A paradox at the heart of language acquisition research is that, to achieve adult-like competence, children must acquire the ability to generalize verbs into non-attested structures, while avoiding utterances that are deemed ungrammatical by native speakers. For example, children must learn that, to denote the reversal of an action, un- can be added to many verbs, but not all (e.g., roll/unroll; close/*unclose). This study compared theoretical accounts of how this is done. Children aged 5–6 (N = 18), 9–10 (N = (...) 18), and adults (N = 18) rated the acceptability of un- prefixed forms of 48 verbs (and, as a control, bare forms). Across verbs, a negative correlation was observed between the acceptability of ungrammatical un- prefixed forms (e.g., *unclose) and the frequency of (a) the bare form and (b) alternative forms (e.g., open), supporting the entrenchment and pre-emption hypotheses, respectively. Independent ratings of the extent to which verbs instantiate the semantic properties characteristic of a hypothesized semantic cryptotype for un- prefixation were a significant positive predictor of acceptability, for all age groups. The relative importance of each factor differed for attested and unattested un- forms and also varied with age. The findings are interpreted in the context of a new hybrid account designed to incorporate the three factors of entrenchment, pre-emption, and verb semantics. (shrink)

General extenders are phrases like 'or something', 'and everything', 'and things ', 'and stuff ', and 'and so on'. Although they are an everyday feature of spoken language, are crucial in successful interpersonal communication, and have multiple functions in discourse, they have so far gone virtually unnoticed in linguistics. This pioneering work provides a comprehensive description of this new linguistic category. It offers new insights into ongoing changes in contemporary English, the effect of grammaticalization, novel uses as associative plural (...) markers and indicators of intertextuality, and the metapragmatic role of extenders in interaction. The forms and functions of general extenders are presented clearly and accessibly, enabling students to understand a number of different frameworks of analysis in discourse-pragmatic studies. From an applied perspective, the book presents a description of translation equivalents, an analysis of second language variation, and practical exercises for teaching second language learners of English. (shrink)

I n t r o d u c t i o n This volume contains papers on general linguistics written by Hungarian scholars. The term 'general linguistics' is not easy to define. Is a paper on Hungarian at the same time a study in general linguistics? Certainly not.

Launched in 1920 by C K Ogden and others as the successor to the Cambridge Magazine , Psyche occupied a unique place for over 30 years as a journal of general and linguistic psychology. Committed from the outset to keeping readers abreast of developments in the burgeoning fields of experimental, theoretical, and applied psychology, Psyche provided not only systematic reporting in these domains but set itself the task of stimulating research of high quality by the critical thrust of its (...) editorial stance. In addition to full-length articles, Psyche featured lively correspondence and discussion, a regular chronicle of research in the US and on the continent, a comprehensive survey of current literature, and regular reports from the meetings and congresses of associations and societies. I A Richards, E J Dingwall and Whately Smith were among those who added their regular contributions to editorials and features by C K Ogden. (shrink)

Wittgenstein famously remarks that ‘the meaning of a word is its use’ (PI §43). Whether or not one views this as gesturing at a ‘theory’ of meaning, or instead as aiming primarily at dissuading us from certain misconceptions of language that are a source of puzzlement, it is clear that Wittgenstein held that for certain purposes the meaning of an expression could profitably be characterised as its use. Throughout his later writings, however, Wittgenstein’s appeal to the notion of use pulls (...) in two directions. In several places, Wittgenstein seems to connect the notion of an expression’s meaning with that of use in the sense of usage or practice. More specifically, he suggests that for an expression to possess meaning is for there to be a practice of employing it according to certain rules. ‘That’, he tells us, ‘is why there exists a correspondence between the concepts “rule” and “meaning”’ (OC §62; cf. PG 68; PO 51; RFM VI §28; VW 103). Indeed, Wittgenstein goes so far as to say, ‘The rule-governed nature of our languages permeates our life’ (RC §303). Call the view that the meaning of an expression is determined by a general principle governing its use, rulism. (shrink)

The question motivating my investigation is: Are the basic philosophical principles underlying the "core" system of contemporary logic exhausted by the standard version? In particular, is the accepted narrow construal of the notion "logical term" justified? ;As a point of comparison I refer to systems of 1st-order logic with generalized quantifiers developed by mathematicians and linguists . Based on an analysis of the Tarskian conception of the role of logic I show that the standard division of terms into logical and (...) extra-logical is partly arbitrary. I argue that the semantic principles of Tarskian logic allow any higher order mathematical predicate or relation to function as a logical term in a 1st-order system, provided it is introduced in the right way into the syntactic-semantic apparatus. ;Formally, I propose a new, "constructive", semantic characterization of logical terms. A logical term is defined by a function which, given a model, "shows" how to construct relations, sets, or n-tuples of individuals which satisfy it. I discuss the linguistic applicability of the extended logic and bring numerous examples. ;One chapter is devoted to branching quantification--a non-standard logico-linguistic construction obtained by affixing a non-linear, partially-ordered quantifier-prefix to a well-formed formula. Although standard branching quantifiers were given a complete account by Henkin and Walkoe, it is not altogether clear what the meaning of branching generalized quantifiers is. I propose a new analysis of the generalized branching prefix which extends the existent, partial, definitions due to Barwise, and I develop a generalization leading to a "family" of branching structures. ;In conclusion I discuss the philosophical impact of the generalized conception of logic on such issues as the logicist thesis, the interaction between mathematics and logic, ontological commitment via logic, metaphysics and logical semantics. (shrink)

The founder of modern linguistics, Ferdinand de Saussure inaugurated semiology, structuralism, and deconstruction and made possible the work of Jacques Derrida, Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, and Jacques Lacan, thus enabling the development of French feminism, gender studies, New Historicism, and postcolonialism. Based on Saussure's lectures, _Course in General Linguistics_ (1916) traces the rise and fall of the historical linguistics in which Saussure was trained, the synchronic or structural linguistics with which he replaced it, and the new look of diachronic (...) linguistics that followed this change. Most important, Saussure presents the principles of a new linguistic science that includes the invention of semiology, or the theory of the "signifier," the "signified," and the "sign" that they combine to produce. This is the first critical edition of _Course in General Linguistics_ to appear in English and restores Wade Baskin's original translation of 1959, in which the terms "signifier" and "signified" are introduced into English in this precise way. Baskin renders Saussure clearly and accessibly, allowing readers to experience his shift of the theory of reference from mimesis to performance and his expansion of poetics to include all media, including the life sciences and environmentalism. An introduction situates Saussure within the history of ideas and describes the history of scholarship that made _Course in General Linguistics_ legendary. New endnotes enlarge Saussure's contexts to include literary criticism, cultural studies, and philosophy. (shrink)

Linguistic justice is about institutions distributing material and symbolic resources fairly when they are faced with linguistic diversity. However, no theory of linguistic justice has developed a systematic and comprehensive account of the moral dilemmas that take place in interpersonal linguistic relationships, in particular the power dynamics leading to (linguistic) domination. The aim of this article is to start building a general theory of linguistic domination, one that offers new conceptual tools for both empirical and normative analyses of linguistically (...) diverse societies. Using the republican tradition of thought, I argue that there is linguistic domination whenever someone is subject to the uncontrolled capacity for interference over their linguistic uses, ideology and acquisition by another agent. This article tests under what conditions this phenomenon takes place and the parties involved in it (both in terms of individuals and political institutions). (shrink)

The founder of modern linguistics, Ferdinand de Saussure inaugurated semiology, structuralism, and deconstruction and made possible the work of Jacques Derrida, Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, and Jacques Lacan, thus enabling the development of French feminism, gender studies, New Historicism, and postcolonialism. Based on Saussure's lectures, _Course in General Linguistics_ traces the rise and fall of the historical linguistics in which Saussure was trained, the synchronic or structural linguistics with which he replaced it, and the new look of diachronic linguistics (...) that followed this change. Most important, Saussure presents the principles of a new linguistic science that includes the invention of semiology, or the theory of the "signifier," the "signified," and the "sign" that they combine to produce. This is the first critical edition of _Course in General Linguistics_ to appear in English and restores Wade Baskin's original translation of 1959, in which the terms "signifier" and "signified" are introduced into English in this precise way. Baskin renders Saussure clearly and accessibly, allowing readers to experience his shift of the theory of reference from mimesis to performance and his expansion of poetics to include all media, including the life sciences and environmentalism. An introduction situates Saussure within the history of ideas and describes the history of scholarship that made _Course in General Linguistics_ legendary. New endnotes enlarge Saussure's contexts to include literary criticism, cultural studies, and philosophy. (shrink)

Journal Name: Semiotica Issue: Ahead of print.

People are generally more accurate at categorizing objects at the basic level (e.g., dog) than at more general, superordinate categories (e.g., animal). Recent research has suggested that this basic‐level advantage emerges from the linguistic‐distributional and sensorimotor relationship between a category concept and object concept, but the proposed mechanisms have not been subject to a formal computational test. In this paper, we present a computational model of category verification that allows linguistic distributional information and sensorimotor experience to interact in a (...) grounded implementation of a full‐size adult conceptual system. In simulations across multiple datasets, we demonstrate that the model performs the task of category verification at a level comparable to human participants, and—critically—that its operation naturally gives rise to the basic‐level‐advantage phenomenon. That is, concepts are easier to categorize when there is a high degree of overlap in sensorimotor experience and/or linguistic distributional knowledge between category and member concepts, and the basic‐level advantage emerges as an overall behavioral artifact of this linguistic and sensorimotor overlap. Findings support the linguistic–sensorimotor preparation account of the basic‐level advantage and, more broadly, linguistic–sensorimotor theories of the conceptual system. (shrink)

The study explores the degree to which readers can use their previous linguistic knowledge, which goes beyond the immediate evidence in the input, to create mental representations of new words and how the employment of this knowledge may reduce the fuzziness of the new representations. Using self-paced reading, initial representations of novel identical forms with different grammatical functions were compared in native German speakers and advanced L2 German learners with L1 Czech. The results reveal that although both groups can employ (...) general knowledge about German grammar when establishing new representations, the L1 native speakers outperform the L2 learners: Their new representations have more precise structure and are better differentiated from related representations with respect to their grammatical information. Modeling consequences of these findings are discussed in the context of the Ontogenesis Model of the L2 Lexical Representation and the Fuzzy Lexical Representation Hypothesis. (shrink)

Today’s textualist Supreme Court draws a bright line between essential “linguistic” interpretive canons and suspect ���substantive” canons. This Article’s thesis is that the venerable linguistic/substantive dichotomy is false. We present the first empirical study of whether ordinary people (N = 1,520) understand rules in line with some of law’s substantive canons. The study supports that some substantive canons represent valid linguistic generalizations about how ordinary people understand rules’ meaning. For example, the presumption against retroactivity is usually justified by values like (...) fairness, but it also best reflects ordinary readers’ default understanding of rules’ meanings. -/- In an age of textualism, this argument has direct practical implications. Interpreters committed to the ordinary reader should reconsider whether rules that have been traditionally described as “substantive canons” might also be linguistic ones. The article’s analysis also puts pressure on textualists to better justify their recent embrace of purely substantive canons, like the new “major questions” canon. Most broadly, the Article makes progress on a longstanding philosophical debate about facts and values in interpretation. Beyond the exclusively linguistic canons and the exclusively substantive canons, there is an important but overlooked category: The linguistic and substantive canons. (shrink)

Wittgenstein famously remarks that ‘the meaning of a word is its use’ (PI §43). Whether or not one views this as gesturing at a ‘theory’ of meaning, or instead as aiming primarily at dissuading us from certain misconceptions of language that are a source of puzzlement, it is clear that Wittgenstein held that for certain purposes the meaning of an expression could profitably be characterised as its use. Throughout his later writings, however, Wittgenstein’s appeal to the notion of use pulls (...) in two directions. In several places, Wittgenstein seems to connect the notion of an expression’s meaning with that of use in the sense of usage or practice. More specifically, he suggests that for an expression to possess meaning is for there to be a practice of employing it according to certain rules. ‘That’, he tells us, ‘is why there exists a correspondence between the concepts “rule” and “meaning”’ (OC §62; cf. PG 68; PO 51; RFM VI §28; VW 103). Indeed, Wittgenstein goes so far as to say, ‘The rule-governed nature of our languages permeates our life’ (RC §303). Call the view that the meaning of an expression is determined by a general principle governing its use, rulism. (shrink)

B a c k g r o u n d. The article is devoted to the analysis of the key directions of the study of the possible influence of the specifics of Chinese language culture on the content and nature of intellectual discourse, which is recognized as philosophical. Logic and ontology are the key areas of analysis of the possible influence of linguistic determinants on the intellectual discourse of China. Three main topics that attract the attention of researchers are the (...) structure of judgment, the semantics of lexical units, and the specificity of the pragmatics of the Chinese language. M e t h o d s. The author applied general scientific methods of analysis, synthesis, comparison and description of the works of researchers of Chinese philosophy, which justify and argue the fruitfulness of studying the peculiarities of Chinese language to explain the reasons of the fundamental difference between the problems actualized in the history of Chinese philosophy and those that formed the basis of the development of the history of philosophy in the Western world. R e s u l t s. It is generally accepted that for the worldview of representatives of Chinese culture, the world is a structural whole, consisting of elements that continuously interact in the dynamics of changes and transformations, we find a reflection of this feature in the semantics of the corresponding symbolic system. Polysemy in the Chinese language mostly reveals a complex and multi-layered "web" of associative and correlative connections between meanings, which in fact cannot be argued outside the context of the relevant cultural tradition indicating common features or similarities of the signified. The doubt about the typicality of understanding the denotations as fixed and atomized for the Chinese language culture is reasonable, even in those cases when it comes to the designation of empirically accessible objectivity. The main specific features of polysemy in the Chinese language are the complete heterogeneity of what is signified, and the lack of transparent grounds for identifying the genus-species subordination of the scope of general concepts. This can also serve as an explanation for the fact that we do not find a completely obvious and nondisputable analogue of the problem of universals of the Western model in the history of Chinese philosophy. C o n c l u s i o n s. Based on the peculiarities of the Chinese language culture, we can recognize as a reasonable a statement that the seemingly natural understanding of the essence – the subject, as something that remains the same (at least for a certain time), but it undergoes some changes through its manifestations – a predicate (properties and actions). It is not as necessary and axiomatic for Chinese thinkers as, for example, for ancient Greek philosophers. In addition, we can recognize the fact that the verb "to exist" does not fulfill the role of a necessary copula in judgments in the Chinese language, as a probable reason for the lack of fundamental problematization of the concept of "being" in the Chinese history of philosophy. In general, the context of the use of a certain word-sign in the Chinese language plays a determining role. The actualization of one or another meaning in an expression is formed not only by its integration into a certain text, but also by its purpose in accordance with the specific practice of application. Therefore, this can serve as an explanation for the absence of an original and axiomatic interpretation of truth as absolute, that is, unchanging and non-relative in the history of Chinese philosophy. (shrink)

The notion of linguistic geometry is defined in this book. It is pertinent to keep in the record that linguistic geometry differs from classical geometry. Many basic or fundamental concepts and notions of classical geometry are not true or extendable in the case of linguistic geometry. Hence, for simple illustration, facts like two distinct points in classical geometry always define a line passing through them; this is generally not true in linguistic geometry. Suppose we have two linguistic points as tall (...) and light we cannot connect them, or technically, there is no line between them. However, let's take, for instance, two linguistic points, tall and very short, associated with the linguistic variable height of a person. We have a directed line joining from the linguistic point very short to the linguistic point tall. In this case, it is important to note that the direction is essential when the linguistic variable is a person's height. The other way line, from tall to very short, has no meaning. So in linguistic geometry, in general, we may not have a linguistic line; granted, we have a line, but we may not have it in both directions; the line may be directed. The linguistic distance is very far. So, the linguistic line directed or otherwise exists if and only if they are comparable. Hence the very concept of extending the line infinitely does not exist. Likewise, we cannot say as in classical geometry; three noncollinear points determine the plane in linguistic geometry. Further, we do not have the notion of the linguistic area of well-defined figures like a triangle, quadrilateral or any polygon as in the case of classical geometry. The best part of linguistic geometry is that we can define the new notion of linguistic social information geometric networks analogous to social information networks. This will be a boon to non-mathematics researchers in socio-sciences in other fields where natural languages can replace mathematics. (shrink)

GENERAL INTRODUCTION THE GROWTH OF THE ARABIC LINGUISTIC TRADITION: A HISTORICAL SURVEY Early grammatical thinking to the end of the second/eighth century ...

Normative political theorists working in the field of linguistic justice generally believe that participation in democratic life in linguistically diverse societies requires a shared lingua franca (e.g., Patten 2009; Van Parijs 2011). Even when a shared lingua franca is present, however, there is likely to be a variety of ways in which people speak it, due to variations in accent, pitch, register, and lexicon. This paper examines the implications of intra‐linguistic diversity for democracy and political representation. More specifically, by drawing (...) on Andrew Rehfeld's (2010) work and on relevant sociolinguistics research, the paper argues that widespread unconscious linguistic prejudice constitutes a constraint on some citizens' right to run for political office that is incompatible with democratic equality. The argument is illustrated via a number of examples concerning Australian politicians. (shrink)

To address complexity information fusion problems involving fuzzy and grey uncertainty information, we develop prioritized averaging aggregation operator and Bonferroni mean aggregation operator with grey linguistic 2-tuple variables and apply them to design a new decision-making scheme. First, the grey linguistic 2-tuple prioritized averaging operator is developed to characterize the prioritization relationship among experts and employed to fuse experts’ information into an overall opinion. Second, we establish dual generalized grey linguistic 2-tuple weighted Bonferroni mean operator to capture the interrelationship among (...) any attribute subsets, which can be reduced to some conventional operators by adjusting parameter vector. On that basis, a flexible group decision-making approach with fuzzy and grey information is designed and applied to an evaluation problem, in which grey relationship analysis method and a linear programming model are combined to extract attribute weights from partially known attribute information. Furthermore, an illustrative example is employed to illustrate the practicality and flexibility of the designed method by conducting the related comparative studies. (shrink)

Linguistic Deception Detection DD is a well-established part of forensic linguistics and an area that continues to attract attention on the part of researchers, self-styled experts, and the public at large. In this article, the various approaches to DD within the general field of linguistics are examined. The basic method is to treat language as a form of behaviour and to equate marked linguistic behaviour with other marked forms of behaviour. Such a comparison has been identified in other fields (...) such as psychology and kinesics as being associated with stress linked to the attempt to deceive, typically in such contexts as examined here. Representative authentic examples of some of the most common linguistic indicators of deception that have been identified are discussed, dividing them into two general categories which we here introduce: language as revealer and language as concealer. We will argue that linguistic analysis for DD should be conducted relative to the subject’s individual linguistic patterns of behaviour, not on absolutes related to broad generalisations about what is supposedly normal or unmarked in the population at large. We will also briefly discuss some structured methods for linguistic analysis for DD and the prospect that technology and artificial intelligence will provide the means to automate and digitalise the linguistic DD process. We maintain that caution is advisable when considering these, as DD will, in all probability, always remain a work in progress, with the need for a flexible human evaluator ready to take into account many different aspects of the individual subject and the case in question. (shrink)

This book deals with the need to rethink the aims and methods of contemporary linguistics. Orthodox linguists' discussions of linguistic form fail to exemplify how language users become language makers. Integrationist theory is used here as a solution to this basic problem within general linguistics. The book is aimed at an interdisciplinary readership, comprising those engaged in study, teaching and research in the humanities and social sciences, including linguistics, philosophy, sociology and psychology.

Apart from the names of Jan Baudouin de Courtenay (1845-1929), Mikołaj Kruszewski (1851-1887), and, later, Jerzy Kuryłowicz (1895-1978), Polish linguists and Polish linguistics generally have been little known in the West. The first two were mentioned with approval by Saussure in an unpublished paper, and this reference was picked up by Roman Jakobson and others many years later. Kuryłowicz, for his part, made himself well known in the West through his important work as Indo-Europeanist, even Semiticist, and as a (...) class='Hi'>general linguist. The present volume is a first attempt to broaden the perspectives on the Polish contribution to linguistics both inside and outside of Poland during the past centuries. Specialists in their respective fields contributed chapters on the origins and development of general linguistics (Z. Wąsik), applied linguistics (F. Grucza), lexicology (T. Piotrowski), dialectology (St. Gogolewski), and onomastics (S. Gala), followed by five chapters presenting the theories of the arguably most remarkable Polish linguistic thinkers, from Baudouin de Courtenay (A. Adamska-Sałaciak), Kruszewski (F. M. Berezin), and Kuryłowicz (W. Smoczyński) to Mikołaj Rudnicki (1881-1978) and Ludwik Zabrocki (1907-1977) (both written by J. Bańczerowski). Detailed individual bibliographies, a full index of names (with life dates of Polish linguists from the Renaissance to the present day), and a thorough index of subjects and terms make this volume an important reference tool for anyone wishing to acquaint himself with the rich heritage of Polish linguistic thought. (shrink)

This study investigates the choice of genitive forms (the woman’s book vs. the book of the woman) in the English of Japanese-English bilingual returnees (i.e. children who returned from a second language dominant environment to their first language environment). The specific aim was to examine whether change in language dominance/exposure influences choice of genitive form in the bilingual children; the more general question was the extent to which observed behaviour can be explained by cross linguistic influence (CLI). First, we (...) compared the choice of genitive form between monolingual Japanese speakers and bilinguals who had recently returned to Japan from an English monolingual environment. Second, we tracked changes in genitive preference within bilingual children, comparing their performances upon return to Japan to those of one year later. Results show that CLI alone is insufficient to explain the difference in genitive evaluation between bilinguals and monolinguals, as well as the intra-group bilingual variation over time. We suggest that both CLI and general processing considerations couple together to influence the changes in genitive preference. (shrink)

Parameters have lain at the core of linguistic research in the generative tradition for decades. The theoretical questions they have raised are deep and broad: this reference text investigates how contemporary linguistics has best tried to answer them. This book looks at how parameters might be properly defined and what their locus might be :lexical information, functional heads, the computational system, the phonological branch of the grammar. What kind of data forms trigger acquisition of a parameter? Are parameters necessary or (...) can we study languages without making reference to them? The questions looked at are not just theoretical: how can a theory of parameters be used to help understand second language acquisition, and what contributions can it make to the study of language typology? This is the right time to gather all this information, dispersed in many different kinds of publications by single authors and groups, into one comprehensive volume. (shrink)

How do we refer to people in everyday conversation? No matter the language or culture, we must choose from a range of options: full name ('Robert Smith'), reduced name ('Bob'), description ('tall guy'), kin term ('my son') etc. Our choices reflect how we know that person in context, and allow us to take a particular perspective on them. This book brings together a team of leading linguists, sociologists and anthropologists to show that there is more to person reference than meets (...) the eye. Drawing on video-recorded, everyday interactions in nine languages, it examines the fascinating ways in which we exploit person reference for social and cultural purposes, and reveals the underlying principles of person reference across cultures from the Americas to Asia to the South Pacific. Combining rich ethnographic detail with cross-linguistic generalizations, it will be welcomed by researchers and graduate students interested in the relationship between language and culture. (shrink)

This book draws on recent developments in research on Ferdinand de Saussure's general linguistics to challenge the structuralist doctrine associated with the Course in General Linguistics and to propose a phenomenological interpretation of Saussure's study of language.

The importance of language for the real understanding of culture is being more and more felt by most students of civilisation. A linguistic system is an expression, though not a complete one, of the system of perception which a social group has of its surroundings and of itself. No civilisation can be fully understood by one who ignores its linguistic means of expression. Modern anthropologists cannot work any more through interpreters if they want to collect really reliable material. As Edward (...) Sapir writes, ‘Some day the attempt to master a primitive culture without the help of the language of its society will seem as amateurish as the labors of a historian who cannot handle the original documents of the civilization which he is describing.’. (shrink)

In this book, for the first time, authors try to introduce the concept of linguistic variables as a continuum of linguistic terms/elements/words in par or similar to a real continuum. For instance, we have the linguistic variable, say the heights of people, then we place the heights in the linguistic continuum [shortest, tallest] unlike the real continuum (–∞, ∞) where both –∞ or +∞ is only a non-included symbols of the real continuum, but in case of the linguistic continuum we (...) generally include the ends or to be more mathematical say it is a closed interval, where shortest denotes the shortest height of a person, maybe the born infant who is very short from usual and the tallest will denote the tallest one usually very tall; however this linguistic continuum [shortest, tallest] in the real continuum will be the closed interval say [1 foot, 8 feet] or [1, 8] the measurement in terms of feet. So, the real interval is a subinterval with which we have associated the real continuum in terms of qualifying unit feet and inches in this case. (shrink)

The goals of linguistic theory are to answer such questions as “What is language?” and “What properties must something (an organism or a machine) have in order for it to learn and use language?” Different theories provide different answers to these questions, and there is at present no general consensus as to what theory gives the best answers. Moreover, most linguists, when pressed, would say that these questions have not yet been answered satisfactorily by any theory.

Linguistic equity through an interpreter is not merely a fundamental human right but also an integral part of procedural justice. As codified in the professional code of conduct, interpreters should faithfully interpret everything that has been said in the exact same manner as the original speakers. Much has been researched about the content. Little has been known about the interpretations of the manner. Drawing on one hundred questionnaire responses, this article examines the interpreters’ awareness of the manner of speech in (...) Australian virtual courts and remote interpreting settings. The results suggest a general lack of understanding of the manner of speech, as reflected by interpreters’ inadequate knowledge of definitions and specific types of manner-related features. Furthermore, the insufficient understanding of the manner of speech impacts the interpreters’ perceptions of the manner of speech in the original utterances, and their views of the faithful reproduction of the se feature in courtroom discursive practices. The qualitative and quantitative analyses of written responses provided by professional interpreters provide insights into the practical aspects of reproducing the manner of speech in court. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: Generalizations in medical research can be informative, but also misleading. Building on recent work in the philosophy of science and ethics of communication, I offer a novel analysis of common generalizations in clinical trials as generics in natural language. Generics, which express generalizations without terms of quantification, have attracted considerable attention from philosophers, psychologists, and linguists. My analysis draws on probabilistic and contextual features of generics to diagnose how these generalizations function and malfunction across communicative contexts in medicine. Given (...) a high risk of misinterpretation ("slippage"), I recommend avoidance of generic claims about medical interventions in public contexts, exemplified by clinical trials and medical research more generally. Generics should only be used with vigilance in private contexts, exemplified by the physician–patient encounter. My analysis provides tools to support vigilance when communicating with generics, suggests new norms for public science communication, and raises deeper questions in the ethics of clinical communication. (shrink)

The topic of this dissertation is the nature of linguistic competence, the capacity to understand and produce sentences of natural language. I defend the empiricist account of linguistic competence embedded in the connectionist cognitive science. This strand of cognitive science has been opposed to the traditional symbolic cognitive science, coupled with transformational-generative grammar, which was committed to nativism due to the view that human cognition, including language capacity, should be construed in terms of symbolic representations and hardwired rules. Similarly, linguistic (...) competence in this framework was regarded as being innate, rule-governed, domain-specific, and fundamentally different from performance, i.e., idiosyncrasies and factors governing linguistic behavior. I analyze state-of-the-art connectionist, deep learning models of natural language processing, most notably large language models, to see what they can tell us about linguistic competence. Deep learning is a statistical technique for the classification of patterns through which artificial intelligence researchers train artificial neural networks containing multiple layers that crunch a gargantuan amount of textual and/or visual data. I argue that these models suggest that linguistic competence should be construed as stochastic, pattern-based, and stemming from domain-general mechanisms. Moreover, I distinguish syntactic from semantic competence, and I show for each the ramifications of the endorsement of a connectionist research program as opposed to the traditional symbolic cognitive science and transformational-generative grammar. I provide a unifying front, consisting of usage-based theories, a construction grammar approach, and an embodied approach to cognition to show that the more multimodal and diverse models are in terms of architectural features and training data, the stronger the case is for the connectionist linguistic competence. I also propose to discard the competence vs. performance distinction as theoretically inferior so that a novel and integrative account of linguistic competence originating in connectionism and empiricism that I propose and defend in the dissertation could be put forward in scientific and philosophical literature. (shrink)

What role do linguistic cues on a surface and contextual level have in identifying the intention behind an utterance? Drawing on the wealth of studies and corpora from the computational task of dialog act classification, we studied this question from a cognitive science perspective. We first reviewed the role of linguistic cues in dialog act classification studies that evaluated model performance on three of the most commonly used English dialog act corpora. Findings show that frequency‐based, machine learning, and deep learning (...) methods all yield similar performance. Classification accuracies, moreover, generally do not explain which specific cues yield high performance. Using a cognitive science approach, in two analyses, we systematically investigated the role of cues in the surface structure of the utterance and cues of the surrounding context individually and combined. By comparing the explained variance, rather than the prediction accuracy of these cues in a logistic regression model, we found that (1) while surface and contextual linguistic cues can complement each other, surface linguistic cues form the backbone in human dialog act identification, (2) with word frequency statistics being particularly important for the dialog act, and (3) the similar trends across corpora, despite differences in the type of dialog, corpus setup, and dialog act tagset. The importance of surface linguistic cues in dialog act classification sheds light on how both computers and humans take advantage of these cues in speech act recognition. (shrink)

We argue that formal linguistic theory, properly extended, can provide a unifying framework for diverse phenomena beyond traditional linguistic objects. We display applications to pictorial meanings, visual narratives, music, dance, animal communication, and, more abstractly, to logical and non-logical concepts in the ‘language of thought’ and reasoning. In many of these cases, a careful analysis reveals that classic linguistic notions are pervasive across these domains, such as for instance the constituency (or grouping) core principle of syntax, the use of logical (...) variables (for object tracking), or the variety of inference types investigated in semantics/pragmatics. The aim of this overview is to show how the application of formal linguistic concepts and methodology to non-linguistic objects yields non-trivial insights, thus opening the possibility of a general, precise theory of signs. (An appendix, found in the online supplements to this article, surveys applications of Super Linguistics to animal communication.). (shrink)

This book reports on the contrastive-semantic investigation of sadness expressions between English and Chinese, based on two monolingual general corpora and a parallel corpus. The exploration adopts a unique theoretical approach which integrates corpus-linguistic theories on meaning (as a social construct, usage and paraphrase) with a corpus-linguistic lexical model. It employs a new complex but workable methodology which combines computational tools with manual examination to tease meaning out of corpus evidence, to compare and contrast lexical items that do not (...) match up neatly between languages. It looks at sadness expressions both within and across languages in terms of three corpus-linguistic structural categories, i.e. colligation, collocation and semantic association/preference, and paraphrase (both explicit and implicit) to capture their subtle nuances of meaning, disclose the culture-specific conceptualisations encoded in them, and highlight their respective cultural distinctiveness of emotion. By presenting multidisciplinary original work, Sadness Expressions in English and Chinese will be of interest to researchers in corpus linguistics, contrastive lexical semantics, psychology, bilingual lexicography and language pedagogy. (shrink)

Linguistic Semantics: An Introduction is the successor to Sir John Lyons's important textbook Language, Meaning and Context (1981).While preserving the general structure of the earlier book, the author has substantially expanded its scope to introduce several topics that were not previously discussed, and to take account of new developments in linguistic semantics over the past decade. The resulting work is an invaluable guide to the subject, offering clarifications of its specialised terms and explaining its relationship to formal and philosophical (...) semantics and to contemporary pragmatics. With its clear and accessible style it will appeal to a wide student readership. Sir John Lyons is one of the most important and internationally renowned contributors to the study of linguistics. His many publications include Introduction to Theoretical Linguistics (1968) and Semantics (1977). (shrink)