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Adjectives
Selected AbstractsThe Non-Evaluative Circumplex of Personality AdjectivesJOURNAL OF PERSONALITY, Issue 4 2001Gerard Saucier In judgments about personality, descriptive and evaluative aspects are ordinarily combined; separating them can be important both theoretically and practically. Study 1 showed that two similar descriptive factors can be found in analyses of personality terms, selected independently in English and in German and using different methods to control for evaluation. The factors relate to two pairs of independent axes suggested by previous work: Assertive-Unassertive and Tight-Loose, or alternatively, Interactional Orientation (Extraversion Introversion) and Affective Orientation. These two pairs of axes are shown to be rotations of each other, and to form the prime non-evaluative circumplex. As in previous studies, non-evaluative scales elicited higher levels of self-peer agreement than did more typical evaluation-confounded scales. Study 2 showed that adjective scales for the octants of this circumplex have circular ordering, can fit even very stringent constraints of a circumplex model, have mild to strong isomorphism with the interpersonal circumplex, but represent somewhat broader constructs, and are systematically related to the Big Five and the Big Three personality factors. [source] Children's Use of Syntactic and Pragmatic Knowledge in the Interpretation of Novel AdjectivesCHILD DEVELOPMENT, Issue 1 2006Gil Diesendruck In Study 1, English-speaking 3- and 4-year-olds heard a novel adjective used to label one of two objects and were asked for the referent of a different novel adjective. Children were more likely to select the unlabeled object if the two adjectives appeared prenominally (e.g., "a very DAXY dog") than as predicates (e.g., "a dog that is very DAXY"). Study 2 revealed that this response occurred only when both adjectives were prenominal. Study 3 replicated Study 1 with Hebrew-speaking 3- and 4,year-olds, even though in Hebrew both types of adjectives appear postnominally. Preschoolers understand that prenominal adjectives imply a restriction of the reference of nouns, and this knowledge motivates a contrastive pragmatic inference regarding the referents of different prenominal adjectives. [source] The origins and evolution of links between word learning and conceptual organization: new evidence from 11-month-oldsDEVELOPMENTAL SCIENCE, Issue 2 2003Sandra Waxman How do infants map words to their meaning? How do they discover that different types of words (e.g. noun, adjective) refer to different aspects of the same objects (e.g. category, property)? We have proposed that (1) infants begin with a broad expectation that novel open-class words (both nouns and adjectives) highlight commonalities (both category- and property-based) among objects, and that (2) this initial expectation is subsequently fine-tuned through linguistic experience. We examine the first part of this proposal, asking whether 11-month-old infants can construe the very same set of objects (e.g. four purple animals) either as members of an object category (e.g. animals) or as embodying a salient object property (e.g. four purple things), and whether naming (with count nouns vs. adjectives) differentially influences their construals. Results support the proposal. Infants treated novel nouns and adjectives identically, mapping both types of words to both category- and property-based commonalities among objects. [source] The adaptive value of personality differences revealed by small island population dynamicsEUROPEAN JOURNAL OF PERSONALITY, Issue 1 2007Andrea S. Camperio Ciani Abstract Whether differences in personality among populations really exist and, if so, whether they are only due to cultural and linguistic differences or have a genetically selected adaptive value, is a controversial issue. In this research, we compared three Italian populations living on three small archipelagos in the Tyrrhenian Sea (n,=,993), with their corresponding neighbouring mainlanders (n,=,598), i.e. sharing the same geographical origin, culture and language. We used an adjective-based Big Five questionnaire in order to measure personality traits in four categories of individuals for each archipelago/mainland population: (1) original islanders; (2) non-original islanders; (3) mainlanders and (4) immigrants to the islands. We further analysed original and non-original islanders who had or had not emigrated from the islands. We found that islanders had different personality traits from mainlanders, the former being more conscientious and emotionally stable and less extraverted and open to experience. We also found that the subgroup of islanders whose ancestors had inhabited their island for about 20 generations in isolation (original islanders, n,=,624) were less extraverted and open to experience than immigrants (n,=,193). In contrast, immigrants retained the typical personality profile of the mainland populations. Lastly, emigrants from the islands (n,=,209) were significantly more extraverted and open to experience than original and non-original islanders who had never left their island (n,=,741). We hypothesise that population differences in extraversion and openness to experience are more probably related to genetic differences which evolved rapidly, presumably through an active gene flow produced by selective emigration from the islands. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Vocabulary acquisition: acquiring depth of knowledge through network buildingINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF APPLIED LINGUISTICS, Issue 2 2000Kirsten Haastrup Lexical progression involves a process of network building whereby learners acquire depth of lexical knowledge. This includes the knowledge of a word's different sense relations, paradigmatic as well as syntagmatic, to other words. The focus of this article is a longitudinal study of young foreign language learners'acquisition of English adjectives. A series of tasks were developed to tap lexical relations between adjectives of emotion, e.g. the paradigmatic relations of synonymy and gradation, in order to study how a particular adjective such as thrilled finds its place among other near-synonymous expressions in the subfield HAPPY. Data were collected over a three-year period, so it was possible to study learner performance over time as well as across tasks. Findings revealed that network building is an extremely slow process and that some subfields are much more difficult than others. With the help of qualitative analyses, an account is given of the way in which particular adjectives become enmeshed , or fail to become enmeshed , in the meaning network of related words in the lexical field. [source] Second Language Acquisition of Gender Agreement in Explicit and Implicit Training Conditions: An Event-Related Potential StudyLANGUAGE LEARNING, Issue 1 2010Kara Morgan-Short This study employed an artificial language learning paradigm together with a combined behavioral/event-related potential (ERP) approach to examine the neurocognition of the processing of gender agreement, an aspect of inflectional morphology that is problematic in adult second language (L2) learning. Subjects learned to speak and comprehend an artificial language under either explicit (classroomlike) or implicit (immersionlike) training conditions. In each group, both noun-article and noun-adjective gender agreement processing were examined behaviorally and with ERPs at both low and higher levels of proficiency. Results showed that the two groups learned the language to similar levels of proficiency but showed somewhat different ERP patterns. At low proficiency, both types of agreement violations (adjective, article) yielded N400s, but only for the group with implicit training. Additionally, noun-adjective agreement elicited a late N400 in the explicit group at low proficiency. At higher levels of proficiency, noun-adjective agreement violations elicited N400s for both the explicit and implicit groups, whereas noun-article agreement violations elicited P600s for both groups. The results suggest that interactions among linguistic structure, proficiency level, and type of training need to be considered when examining the development of aspects of inflectional morphology in L2 acquisition. [source] Processing Constraints, Categorial Analysis, and the Second Language Acquisition of the Chinese Adjective Suffix - de(ADJ)LANGUAGE LEARNING, Issue 3 2004Yanyin Zhang The study investigates the second language (L2) acquisition of the adjective marker - de(ADJ) in Chinese. It explores the interaction between processing constraints as represented in processability theory (Pienemann, 1998) and the learner's categorial analysis of Chinese adjectives and stative verbs (which cross-categorize) in the acquisition process. An examination of 3 longitudinal L2 data sets revealed more stative verbs (Vstatives) than adjectives in the learners' L2 Chinese. Furthermore, there appeared to be a correlation between the number of adjectives in the L2 samples and the developmental schedule of - de(ADJ). The reasons for the findings were explored through the processing procedures required for the structures in which the adjective and the Vstative occur and the impact they had on learners' categorial analysis of adjectives and Vstatives in L2 Chinese. [source] Linguistic Anthropology at the End of the Naughts: A Review of 2009AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST, Issue 2 2010Francis Cody ABSTRACT, Here I consider some of the major themes that emerged in linguistic anthropology in 2009, focusing on intersections with other disciplinary fields. Research on globalization, citizenship, publics, footing, and register formation shows how linguistic anthropology has developed a distinctive set of tools to address broad questions in the human sciences. The subdiscipline remains centrally concerned with the semiotic qualities specific to language and the forms of social life that these qualities enable. "Language" has not yet dissolved into a weak adjective in quite the same way that "culture" or "society" seem to have done, and much of the most sophisticated conceptual work on the semiotics of life lived collectively continues to focus on the concrete aspects of this multifaceted phenomenon. Linguistic anthropology maintains a relatively stable theoretical core compared to its subdisciplinary siblings, even if few of us would agree on what constitutes the limits of the field. [source] Towards an understanding of nursing as a response to human vulnerabilityNURSING PHILOSOPHY, Issue 1 2005Derek Sellman rmn rgn bsc(hons) ma Abstract It is not unusual for the adjective ,vulnerable' to be applied to those in receipt of nursing practice without making clear what it is that persons thus described are actually vulnerable to. In this paper I argue that the way nursing has adopted the idea of vulnerability tends to imply that some people are in some way invulnerable. This is conceptually unsustainable and renders the idea of the vulnerable patient (almost) meaningless. The paper explores the meaning of vulnerability both in general terms and in the context of nursing practice. It is argued that to be in receipt of nursing is to become, to a greater or lesser extent, more-than-ordinary vulnerable. Thus all patients are more-than-ordinarily vulnerable and this restricts their potential to flourish. Nurses are well placed to contribute to the flourishing of more-than-ordinarily vulnerable persons and my substantive claim is that this ,protective' function is indeed a legitimate and fundamental part of the role of nurses. [source] Differential integration efforts of mandatory and optional sentence constituentsPSYCHOPHYSIOLOGY, Issue 5 2006Anat Prior Abstract We investigated the online sensitivity of the semantic integration system to the different roles played by sentence constituents that are necessary (verbs and nouns) or optional (adjectives) for argument completion. We compared the effect of semantic incongruities introduced in both types of words on the N400 ERP component. Participants read sentences for meaning, half of which were rendered anomalous by an incongruent verb, noun, or an early/late adjective. Incongruent adjectives led to smaller N400 effects than did incongruent nouns and verbs, and the congruity effect for sentence-final adjectives was not significant. All incongruities are therefore not created equal: Incongruent optional sentence constituents create less of an integrative burden than incongruent mandatory sentence constituents, suggesting that online sentence integration processes are sensitive to the distinct roles played by different words in shaping sentence meaning. [source] Substantive unconscious and adjective unconscious: the contribution of Wilfred BionTHE JOURNAL OF ANALYTICAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 1 2000Ana Maria Andrade de Azevedo The author first provides her readers with a brief summary of some of Freud's ideas, as found throughout his work, on the notion of ,unconscious'. The notion of unconscious as noun is contrasted to the idea of unconscious as adjective, this latter being proposed as a quality, or a state, ever temporary, dynamic, and subject to the constant changes going on in the individual's internal psychic world, as well as to external conditions. After presenting some considerations, the author then contrasts the Kleinian model of the mind to the Freudian, and Wilfred Bion's contribution is discussed at some length. Within Bion's conception of psychic functioning, the model of ,dream' is highlighted and, in this regard, clarifications are sought regarding Bion's view of the unconscious. To conclude, a brief and superficial approximation to the work of Carl Jung is touched upon, although the author admits to knowing little of Jung's positions. [source] Children's Use of Syntactic and Pragmatic Knowledge in the Interpretation of Novel AdjectivesCHILD DEVELOPMENT, Issue 1 2006Gil Diesendruck In Study 1, English-speaking 3- and 4-year-olds heard a novel adjective used to label one of two objects and were asked for the referent of a different novel adjective. Children were more likely to select the unlabeled object if the two adjectives appeared prenominally (e.g., "a very DAXY dog") than as predicates (e.g., "a dog that is very DAXY"). Study 2 revealed that this response occurred only when both adjectives were prenominal. Study 3 replicated Study 1 with Hebrew-speaking 3- and 4,year-olds, even though in Hebrew both types of adjectives appear postnominally. Preschoolers understand that prenominal adjectives imply a restriction of the reference of nouns, and this knowledge motivates a contrastive pragmatic inference regarding the referents of different prenominal adjectives. [source] Teaching Language Categories and Learning About Language Categories from TeachingLINGUISTICS & LANGUAGE COMPASS (ELECTRONIC), Issue 3 2010Sachiko Yamahashi Familiar category terms, such as ,noun', ,verb', and ,adjective', are usually used in language classes. However, the application of these labels in the target language is not necessarily intuitive. English learners of Japanese often have problems with: (i) ,deverbal nouns', problems that stem from the ,noun,verb' distinction, and (ii) ,adjectives', which are divided into two types unlike English ,adjectives'. This article builds on these examples toward an analysis of Japanese involving four categories defined by the intersection of the nominative case and tense markers. The moral is that a language could be learned more accurately and readily if categories were based on such salient distinctions in the target language. [source] Exuberance, I Don't Know; Excess, I LikeARCHITECTURAL DESIGN, Issue 2 2010Hernan Diaz Alonso Abstract Hernan Diaz Alonso redefines ,excess' and ,exuberance' on his own terms. Fully au fait and comfortable with the excessive, he describes how in relation to his own work he views excess as more of a tendency or a logic, which sums up his approach; whereas he perceives the exuberant as removed from the design process and more like an ,adjective', an ,emerging quality' observed by others. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Auditory verb perception recruits motor systems in the developing brain: an fMRI investigationDEVELOPMENTAL SCIENCE, Issue 6 2009Karin Harman James This study investigated neural activation patterns during verb processing in children, using fMRI (functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging). Preschool children (aged 4,6) passively listened to lists of verbs and adjectives while neural activation was measured. Findings indicated that verbs were processed differently than adjectives, as the verbs recruited motor systems in the frontal cortex during auditory perception, but the adjectives did not. Further evidence suggested that different types of verbs activated different regions in the motor cortex. The results demonstrate that the motor system is recruited during verb perception in the developing brain, reflecting the embodied nature of language learning and processing. [source] The origins and evolution of links between word learning and conceptual organization: new evidence from 11-month-oldsDEVELOPMENTAL SCIENCE, Issue 2 2003Sandra Waxman How do infants map words to their meaning? How do they discover that different types of words (e.g. noun, adjective) refer to different aspects of the same objects (e.g. category, property)? We have proposed that (1) infants begin with a broad expectation that novel open-class words (both nouns and adjectives) highlight commonalities (both category- and property-based) among objects, and that (2) this initial expectation is subsequently fine-tuned through linguistic experience. We examine the first part of this proposal, asking whether 11-month-old infants can construe the very same set of objects (e.g. four purple animals) either as members of an object category (e.g. animals) or as embodying a salient object property (e.g. four purple things), and whether naming (with count nouns vs. adjectives) differentially influences their construals. Results support the proposal. Infants treated novel nouns and adjectives identically, mapping both types of words to both category- and property-based commonalities among objects. [source] Taxonomy and structure of the Polish personality lexiconEUROPEAN JOURNAL OF PERSONALITY, Issue 6 2007Piotr Szarota Abstract We identified 1839 person-descriptive adjectives from a Polish dictionary, and 10 judges classified those adjectives into five descriptive categories. Two hundred ninety adjectives (16 per cent) were classified by most judges as ,Dispositions' (i.e. relatively stable personality traits and abilities). We examined the structure of those 290 adjectives in self-ratings from 350 respondents. In the five-factor solution, two dimensions closely resembled Big Five Conscientiousness and Agreeableness, and two others represented rotated variants of Extraversion and Emotional Stability. The fifth factor was dominated by Intellect, containing little Imagination and no Unconventionality content. A six-factor solution closely resembled the cross-language HEXACO structure (but with ,Intellect' rather than ,Openness to Experience'). Analyses of 369 peer ratings revealed five- and six-factor solutions nearly identical to those of self-ratings. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] German lexical personality factors: relations with the HEXACO modelEUROPEAN JOURNAL OF PERSONALITY, Issue 1 2007Michael C. Ashton Abstract We correlated the scales of the HEXACO Personality Inventory (HEXACO-PI) with adjective scale markers of factors previously obtained in indigenous lexical studies of personality structure in the German language. Self-ratings obtained from a sample of 323 German participants showed a pattern of strong convergent and weak discriminant correlations, supporting the content-based interpretation of the German lexical factors in terms of the HEXACO dimensions. Notably, convergent correlations were strong for both the broader and the narrower variants of the Honesty-Humility factor as observed in German lexical studies. Also, convergent correlations for HEXACO Openness to Experience were, as expected, stronger for German adjectives describing a creative and intellectual orientation than for German adjectives describing intellectual ability. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] The cross-cultural generalizability of personality types: a Philippine studyEUROPEAN JOURNAL OF PERSONALITY, Issue 6 2005Tatyana V. Avdeyeva Abstract Research on personality types was extended to a non-Western culture, the Philippines. In two large samples of Filipino college students, cluster analyses of self-rated trait adjectives revealed interpretable three-cluster solutions (i.e. types) for each gender. The types differed on indigenous measures of ego resiliency and ego control and exhibited sensible configurations of Big Five traits, indigenous Filipino traits, and behavioural indicators. Most types were interpretable in terms of the concepts of ego resiliency and ego control of Block and Block (1980) and resembled types identified in other cultures. Two of three male and female types were fairly comparable and some types replicated across data sets. The results provided some support for the cross-cultural comparability of personality types and for typological research in general. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Taxonomy and structure of Croatian personality-descriptive adjectivesEUROPEAN JOURNAL OF PERSONALITY, Issue 2 2005Boris Mla This paper describes the development of a comprehensive taxonomy of Croatian personality-descriptive terms, organized in three studies. In the first study three judges searched through a standard dictionary of the Croatian language for person-descriptive terms. In the second study, personality-descriptive adjectives were classified by seven judges into 13 different categories of descriptors. In the third study, the 483 adjectives that the majority of judges in the second study classified as dispositions were rated for self-descriptions by 515 University of Zagreb students and for peer-descriptions by 513 students' best acquaintances. Self- and peer ratings were factor analysed separately and the Croatian emic lexical factors from both data sets were interpreted to be similar to the Big-Five factors: Agreeableness, Extraversion, Conscientiousness, Intellect, and Emotional Stability. The inspection of factor content of the Croatian emic factors and their relation to imported Big-Five measures revealed high correspondences for all five Croatian factors although the relation between the Croatian and the imported factors of Emotional Stability and Agreeableness was somewhat more complex. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] A defence of the lexical approach to the study of personality structureEUROPEAN JOURNAL OF PERSONALITY, Issue 1 2005Michael C. Ashton In recent years there have been many investigations of personality structure, and much of this research has been based on the lexical strategy for finding the major personality dimensions. However, this approach has frequently been criticized on several grounds, including concerns regarding the use of adjectives as personality variables, the use of lay observers of personality, the limited explanatory power of lexically derived personality dimensions, and the lack of any similar strategies used in other sciences. In this paper, these criticisms are addressed in detail and judged to be invalid. It is argued that the study of personality structure via the lexical approach is an important area of research. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Cognitive style: a psycholexically-derived personality-centred modelEUROPEAN JOURNAL OF PERSONALITY, Issue 2 2003John RoodenburgArticle first published online: 20 FEB 200 Cognitive style suffers from a confusing multitude of conceptualizations, and dominance by information-processing type measures. This study sought to elucidate a comprehensive and universal set of personality-centred cognitive style constructs. A grounded approach based on the psycholexical hypothesis (effective in personality modelling) was adapted, explicating cognitive styles as evident in late adolescents. Approximately 700 Australian secondary teachers generated a lexicon of 1040 style adjectives, which were consolidated into 99 key words. 596 teachers rated 1192 senior secondary students against these. After removing acquiescence and a ubiquitous good,bad-ability factor, optimum structure appears to be a spherex abridgeable as three circumplexes, reported across six factor pure and 24 blended facets. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] The structure of the French personality lexiconEUROPEAN JOURNAL OF PERSONALITY, Issue 4 2001Kathleen Boies The structure of the French personality lexicon was investigated. Self-ratings on the 388 most frequently used French personality-descriptive adjectives were obtained from 415 French-speaking people. The scree plot of eigenvalues indicated six large factors. In the varimax-rotated six-factor solution, the four largest factors, in order of size, corresponded fairly closely to the Big Five dimensions of Agreeableness, Emotional Stability, Extraversion, and Conscientiousness. The fifth factor was similar to the Honesty dimension found in several other languages. The sixth factor was defined by Imagination-related terms, but not by Intellect-related terms. Solutions involving one to five factors were also investigated and correlations between the factors that emerged from these different solutions are presented. The results are discussed in relation to other lexical studies of personality structure. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Democrats with adjectives: Linking direct and indirect measures of democratic supportEUROPEAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL RESEARCH, Issue 5 2007ANDREAS SCHEDLER Since people may entertain competing democratic ideas and ideals, however, the academic community ignores the extent to which standard questions capture citizen support for liberal democracy. To solve the validity problems associated with direct measures of democratic support, this article proposes linking them to more concrete, indirect measures of support for democratic principles and institutions. It employs the statistical technique of cluster analysis to establish this linkage. Cluster analysis permits grouping respondents in a way that is open to complex and inconsistent attitudinal profiles. It permits the identification of ,democrats with adjectives' who support democracy in the abstract, while rejecting core principles of liberal democracy. The article demonstrates the fruitfulness of this approach by drawing a map of ,illiberal democrats' in Mexico on the basis of the country's 2003 National Survey on Political Culture. [source] The role of valence in the perception of agency and communionEUROPEAN JOURNAL OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 7 2008Caterina Suitner Social judgments necessarily carry evaluative connotations that may mask other dimensions of interest. With reference to bi-dimensional models of stereotype content, we analyzed the role of valence in the study of agency and communion. Because agency and communion are both positively evaluated dimensions, we hypothesize that valence may function as a "third variable" that obscures their obverse relation. In Study 1, investigating people's lay understanding of agency and communion, ratings of 130 adjectives revealed a positive correlation between the two dimensions, unless valence was controlled for, in which case the correlation became negative. In Study 2, exemplifying the role of valence in the case of gender stereotyping, a word frequency analysis of Italian language revealed that more agentic traits were more likely to occur in masculine and more communal traits in feminine form, but again this link emerged only after controlling for valence. This research highlights the importance of controlling for valence when studying the distinct roles of agency and communion in social perception. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Towards an operationalization of the fundamental dimensions of agency and communion: Trait content ratings in five countries considering valence and frequency of word occurrenceEUROPEAN JOURNAL OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 7 2008Andrea E. Abele Despite many convergences in theorizing and research on the two fundamental dimensions of social judgment the operationalizations differ considerably across studies and possible confounds (valence, frequency of word occurrence) are not always controlled. The present study was meant as a first step towards a more standardized operationalization by providing trait words which are clearly distinct in content (agency and communion) but comparable in valence and frequency of word occurrence in written language across different countries. We created a pool of 304 trait adjectives and reduced this pool in several pretests to a list of 69 trait words. These were clearly different in content and covered a large range of valence. In the main study N,=,548 participants from five countries (Belgium, Germany, Italy, Poland and USA) rated the 69 trait words on agency, communion and valence. The results were quite consistent across countries. The trait adjectives' agency ratings and communion ratings were negatively correlated; valence was correlated with communal content, but not with agentic content; word frequency was barely related to the content ratings. Cluster analyses suggest four clusters of trait words. Based on these findings we propose sets of agentic and communal trait words which do not differ in valence and word frequency. These item-sets can serve as a first step towards a standardized operationalization of the two fundamental content dimensions across languages. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] The structure of perceived qualities of situationsEUROPEAN JOURNAL OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 6 2005John A. Edwards Situations can be seen as having attributes or qualities in much the same way as people have traits. The structure of people's perceptions of these situation qualities was explored. A comprehensive list of adjectives that might describe situations was generated, and people rated situations using samples of the words. Across several samples of words and participants and several analytic methods, four factors show up regularly (positivity, negativity, productivity, and ease of negotiation). In a second study, it was shown that these factors predict the way in which people freely sort situations. The conceptual nature of these factors and of situation qualities is discussed, with particular emphasis on how people's goals and perceived outcomes influence their perceptions of situations. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Ethnic minority identity and group context: self-descriptions, acculturation attitudes and group evaluations in an intra- and intergroup situationEUROPEAN JOURNAL OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 6 2002Maykel Verkuyten In an experimental questionnaire study among Chinese participants living in the Netherlands, it was found that self-descriptions, acculturation attitudes and ingroup evaluation were affected by the comparative group context. Following self-categorization theory, different predictions were tested and supported. Self-ratings on trait adjectives systematically differed between an intragroup (Chinese) and an intergroup (Chinese versus Dutch) context. Furthermore, ethnic self-categorization turned out to be related to self-descriptions in the intragroup context, whereas ethnic self-esteem showed an effect on self-descriptions in the intergroup context. Acculturation attitudes and ingroup favouritism were also affected by the comparative context. In the intergroup context, participants were more strongly in favour of heritage culture maintenance and reported higher ingroup favouritism than in the intragroup context. It is concluded that studies on ethnic minorities should consider the important and often neglected intragroup processes and comparisons in addition to the familiar minority,majority group comparisons. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Acquisition of Spanish Gender Agreement in Two Learning Contexts: Study Abroad and At HomeFOREIGN LANGUAGE ANNALS, Issue 2 2010Christina Isabelli-García Abstract: The goal of this study is to describe the acquisition rate for gender acquisition in Spanish and to show whether individual variability and language contact may affect this rate. The participants were intermediate second language Spanish (first language English) learners in the study abroad and at-home contexts over a 4-month period. The participants received grammaticality judgment tests coded for morphological class of the modified noun as well as attributive and predicative adjectives. Data were also collected on social behavior and language contact in Spanish and English in order to explain data outcome. The findings suggest that no difference exists between the two learning contexts and that social behavior and language contact abroad have minimal influence on acquisition rate. [source] Solicitudes in American EnglishINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF APPLIED LINGUISTICS, Issue 1 2003Susan Meredith Burt Using a corpus of about 300 ethnographically collected tokens, this article discusses the form and function of the speech act ,solicitude', the act of speaking aloud a wish for something good for the addressee, in American English. Non-conventionalized solicitudes are extremely formulaic, making overwhelming use of imperative form, although without clear directive force. The single most common formula is the (you) have a+ Adj + NP formula, as in (You) Have a good day. Analysis of the adjectives and noun phrases used in this formula shows that solicitudes tend to convey only temporary good wishes to the addressee. Such strongly formulaic solicitudes, however, are more likely to be given by speakers who are socially distant from the addressee, while socially closer speakers seem to make use of less frequently used formulae to create more individualized utterances. [source] | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||