This volume considers nouns in sign languages and in the evanescent performances of homesigners (and gesturers), which exhibit considerable iconic motivation. Originally published in Gesture Vol. ...13:3 (2013).
This book is a detailed study of the possessive semantic space within the framework of construction grammar. Using corpus data from Old Church Slavonic and Old Russian, the book uses semantic maps to ...document the relationship between form and meaning in a set of semantically closely related adnominal possessive constructions, and to trace their diachronic development. Hanne Martine Eckhoff, University of Oslo, Norway.
We developed emotionally positive, neutral, and negative noun phrases by adding different modifiers to identical nouns. First, we explored modifiers to add to nouns to change emotional valences. ...Second, we assessed the subjective emotional valences and the subjective frequency of contact of the developed noun phrases. Third, we examined the differences between the mental images that formed from the positive, neutral, and negative noun phrases. The contents of the mental images formed from the noun phrases developed in this study did not differ among the positive, neutral, and negative noun phrases compared with those in a previous study. An incidental recall experiment was conducted to assess whether emotions could be evoked by the presentation of the positive and negative noun phrases compared with the neutral phrases. Nouns in the positive and negative noun phrases were recalled more frequently than those in the neutral noun phrases, suggesting that the positive and negative noun phrases evoked emotions that resulted in an increase in recall performance. We propose that these noun phrases could serve as stimuli in studies on emotion, memory, and mental imagery.
Verbal Classifiers in Haida Hori, Hirofumi
GENGO KENKYU (Journal of the Linguistic Society of Japan),
09/2022, Letnik:
162
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Haida, a language isolate spoken in the northwestern coast of North America, uses classifiers on verbs to denote the semantic category of the referent of a noun that functions as the subject of an ...intransitive clause or the object of a transitive clause. The present study shows that the functions of Haida classifiers can be roughly divided into static and dynamic in terms of the degree of dependence on the contexts in which they occur. The former function relates to noun classification, in which classifiers refer to inherent properties of the syntactically associated noun, whereas in the latter function, classifiers denote the temporal state of the noun referent or the state or manner of an action to add some meaning to the verbal root. Thus, Haida classifiers can be considered distinctive in that they cover a wide range of functions, from typical noun classifications to various other kinds of functions.
The article presents the results of a study of functional, semantic and chronological issues concerning Middle English occupational terms with Scandinavian word stems. The semantic group under ...investigation consists of 184 words, comprising 24.5% of the total number of loan-blends within the semantic group of Middle English occupational terms, and 8% of the total 2,417 Middle English occupational terms. 97 loan-blends with Scandinavian word stems were revealed on the basis of proper names. They constitute 13% of all Middle English occupational terms. a predominance of the function of identification and a very active usage with the aim of identifying people in medieval society prove loan-blends with Scandinavian word stems to be very popular. The data obtained in the study prove the very high level of popularity of Scandinavian borrowings in Middle English, as well as a prevalence of the names of artisans among all the semantic groups of the word stems. We noted an increase in the number of derivatives first attested in the 13th and the 14th centuries, whereas a decrease in the process of word formation on the basis of Scandinavian borrowings is noticed in the 15th century.
This study examined abstracts for a British Association for Applied Linguistics conference and a Sociolinguistics Symposium, to define the genre of conference abstracts in terms of vague language, ...specifically universal general nouns (e.g. people) and research general nouns (e.g. results), and to discover if the language used reflected the level of completeness of the abstract (whether the ldata was collected or analysed). It was found that half the authors had not completed the analysis and some had not finished collecting their data, and that the abstracts mostly consisted of introduction and method moves. Vague language is part of the conference abstract genre as used by all authors. The function of general nouns appeared to be a matter of ‘convenience’ or ‘anticipation’. Abstracts of less complete research contained open references to the incompleteness of the research, but the universal general nouns implication, resource, thing and problem appeared to ‘disguise’ the incompleteness, as did the clusters of research general nouns with no details about the research. It is considered that EAP lecturers guiding early career researchers will benefit from this description of vague language in the conference abstract genre.
Conference abstracts of less complete research contain more research general nouns (e.g. analysis, data, discussion) than those of completed research. They tend to be used without expansion or explanation and in clusters, as in
“Thus, the poster will include formal aspects such as brief descriptions of the participants and their communities of practice, the methodology used and the data collection procedures and analyses, as well as preliminary results and implications for both theory development (gender relevancy) and methodological issues.”
Percentage of general nouns out of all words in each CA type and levels of completeness. Display omitted
► Half the authors had not completed their analysis; many had not collected their data. ► Authors of less complete research devoted little space to results and discussion. ► They used clusters of non-modified non-cohesive general nouns. ► They used them as a matter convenience and to disguise their incomplete research.
The Noun Phrase in English Ho-Cheong Leung, Alex; Wurff, Wim van der
2018, 2018-06-18, Letnik:
246
eBook
Building on a substantial earlier literature, the chapters in this volume further advance knowledge and understanding of properties of the noun phrase in English.
Aims and objectives/purpose/research questions:
The connection between language contact and the bilingual speaker goes back to foundational authors in the field of contact linguistics. Yet there is ...very little work that combines these two levels in a single study. In this paper, we propose a unified approach to language contact by testing the role of cross-language priming (CLP) on contact-induced change at the level of complex noun phrases (NPs).
Design/methodology/approach:
We conducted three studies with different types of data. In Study 1, we analyse the Romani Morpho-Syntax database to identify word order preferences in Romani dialects from different countries. In Study 2, we examine a corpus of interviews in Romani from Romania. In Study 3, we conduct an experiment to test short-term priming in adjective (ADJ)/noun (N) order from Romanian to Romani and within Romani.
Data and analysis:
In Study 1, we examine the word order in approximately 3000 NPs from 119 Romani speakers. In Study 2, we analyse a speech corpus of 9400 words from four elderly Romani–Romanian bilinguals. In Study 3, 90 Romani–Romanian bilinguals participated in a priming experiment. We used multinomial mixed-effects logistic regression, Bayesian models and Random Forests to analyse the experimental results.
Findings/conclusions:
Study 1 shows that Romani speakers from Romania stand out for their frequent use of postnominal ADJs. Study 2 confirms these uses in free speech. Study 3 reveals significant CLP effects, whereby speakers favour the use of determiner (DET)–N–ADJ order in Romani immediately following a noun with a suffixed determiner (NDET)–ADJ sentence read in Romanian.
Originality:
Our study is the first to demonstrate CLP effects in ADJ/N order.
Significance/implications:
We illustrate a unified approach to language contact by introducing theoretical and methodological advances from the field of bilingualism into the study of contact-induced change.
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