negativbezeichnungen, heißen Dysphemismen. Ob sie als Tabubruch, als Verstoß gegen Konventionen oder als unangemessenes Verhalten gelten, hängt von den Textsorten, den Situationen und Diskursen ab, in denen sie gebraucht werden. Oft geht es um Tod oder (...) Krankheiten, um den Mediendiskurs über Immigranten oder Minderheiten, aber auch um Arbeitszeugnisse oder die Werbung für Produkte und Dienstleistungen. Das alles sind Themen der Beiträge in diesem Buch. (shrink)

Knowlson nous a donné un des livres les plus complets, jusqu'à présent, sur l'histoire de l'idée d'une langue universelle. Dans cette étude critique, cet ouvrage est analysé en détail. Parmi ses mérites, on souligne l'usage de matériaux inédits , et l'effort pour élargir l'horizon de la recherche sur cette idée, en essayant de l'identifier non seulement dans une ou deux disciplines , mais dans un contexte culturel plus général. D'autre part, on critique l'absence d'une sensibilité plus aigüe pour l'analyse des (...) "transformations" que l'idée a pu subir au cours des 17éme et 18éme siécle, ainsi que pour les nuances d'opinions - souvent décisives - parmi des auteurs qui appartiennent au même groupe. (shrink)

This article introduces the special issue on the brain and processing of nonliteral and other forms of language in which meaning is "stretched" or deviates from expectations. The introduction consists of 2 sections meant to orient the reader to the articles that follow. The first section is a brief review and commentary on recent research and theorizing into the evolution of the human brain, selected brain structures, and implications that arise for nonliteral language and thought. The second section (...) reviews and comments on recent advances in technology in cognitive neuroscience that increasingly are being brought to bear on questions of how we process a range of language forms that deviate from literal usage. I take the evidence as indicating that normal understanding of nonliteral language is highly interactive, involving multiple parts of the brain and, based on temporal processing in the brain, these interactions occur very early in the processing of a trope. (shrink)

MARXISM AND THE PHILOSOPHY, OF LANGUAGE By V.N. Volo?inov translated by Ladislav Matejka & I.R. Titunik Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1986. 205 pp., $9.95 The contributions of Volo?inov's theories of language are assessed and are contrasted to traditional Marxist philosophy, Saussurean linguistics and more recent developments in transformational grammar and sociolinguistics. Studying connections between language and politics in the 1920s, Volosinov explored the ways social reality enters verbal signs and their usage, anticipating many of the debates (...) within modem linguistics. (shrink)

Combining theory from cognitive semantics and pragmatics, this book offers both a new model and a new usage-based method for the understanding of intersubjectivity, and how social cognition is expressed linguistically at different levels of complexity. Bringing together ideas from linguistics and theory of mind, Tantucci demonstrates the way in which speakers constantly monitor and project their interlocutor's reactions to what is being said, and sets out three distinct categories of social cognition in first language acquisition and language (...) change. He also shows how this model can be applied in different settings and includes a range of examples from languages across the globe, to demonstrate the cross-linguistic universality of the model. Additionally the book offers insights into the gradient dimension of intersubjectivity in language evolution and across the autistic spectrum. Original and innovative, it will be invaluable for researchers in cognitive linguistics, pragmatics, historical linguistics, applied linguistics and cognitive psychology. (shrink)

My argument is that poststructuralist and postmodernist theory carries on and intensifies the main lines of a characteristically modern tradition of aesthetics whose most important point of reference is not French structuralism – as the term, ‘poststructuralism’, implies – but the tradition of 18th-century German romanticism and idealism that culminated in the work of Heidegger during the Weimar period in Germany between the world wars and afterward. What characterizes this modernist tradition of aesthetics is its valorization of language as (...) a mode of being possessed of an ‘ontological’ status. I place the term ‘ontology’ in quotes in order to highlight the distinction between ‘metaphysics’, with its Aristotelian and neo-Platonic connotations of a ‘chain of being’, and the more modern term ‘ontology’, which was coined in the 17th century and which became widely used during the 18th century by Leibnizian philosophers Christian Wolff and Alexander Baumgarten ; the latter, not incidentally, also helped to establish modern usage of the term ‘aesthetics’. ‘Metaphysics’ and ‘ontology’ have their roots, respectively, in those two most major currents of our western heritage, the Graeco-Roman and Judaeo-Christian. These currents, although inextricably linked to one another in innumerable ways, have nonetheless been engaged, as Nietzsche put it, ‘in a fearful struggle on earth for thousands of years’ that has been obscured by Heidegger’s and Derrida’s accounts of the history of western philosophy. Such accounts have projected what is basically a romanticist critique of Enlightenment values and thought on to a totalizing account of the history of Western thought since Plato. My purpose in emphasizing the distinction between metaphysics and ontology is to provide a conceptual framework within which our understanding of the development of modern aesthetics, and the concept of language that informed that development, can be related to the larger philosophical issues at hand. Literary theorists in the United States, by endorsing Heidegger’s and Derrida’s self-serving accounts of their writings as assaults on the entire history of Western philosophy, and by failing to judge them critically as outgrowths of that history, have not only obscured these developments. They have also sustained the central tenet of American literary theory since the 1960s: that there is such a thing as a ‘Western philosophical tradition’ on the ‘other’ side of which, through an endless series of linguistic coinages and ‘erasures’, we may maneuver ourselves. My claim is that to the extent that there is such an other side, we are already on it, and that we fundamentally misunderstand our situation if we regard it as ‘other’ to the Western philosophical tradition. Key Words: Derrida • Heidegger • language • ontology • theory. (shrink)

Previous studies provided evidence for a connection between language processing and language change. We add to these studies with an exploration of the influence of lexical-distributional properties of words in orthographic space, semantic space, and the mapping between orthographic and semantic space on the probability of lexical extinction. Through a binomial linear regression analysis, we investigated the probability of lexical extinction by the first decade of the twenty-first century (2000s) for words that existed in the first decade of (...) the nineteenth-century (1800s) in eight data sets for five languages: English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish. The binomial linear regression analysis revealed that words that are more similar in form to other words are less likely to disappear from a language. By contrast, words that are more similar in meaning to other words are more likely to become extinct. In addition, a more consistent mapping between form and meaning protects a word from lexical extinction. A nonlinear time-to-event analysis furthermore revealed that the position of a word in orthographic and semantic space continues to influence the probability of it disappearing from a language for at least 200 years. Effects of the lexical-distributional properties of words under investigation here have been reported in the language processing literature as well. The results reported here, therefore, fit well with a usage-based approach to language change, which holds that language change is at least to some extent connected to cognitive mechanisms in the human brain. (shrink)

Dictionaries have long been seen as an essential contribution by linguists to work on endangered languages. We report on preliminary investigations of actual dictionary usage and usability by 76 speakers, semi-speakers and learners of Australian Aboriginal languages. The dictionaries include: electronic and printed bilingual Warlpiri-English dictionaries, a printed trilingual Alawa-Kriol- English dictionary, and a printed bilingual Warumungu-English dictionary. We examine competing demands for completeness of coverage and ease of access, and focus on the prospects of electronic dictionaries for (...) solving many traditional problems, based in particular on observations on the usability of a prototype interface developed in our project. The flexibility of computer interfaces can help accommodate different needs including those of speakers with emerging literacy skills, but they are not useful in communities where computer access is generally unavailable. (shrink)

This paper examines the function of language in the domain of education and it‘s vice versa. As we are aware of the fact that language and education are endemic elements of human development and evolution. According to Gandhi, education is the recognition of mind-body, soul and spirit. It is the attainment of the values through morality and ethics. Gandhi accepts communicative aspect of language where as Wittgenstein accepts analytical and conceptual aspect of language. Wittgenstein realized that (...) education is the constituent of what we know, believe and learn. Gandhi asserts on Mother tongue, primary- secondary languages and national languages whereas Wittgenstein emphasis on the natural languages, meta-languages and ideal languages. In this paper I shall demonstrate the problems of language which becomes hurdles in the process of education. For both Gandhi and Wittgenstein, there are problems not in language but in its ordinary usage, speaking, writing, meaning and communication. (shrink)

This study puts the usage-based assumption that our linguistic knowledge is based on usage to the test. To do so, we explore individual variation in speakers’ language use as established based on corpus data – both in terms of frequency of use and productivity of use – and link this variation to the same participants’ responses in an experimental judgment task. The empirical focus is on transfer by native German speakers living in the Netherlands, who oftentimes experience transfer from (...) their second language Dutch to their native language German regarding the placement of prepositional phrases. The analyses show a large amount of variation in both the corpus and experimental data with a strong link across data types: individual speakers’ usage – but not the usage by other speakers – is a significant predictor for the speakers’ judgments. These results strongly suggest that, in line with a usage-based approach, variation between speakers in experimental tasks is linked to their variation in usage. At the same time, such usage-based predictions do not explain all of the variation, suggesting that other individual factors are also at play in such experimental tasks. (shrink)

The issue of textual criticism/matn criticism in the Islamic world has started to be discussed, especially in modern times, when the issue of criticism of the holy books came to the fore in the West. However, when the history of Islamic sciences literature is examined, it is seen that the subject of criticism of hadith texts has been on the agenda of Muslims, even though it is not as central as isnad. One of the important pillars of the text-centered approach (...) as a method of hadith criticism is the Arabic language. In our study, it is aimed to determine the effect and the limits of the Arabic language in hadith criticism based on the text. While doing this, first of all, the discussions about the link between the language and criticism of the holy scriptures in the West will be discussed, and then the relationship between the hadith and the Arabic language will be revealed, especially in the context of istishhād and literature. Then, the place where the Arabic language stands as a method in the criticism of hadith texts will be determined and an evaluation will be made about its limits and possibilities. The evaluations about the limits and possibilities of the Arabic language will be discussed in terms of the narration of hadiths with meaning, the different approaches of linguists and schools, the conflicts between tribes, and the reliability of poetry as an istishhād method. In this study, particular examples obtained by examining Ibn Dureyd’s (d. 321/933) Jamhara al-luga ve Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Azherī’s (d. 370/980) Tahzīb al-Luga Abū Aḥmad al-ʿAskarī’s (d. 382/992) Taṣḥīfāt al-muḥaddiṯīn and al-Ḫaṭṭābī's (d. 388/998) Iṣlāḥ ġalaṭ al-muḥaddiṯīn and Ṣafadī’s (d. 764/1363) Taṣḥīḥ al-taṣḥīf wa-taḥrīr al-taḥrīf. In addition, the subject has been examined by taking into account other linguistic sources, basic hadith texts and hadith commenta-ries. In this way, the reflection of the subject in the hadith literature will be revealed and it will be tried to determine the place where the Arabic language stands in hadith criticism, taking into account the problems of the language itself. (shrink)

This paper examines popular‘conventionalist’explanations of why philosophers need not back up their claims about how‘we’use our words with empirical studies of actual usage. It argues that such explanations are incompatible with a number of currently popular and plausible assumptions about language's ‘social’character. Alternate explanations of the philosopher's purported entitlement to make a priori claims about‘our’usage are then suggested. While these alternate explanations would, unlike the conventionalist ones, be compatible with the more social picture of language, they are each (...) shown to face serious problems of their own. (shrink)

Using Figurative Language presents results from a multidisciplinary decades-long study of figurative language that addresses the question, 'Why don't people just say what they mean?' This research empirically investigates goals speakers or writers have when speaking figuratively, and concomitantly, meaning effects wrought by figurative language usage. These 'pragmatic effects' arise from many kinds of figurative language including metaphors, verbal irony, idioms, proverbs and others. Reviewed studies explore mechanisms - linguistic, psychological, social and others - underlying pragmatic (...) effects, some traced to basic processes embedded in human sensory, perceptual, embodied, cognitive, social and schematic functioning. The book should interest readers, researchers and scholars in fields beyond psychology, linguistics and philosophy that share interests in figurative language - including language studies, communication, literary criticism, neuroscience, semiotics, rhetoric and anthropology. (shrink)

I will argue that the cognitive-linguistic enterprise should step up its efforts to embrace the social and pragmatic dimensions of language. This claim will be derived from a survey of the premises and promise of the cognitive-linguistic approach to the study of language and be defended in more detail on logical and empirical grounds. Key elements of a usage-based emergentist socio-cognitive approach known as Entrenchment-and-Conventionalization Model (Schmid 2014, 2015) will be presented in order to demonstrate how social and (...) pragmatic aspects can be integrated and operationalized in a cognitive-linguistic framework. (shrink)

The data from the World Color Survey of 110 un-written languages have been analyzed in regard to individual focal choices. A total of 46 major color terms have been identified. Of these 24 can be defined in terms of English color terms, while 22 cannot. The most important color term in terms of usage is red, followed by white and black. In the 110 languages, 73 different arrangements of major color terms have been found. The six Hering fundamental (...) colors, presumably closely related to the workings of the color vision system, occur preferentially but not consistently in languages with 6 or more major terms. They represent the top six categories in terms of major usage. WCS indicates usage of major color terms to be complex and clearly also influenced by cultural choices. (shrink)

The purpose of this study was to establish the usage of research and theory in the teaching of English language in secondary schools in Botswana. Altogether 100 questionnaires were administered in 19 secondary schools. The results of this study indicate that teachers rarely ever refer to language research in their teaching. Less value was also placed on the theoretical information acquired during training. The respondents indicated that their teaching is essentially based on utilizing their teaching experience and individual (...) creativity. (shrink)

Digital media, such as cellphones and tablets, are a common part of our daily lives and their usage has changed the communication structure within families. Thus, there is a risk that the use of DM might result in fewer opportunities for interactions between children and their parents leading to fewer language learning moments for young children. The current study examined the associations between children’s language development and early DM exposure.Participants: Ninety-two parents of 25months olds recorded their home sound (...) environment during a typical day [Language ENvironment Analysis ] and participated in an online questionnaire consisting of questions pertaining to daily DM use and media mediation strategies, as well as a Swedish online version of the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory, which includes a vocabulary scale as well as a grammar and pragmatics scale.Results: Through correlations and stepwise regressions three aspects of language were analyzed. The child’s vocabulary was positively associated with interactional turn-taking. The child’s vocabulary and grammar were negatively associated with the likelihood of parent’s device use during everyday child routines and the amount of TV watched by the child. The child’s pragmatic development was also positively associated with the parent’s device use in child routines but also with the parent’s joint media engagement, as well as the child’s gender.Conclusion: Our study confirms that specific aspects of the 2-year old’s DM environment are associated with the child’s language development. More TV content, whether it is viewed on a big screen or tablet, is negatively associated with language development. The likelihood of parents’ use of DM during everyday child routines is also negatively associated with the child’s language development. Positive linguistic parental strategies such as interactional turn-taking with the child, JME, and book reading, on the other hand, are positively associated with the child’s language development. (shrink)

La philosophie du langage s'est développée au XXe siècle comme prima philosophia. L'auteure entend montrer que le vivant humain ne peut se réaliser qu'en forgeant sa faculté philosophique de juger à l'aide du dialogue. Mais il ne peut affirmer ses vérités qu'en jaugeant celles-ci aux effets de bonheur qu'elles transmettent. Cette régulation de l'usage du langage par l'esthétique inhérente à l'usage du jugement de vérité est en effet autant une condition de vie qu'une condition de son bonheur. Le tournant esthétique (...) qu'opère la conception de la philosophie comme esthétique culturelle prétend, quant à elle, que l'usage du langage n'est condition de vie de l'être humain qu'en déployant la dynamique d'harmonisation du monde, de soi-même et d'autrui à l'aide de l'imagination dialogique et du jugement de vérité. Seul l'exercice de ce jugement permet de juger si l'harmonie de vie exprimée dans la pensée et la parole rend aussi heureux les interlocuteurs que celle-ci leur fait partager sa vérité"--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

Problems of functional style differentiation of modern literary language are considered and analyzed in the article. Taking into account the communicative and pragmatic function, various substyles and sublanguages formed as a result of practical language usage in society are singled out on the example of the scientific style.