QP for indefiniteness: With special reference to Sinhala and Chinese
Publication date: Available online 6 January 2020Source: LinguaAuthor(s): Jiajuan Xiong, Chu-Ren HuangAbstractThis paper proposes a QP account for indefiniteness in a range of languages, with QP being situated between DP and NumP. This proposal differs from the traditional DP framework crucially in two aspects: (i) definiteness and indefiniteness are expressed by DP and QP, respectively, and their co-occurrence is theoretically allowed, under due circumstances; (ii) both [Spec, DP] and [Spec, QP] can serve as the landing sites for an XP under a wh-movement, which can thus be associated with both definiteness and indefinite...
Source: Lingua - January 8, 2020 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research
Post-head negation in Tujia
Publication date: Available online 24 December 2019Source: LinguaAuthor(s): Man Lu, Jeroen van de Weijer, Zhengguang LiuAbstractThis paper aims to provide a comprehensive description of the negation system of Tujia, an endangered Sino-Tibetan language spoken in south-central China. There are five negators, which display a mixed pre-head and post-head word order. Simple verb negation is usually post-head, but in existential constructions the negator precedes the verb, while in imperative constructions negation can either follow or precede the head. We argue that there is only one original negator, and the other forms result...
Source: Lingua - December 24, 2019 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research
“Nordic Cool” and writing system mimicry in global linguistic landscapes
This study explores how Nordic orthographic features are capitalised on in international marketing to elevate the images of various brands. Nordic words and graphemes can be used to evoke positive associations that the consumer may have relating to the region (e.g. associations of ‘nature’, ‘simplicity’, or even ‘luxury’), or simply to index foreigness, globalism, or exclusivity (Jaworski, 2015a). (Source: Lingua)
Source: Lingua - December 24, 2019 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research
Editorial Board
Publication date: January 2020Source: Lingua, Volume 233Author(s): (Source: Lingua)
Source: Lingua - December 21, 2019 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research
Reformulating via conceptual translation: What agnation patterns in American Economic student academic writing can reveal for EAP teachers and students
Publication date: Available online 18 December 2019Source: LinguaAuthor(s): Ning Liu, Derek IrwinAbstractOne goal of discipline-specific academic assignments is translating observations of the actual world into disciplinary explanations. Students thereby prove that they can connect sophisticated field knowledge with general experience. To contribute linguistic evidence regarding how this process works, the present research examines particular patterns of agnation (via Halliday and Matthiessen, 2014, p. 49): the ways in which one semantic component of the text is related to another one, even if the two components do not nec...
Source: Lingua - December 19, 2019 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research
On dissolving the A/A-bar distinction and the status of preverbal DPs in NSLs: A reply to Alahdal
Publication date: Available online 18 December 2019Source: LinguaAuthor(s): Marwan JarrahAbstractIn this paper, we first argue against Alahdal's (2018) account of feature inheritance of the Edge Feature (EF) from C0 to T0 in null subject languages (NSLs), including (Modern Standard) Arabic. Alahdal proposes that Spec,TP becomes a position that exhibits A/A-bar properties in Arabic when T0 inherits EF from C0. We explore the defects of this argument, highlighting its conceptual and empirical inconsistencies. We also show that this argument suffers from internal problems which speak against its theoretical validity. Second, ...
Source: Lingua - December 19, 2019 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research
Transitivity-ergativity perspectives on causation in legal texts: A contrastive study of Arabic and English website terms of service
Publication date: Available online 18 December 2019Source: LinguaAuthor(s): Akila Sellami-BakloutiAbstractThe description of grammatical systems of languages constitutes one of the major objectives of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL). The present study investigates the system of causation in English and Arabic in a contrastive perspective, and aims to show that in addition to typological differences, the lexicogrammatical realisation of causation may be activated by contextual factors. To this end, the instances of causation in three parallel corpora of website Terms of Service (TOS) are explored from transitivity and...
Source: Lingua - December 18, 2019 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research
Metalanguage and subjectivity in indirect reports
This study attempts to show that Persian reporters, just like English speakers, are able to indicate their divergence from the original utterances in indirect reporting. The metalanguage comments in the Persian indirect reports highlighted situations where reporters monitored (i.e. self-regulated) themselves by changing the verbs of saying (e.g. ‘said’, ‘claimed’, etc.), assessing the appropriateness of the discourse and communicating uncertainty. We also discuss a number of examples where there was disagreement in the Persian indirect reports (the original speakers did not accept the report to be genuine) because ...
Source: Lingua - December 18, 2019 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research
Gender identification in Chinese names
Publication date: Available online 13 December 2019Source: LinguaAuthor(s): Jeroen van de Weijer, Guangyuan Ren, Joost van de Weijer, Weiyun Wei, Yumeng WangAbstractIn this paper we discuss a number of factors that bear on the question if a Chinese given name is more likely to refer to a female or a male. In some cases this can be determined (with some degree of confidence) – in others it cannot. We identify the relevant factors as 1) gender-identifying characters or radicals; 2) sound symbolism and 3) reduplication. We consider the relations between these factors, and test our predictions in a psycholinguistic experimen...
Source: Lingua - December 14, 2019 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research
A top-down, parser-friendly approach to pied-piping and operator movement
This article explores the phenomenon of pied-piping within the context of two assumptions. The first assumption is that a realistic natural language parser must assign incoming words incrementally into the syntactic representation as it is built during the parsing process. The second assumption is that this process makes use of Merge, the core recursive operation in syntax. These assumptions lead us to consider an extension of the standard theory of Merge, in which phrase structure is derived from a linear string of words in a left-to-right/top-down fashion (e.g. Phillips, 1996, Phillips, 2003). We propose a generalization...
Source: Lingua - December 11, 2019 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research
A novel multidimensional analysis of writing styles of editorials from China Daily and The New York Times
This study provides novel insights into peculiar and unique writing styles in both American and Chinese English persuasive writing. (Source: Lingua)
Source: Lingua - December 1, 2019 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research
Do teenagers know how to use connectives from the written mode?
Publication date: Available online 30 November 2019Source: LinguaAuthor(s): Sandrine Zufferey, Pascal GygaxAbstractConnectives are complex lexical items for children, who do not even master connectives used frequently in speech until the end of their primary school years. In this paper, we assess the ability of two groups of 16-year-olds from two different academic levels (i.e., high school vs. professional school students), as well as a group of university students, to use four French connectives bound to the written mode in a constrained production task. These connectives were chosen to assess three potential sources of ...
Source: Lingua - November 30, 2019 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research
The use of genitive citations in academic writing
Publication date: Available online 26 November 2019Source: LinguaAuthor(s): Hongyan Zhao, Hongwei ZhanAbstractCitation, an indispensable feature of academic English writing, is often regarded as an indication of the degree of sophistication in academic writing. Building on previous studies that have shown the importance of integral citation in academic writing, this study investigates one of the subcategories of integral citation: “genitive citation” (e.g., Smith's study, where ’s denotes a possessive relationship: the study is in Smith's possession, so Smith is the possessor, study is the possessee). Based on a corp...
Source: Lingua - November 27, 2019 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research
The development on transposed-letter effect in English word recognition: Evidence from Late unbalanced Chinese-English bilinguals
Publication date: Available online 26 November 2019Source: LinguaAuthor(s): Yu Chen, Huan Liu, Miao Yu, Jianwu DangAbstractThe present study examined the orthographic processing of English visual word recognition in adult Chinese-speaking English learners under the framework of the multiple-route model of reading development. Two groups of adult learners with high and low English proficiency finished a forward-masked lexical decision task. The results showed a complicated scenario on transposed-letter effects, implying that the late unbalanced Chinese-English bilinguals with low English proficiency still needed to adopt a ...
Source: Lingua - November 27, 2019 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research
Editorial Board
Publication date: December 2019Source: Lingua, Volume 232Author(s): (Source: Lingua)
Source: Lingua - November 16, 2019 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research
