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Linguistic Theory (linguistic + theory)

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Humanities and Social Sciences75%

Selected Abstracts

Connecting linguistic description and language teaching: native and learner use of existential there1

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF APPLIED LINGUISTICS, Issue 2 2006
Ignacio Palacios-Martínez
construcciones existenciales; corpus de estudiantes; enseñanza de lenguas; lingüística contrastiva; lingüística de corpus This article emerges from the need to connect linguistic theory and language teaching to find concrete solutions to problems Spanish students confront when learning English. This study looks at existential there constructions taken from the following native and non-native written English corpora: the International Corpus of Learner English and the Santiago University Learner of English Cor-pus for the non-native set, and the Louvain Corpus of Native English Essays, Biber et al. (1999) and a subcorpus of the BNC for the native English group. This contrastive study reveals important differences in the use of there constructions as regards their frequency, structural complexity, polarity and pragmatic value. Important implications for the presentation and the pedagogical treatment of the there constructions can be derived from the results. El presente artículo surge de la necesidad de conectar la teoría lingüística y la práctica pedagógica, tratando de encontrar soluciones concretas a problemas con los que se enfrentan alumnos españoles de inglés como lengua extranjera. Este trabajo estudia las construcciones existenciales con there (CTs) a partir de los siguientes corpus de textos escritos de hablantes nativos y no nativos: International Corpus of Learner English y Santiago University Learner of English Corpus para los no nativos, y Louvain Corpus of Native English Essays, Biber et al. (1999) y un subcorpus del BNC para los nativos. Este estudio contrastivo constata diferencias importantes en el uso de las CTs relativas a su frecuencia, complejidad estructural, polaridad y valor pragmático. De todos estos resultados se derivan importantes implicaciones para la presentación y tratamiento pedagógico de las CTs. [source]

Unexpected but authentic use of an ethnically,marked dialect

JOURNAL OF SOCIOLINGUISTICS, Issue 4 2002
Julie Sweetland
Recent work on language crossing in the U.S. has examined the temporary appropriation of African American Vernacular English by white youth in an effort to participate in the current popularity and prestige of hip,hop culture, or in order to highlight racial boundaries. While such verbal behavior probably encompasses most white use of AAVE, it is not the only way in which whites (or other non,blacks) can use the variety. This paper presents a case study of the language of a 23 year old white female who makes consistent use of many distinctive linguistic features associated with AAVE. I argue that the interaction of ideologies of race, class, localness and language allow her to be considered an ingroup member despite her biographical race. This suggests that there is a tension between academic linguistic theory and actual speaker practice in assigning authenticity to individuals, and I conclude that language ideologies and other forms of qualitative evidence should be taken into account by sociolinguists looking at the link between language and race. [source]

Subjects: Grammatical Relations, Grammatical Functions and Functional Categories

LINGUISTICS & LANGUAGE COMPASS (ELECTRONIC), Issue 9 2010
Ileana Paul
This paper presents an overview of how the notion of ,subject' has been defined in linguistic theory. Although the term developed out of Artistotelian logic, its use has been narrowed to refer to the grammatical relation (or function). Over the past 50 years, the definition of subject and its universality have been the source of much debate. Broadly Chomskian approaches claim that grammatical relations such as subject are not primitives of the grammar and can be derived from phrase structure. As such, testing for the subject involves constituency tests (more recent versions of Chomskian syntax, however, abstract away from constituency). Other approaches (Relational Grammar, Lexical-Function Grammar) posit grammatical relations as primitives of the grammar that are not necessarily related to constituency. And at the other extreme, certain linguists argue that subjects are not found in all languages and therefore the notion is not one of interest (e.g. Role and Reference Grammar). This paper reviews the various analyses of subjects and considers in some detail how the notion of subject has evolved within the Chomskian framework. [source]

The Role of Prominence Information in the Real-Time Comprehension of Transitive Constructions: A Cross-Linguistic Approach

LINGUISTICS & LANGUAGE COMPASS (ELECTRONIC), Issue 1 2009
Ina Bornkessel-Schlesewsky
Approaches to language processing have traditionally been formulated with reference to general cognitive concepts (e.g. working memory limitations) or have based their representational assumptions on concepts from generative linguistic theory (e.g. structure determines interpretation). Thus, many well-established generalisations about language that have emerged from cross-linguistic/typological research have not as yet had a major influence in shaping ideas about online processing. Here, we examine the viability of using typologically motivated concepts to account for phenomena in online language comprehension. In particular, we focus on the comprehension of simple transitive sentences (i.e. sentences involving two arguments/event participants) and cross-linguistic similarities and differences in how they are processed. We argue that incremental argument interpretation in these structures is best explained with reference to a range of cross-linguistically motivated, hierarchically ordered information types termed ,prominence scales' (e.g. animacy, definiteness/specificity, case marking and linear order). We show that the assumption of prominence-based argument processing can capture a wide range of recent neurocognitive findings, as well as deriving well-known behavioural results. [source]

MORAL CONTEXTUALISM AND MORAL RELATIVISM

THE PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY, Issue 232 2008
Berit Brogaard
Moral relativism provides a compelling explanation of linguistic data involving ordinary moral expressions like ,right' and ,wrong'. But it is a very radical view. Because relativism relativizes sentence truth to contexts of assessment it forces us to revise standard linguistic theory. If, however, no competing theory explains all of the evidence, perhaps it is time for a paradigm shift. However, I argue that a version of moral contextualism can account for the same data as relativism without relativizing sentence truth to contexts of assessment. This version of moral contextualism is thus preferable to relativism on methodological grounds. [source]

NUMBER WORDS AND ONTOLOGICAL COMMITMENT

THE PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY, Issue 226 2007
Berit Brogaard
With the aid of some results from current linguistic theory, I examine a recent anti-Fregean line with respect to hybrid talk of numbers and ordinary things, such as ,The number of moons of Jupiter is four'. I conclude that the anti-Fregean line with respect to these sentences is indefensible. [source]

Trope Control: The Costs and Benefits of Metaphor Unreliability in the Description of Empirical Phenomena,

BRITISH JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT, Issue 2 2004
John Ramsay
The process of communicating and interpreting the meaning of metaphors in business writing is deeply unreliable. This stems from the structure of metaphors in which some of the characteristics of a source domain are transferred to a target domain. The precise selection of characteristics is made by the reader rather than the author of the metaphor, thus creating uncertainty of meaning. Although there are some benefits stemming from the inherent ambiguity of metaphor, the unreliability of the trope not only makes it impossible to choose between competing metaphors, but may distort our view of reality and thus lead to poor management decision-making. Moreover, the unreliability of the interpretation process is so pronounced that some authors have attempted to reject the use of metaphor entirely. However, this paper argues that although it is impossible to avoid employing metaphor, contrary to the conventional wisdom in this subject area, it is possible to improve meaning reliability. Drawing on linguistic theory to explain the recommendations, and illustrative examples from business literature and practice, the papers offers several recommendations for so doing that may be applied throughout the Business and Management field. [source]

Statistical models of syntax learning and use

COGNITIVE SCIENCE - A MULTIDISCIPLINARY JOURNAL, Issue 3 2002
Mark Johnson
Abstract This paper shows how to define probability distributions over linguistically realistic syntactic structures in a way that permits us to define language learning and language comprehension as statistical problems. We demonstrate our approach using lexical-functional grammar (LFG), but our approach generalizes to virtually any linguistic theory. Our probabilistic models are maximum entropy models. In this paper we concentrate on statistical inference procedures for learning the parameters that define these probability distributions. We point out some of the practical problems that make straightforward ways of estimating these distributions infeasible, and develop a "pseudo-likelihood" estimation procedure that overcomes some of these problems. This method raises interesting questions concerning the nature of the data available to a language learner and the modularity of language learning and processing. [source]