Volume 10, Issue 1

This article reports on smell lexicon in two genetically unrelated languages, Estonian and German with the primary aim to compare cognitively salient and actively used smell terms and preferred lexical strategies. Two consecutive field experiments were carried out by interviewing 43 native speakers of both languages. The results are discussed against the background of anthropologically and cognitively oriented linguistics, where both languages can be told to share the typical features of WEIRD languages. The results of comparisons demonstrate that despite the genetic unrelatedness of Estonian and German, the active and cognitively salient smell vocabulary of the speakers of the two languages occurred as structured by the same principles of evaluative connotations and multisensoriality of odour lexicon.

This article will describe the long-time use of sound symbolic forms (including ideophones and interjections) in Italian Disney comic book publications, from the 1930s until recent times. This is achieved through the diachronic analysis of ∼4,700 entries coming from a corpus of sound symbolic forms as compiled by the author, taken from 210 Disney stories. Each of the entries was classified according to five different sound symbolic types based on the event, scenario, or situation they referred to. This analysis will provide an ideal chance to comment on several features exploited in the creation and use of sound symbolic forms and will be offered together with elucidations on a few under-researched areas within the linguistic study of sound symbolism. Quantitative data will be provided on (1) the lexical status of these forms, (2) their language of origin, and (3) the frequency of the five sound symbolic types. Additional commentary will also be offered on the various lexical and phonaesthetic experimentations featured in the comic strips. The results will be based on the comparison of the data coming from the corpus with existing research on these topics.

As separatist yearnings resurge and gain traction in Nigeria, the agency of language and digitality in spreading dissident discourses has come under scrutiny. In this study, I investigate the linguistic-historical dimension of the Biafran movements, exploring the rhetorical frames by which the actors curate ethnic victimhood and sustain the secessionist struggle. Drawing on a corpus of memoiristic narrative of the Biafra war and digitally mediated discourses from a new Biafran movement – Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), I identify and discuss the central topoi of warspeak in both narratives across space and time. In this context, the notions of linguistic framing and atrocity propaganda are fruitfully integrated to analyse the range of rhetorical strategies for incentivizing the struggle and for animating its social capital. While both narratives draw on shared belongings, historical precedents, cultural frameworks, and atrocity stories for incitement, they vary in style and audience. I attribute the shifts to changes in actors’ demographics, discursive contexts, and Nigeria’s ethnopolitical cartographies.

This article investigates word order of clitics in L2 Slovak and the possible impact of cognitive factors on it. Based on data from the learner corpus, the article makes a first attempt at a more thorough inquiry of ordering patterns in the interlanguage of non-native speakers of Slovak to assess whether cognitive principles of contiguity, relevance, and verb–object bonding possibly have an effect on preferential clitics placement. As proxies for cognitive effects on word order, linguistic and (psycho)linguistic predictors are used, such as proficiency level to consider the possible developmental patterns of word order competence and L1 language group of speakers. The dataset includes 1,051 sentences with the annotated erroneous placement of clitics from learner corpus errkorp-1.0. The data are further annotated manually with respect to relevant variables (type of clitic component, syntactic environment in which this component occurs, expected and actual distance of clitic component from matrix verb in terms of linear dependency segments and syntactic words, actual and expected position of clitic component on right or left periphery of the matrix verb, and proficiency level according to CEFR and L1 language group of speakers). Correspondence analysis based on corpus data demonstrates the relevance of proficiency levels and the irrelevance of the L1 speaking group for preferential orders in the interlanguage. It is thus concluded that the interference hypothesis has little explanatory power for clitic placement in Slovak as L2. It is shown, however, that preferential ordering patterns in the interlanguage can be explained as being regulated by cognitive principles that operate irrespectively of L1.

Non-canonical coordination occurs when non-constituents are conjoined. Two major types of non-canonical coordination are gapping and non-constituent coordination (NCC). Non-canonical coordination has received interest for its relevance to core issues in syntax, such as constituency and phrase structure. The aim of this article is twofold. First, it provides empirical evidence for non-canonical coordination from Jordanian Arabic (JA) via an experimental investigation. Two acceptability judgment tasks (rating on a Likert scale) were designed to investigate the status of gapping and NCC in JA. A generalized linear model (GLM) was fit to the data, using the ( glm ) function from the mlogit package in R. There was a main effect of gapping ( χ 2 = 13.203, p < 0.001) and NCC ( χ 2 = 15.371, p < 0.001) on the acceptability of the constructions in the positive direction. Second, the article provides an analysis of the facts that is couched in terms of left-to-right syntax via a hybrid analysis that assumes that non-canonical coordination can have two sources: a complementizer phrase source and a vP source.

This study is the first to comprehensively describe suffixing morphology in Zhangzhou Southern Min, an under-described Sinitic language spoken in southern China. Suffixation can be derivational in this language to create new lexemes and expand local vocabulary but can be inflectional to convey grammatical information. It can also induce special tone sandhi patterns on either the lexical bases or the suffix itself. The bases that can undergo suffixation are cross-categorical, ranging from nouns, verbs, adjectives, classifiers, noun phrases, verb phrases to adjective phrases. However, the occurrences of suffixes, lexical bases, and derived items are subject to severe constraints from diverse factors of semantics, word class, syntax, phonology, and pragmatics. These reflect that the suffixing is not an isolated morphological event but rather involves systematic and complex interfaces among different linguistic levels. This study is a breakthrough to fill the research gap, while substantially broadening and deepening our knowledge of suffixation as an important morphological device in Sinitic languages. The study also contributes well-attested empirical data to the typology of suffixation in the world’s natural languages while shedding important light on how Sinitic languages and other so-called isolating languages should be better defined from a modern linguistic perspective.

This article describes three homophonous morphemes ka integral to alignment in Vamale, a South Oceanic language: a relational classifier, a subject marker clitic, and a possessive linker in nominalizations. Northern New Caledonian languages tend towards ergativity, while southern ones favour accusative alignment in all domains. Vamale is spoken near the border between the two and shows a fascinating pattern: one system in nouns, another in verbs, and a third one in nominalizations. Using first-hand field data, this article introduces the relevant concepts with examples and compares Vamale to its neighbours. While the development of this system remains speculative, we argue that the language has assimilated to its powerful neighbour Cèmuhî.

This article presents the findings of a study of the epicene pronouns used by Macedonian learners of English to refer anaphorically to compound indefinite pronouns and common-gender nouns as antecedents in their essays written in English. This study is based on the Macedonian component of the International Corpus of Learner English and aims to discover the distribution of epicene pronouns ( he , he or she, and singular they ), and the relationship between the choice of an epicene pronoun and particular antecedent (sub)types. The association between the use of specific epicene pronouns and the students’ gender, as well as their year of study at the university, was also investigated. The results point to a more widespread application of singular they compared to he or she and he . The findings also reveal an association between specific epicene pronouns and the degree of individuation of the antecedent. There was virtually no statistically significant difference in the students’ use of each pronoun across the academic years. It also appeared that there was no statistically significant difference between male and female participants regarding their use of epicene pronouns. Finally, the limitations of this study are discussed and directions are offered for future research.

We present evidence for iconicity as the motivation for two patterns of morphophonological alternation in Nigerian Pidgin, also known as Naijá. To express an ‘unconventional positive’ in all varieties of Naijá, some nouns with the tone melodies H-L and L-H surface with the tone melodies L-H and H-L, respectively. In addition to unconventional positive, the Wafi variety of Naijá also expresses ‘unconventional negative.’ In this case, the first syllable of bisyllabic nouns (analogously, the first foot of four-syllable nouns) is transposed with the second syllable. However, in onsetful monosyllabic nouns, the initial consonant is deleted to express an unconventional negative. We account for the metatheses and truncation using transderivational faithfulness constraints and other independent constraints. Expressing the notion of unconventionality by changing the prosaic linear order of phonological elements in a word is a kind of form-meaning resemblance. Similarly, the association of (unconventional) negative with a reduction in a string of segments is another pattern of iconicity. This suggests that crossmodal depiction of sensory imagery, in addition to articulatory and auditory factors, can motivate morphophonological patterns. The morphophonological metatheses and truncation in Naijá contribute to the typology of morphophonological alternations with iconicity as their motivation. Most importantly, these patterns run counter to the claim that pidgins and creoles have simplified morphophonology.

Never formally colonised by Western powers, Thailand is a rapidly developing nation in Southeast Asia. To outsiders, the assumption might be that Thailand is a homogenous Thai-speaking Buddhist country. However, such over-simplistic views ignore diversity and the existence of de facto multilingualism and multiculturalism on the ground. This linguistic landscape (LL) study explores a unique and sociolinguistically compelling area called ‘Little Arabia’ (Soi Arab) in the heart of Bangkok, where elements of both Islamic and Buddhist civilisations meet. The existence of this Middle Eastern enclave creates a sense of contrasts on linguistic, religious, and cultural levels. Because of globalisation and spurred by (medical and sex) tourism, this area boasts a number of halal restaurants, hotels, travel agencies, stores, pharmacies, and clinics. This gives rise to an interesting sociolinguistic ecology, featuring an ‘ethnic’ economy which caters to the needs of tourists and businessmen hailing from the Arab world. Drawing on authentic photographic data, this study explores how various linguistic practices give the area a unique identity. More specifically, we reveal how various languages (including Arabic, Thai, and English) are mobilised and combined in ways that illustrate translation practices evidenced within the enclave for particularised marketing, commercial, and communication purposes. Theoretically and conceptually, the term ‘machine-translated multilingualism’ is coined to capture the growing trend for businesses to resort to translation software for multilingual communication, which may result in non-standard translations and orthographic forms. This study contributes to a growing body of sociolinguistic research examining LLs in global cities and commercial hubs in the Global South, particularly those arising from ‘South-South’ population flows.

The present study analyzes the meanings bilingual and multilingual speakers attach to the term mother tongue , a familiar concept which is most often intuitively understood, but difficult to define. Taking as the main frame of reference the vulnerable linguistic communities of Serbia, the authors assess the answers given by the interviewees to the open question “What does the notion of mother tongue mean to you?” asked in the pilot sociolinguistic questionnaire the study is based on. The responses are classified in several categories, which are then analyzed and discussed. The findings show that the speakers give equal importance to the period of language acquisition, in early childhood, and the role of the family in language transmission for defining mother tongue . The diversity of responses obtained in the study suggests that the definitions provided by the censuses, used in the education context, human rights literature, or sociolinguistics, do not necessarily overlap with the social reality, as the actual members of the linguistic communities perceive the concept as being more heterogeneous than generally assumed and do not automatically connect it to mothers.

The present study deals with the inventory and functional variation of six turn-initial particles in Lithuanian. The aim of the study is to identify the functions of the demonstrative turn-initial particles tai , va , and štai and the emotive particles o , nagi , and ogi in spoken discourse, namely in spontaneous private conversations, and in literary dialogues by exploring the relationship of the particles to a previous and emerging turn. The data for the study have been retrieved from the Corpus of Spoken Lithuanian and from the subcorpora of spoken discourse and fiction in the Corpus of the Contemporary Lithuanian Language. The most frequent turn-initial particles in spoken interactions are o , tai , and va , whereas in literary dialogues the particles nagi and ogi occur most frequently turn-initially. Both tai and va are speaker-oriented and express the speaker’s conclusion on the basis of the arguments in a previous turn, agreement or disagreement with the addressee, and elaboration of information. The particle o is addressee-oriented, since it frames the speaker’s question and emphasises the intention to elicit an answer from the addressee. Nagi and ogi tend to occur in directives or emphatic responses and are speaker-oriented in a similar way to tai and va .

This article presents a typological survey of verbal numeral classifiers (VNCs) in languages of Eastern Eurasia. As classifiers of occurrence (e.g., to V once, to V twice), VNCs are prevalent in languages of East Asia and Southeast Asia, yet the phenomenon has been largely overlooked in typological studies that have overwhelmingly focused on the adnominal use of numeral classifiers. Analyzing a sample of 543 linguistic varieties, the study categorizes the language families of Eastern Eurasia into three groups based on their use of VNCs: 1) VNCs consistently present in all languages (e.g., Tai-Kadai); 2) VNCs present in some languages (e.g., Sino-Tibetan); and 3) VNCs consistently absent (e.g., Yukaghir). Additionally, the meanings of VNCs are shown to follow a non-random distribution by centering on certain semantic fields, such as quantifying hits with ‘verbs of violence’. The study aims to offer the first step toward an areal typological study of VNCs, highlighting the importance of including this phenomenon in future descriptive work.

This article provides an initial sociolinguistic and structural characterization of the multilingual repertoire of the Haitian migrant community in Chapecó, Santa Catarina, Brazil, based on a corpus of interviews I compiled myself. The focus is primarily on two languages from the repertoire, French and Spanish, which I consider ‘forgotten’ in two senses. First, in a scholarly context, since studies in migration linguistics often pay less attention to languages that are neither the in-group language of the migrant population (in this case, Haitian Creole) nor the main language of the host country (in this case, Portuguese); indeed, French is the official, post-colonial language used by the social elites in the homeland, while Spanish is the language of a first country of migration (the Dominican Republic) for some Haitians before their current migration to Brazil. Second, at the cognitive level, because although these languages are part of the speakers’ experiential baggage, they are seldom actively spoken in the new Brazilian context. Lastly, the article highlights how speakers efficiently utilize the different languages in their repertoire, giving rise to contact-induced linguistic features (which, following traditional criteria, are classified here as the result of transfer or borrowing).

The language contact between Basque and Spanish in the Basque Autonomous Community (BAC) gives rise to the production of specific linguistic features such as non-standard gender agreement (N-SGA). N-SGA in BAC Spanish has been traditionally attributed to elder Basque native speakers without much access to education, but this affirmation is not based on any empirical study. In addition, although several scholars have explored N-SGA in other language contact situations, there is no agreement on the linguistic factors that favor this production. Taking this knowledge gap as the point of departure, the present study explores 73 individual sociolinguistic interviews by a diverse population from the BAC in order to delimit (i) the community that produces N-SGA and (ii) the linguistic factors that condition it. Results follow Basterretxea Santiso’s (2022, “A triangulation study on gender agreement in Spanish by native Basque speakers.” Revista Española de Lingüística (RSEL) 52(1): 7–37) suggestion that N-SGA in BAC Spanish is present across generations: it is a well-established feature present in BAC Spanish as a result of language contact. Results also support the existence of a local gender agreement system that depends on the gender of the controller, inflectional form, number, distance, and whether the target is a clitic or adjective.

Identifying the meanings of grammatical elements in context is a major challenge for corpus-linguistic studies of grammatical variation. This study proposes a novel solution to this problem. I describe the situated meanings of grammatical elements as latent constructs, i.e., social concepts that cannot be observed directly but need to be inferred from the way that speakers behave. I use Latent Class Analysis (LCA) to create a data-driven typology of meanings for three modal periphrases in spoken Spanish and compare this typology to manual classification of the data in terms of modality. My findings show that (a) the situated meanings identified by the LCA do not directly correspond to the modal meanings that are commonly assumed to govern the variation between the three periphrases, and (b) the data-driven typology of meanings explains better the variation between these periphrases.

In generative syntax, two major types of proposals – syntax-oriented and semantics-oriented proposals – have been used to examine adverbs and adverbials. Despite these proposals explaining the remarkable properties of adverb positioning, this class of words is heterogeneous and problematic in terms of their displacement. This study adopts scopal theories and proposes a partial semantic analysis using phases to describe adverbial positioning in Modern Standard Arabic. We argue that the semantic scope and the modification domain are the main determinants of adverbial position, which can best be analysed in terms of phases. In this regard, adverbials are classified into lower and higher adverbials. Lower adverbials have a narrow semantic scope and modification domain. They include subject-oriented and verb-oriented modifiers and freely adjoin the v P layer. Higher adverbials have a wider scope and modification domain. They include discourse-oriented modifiers and tend to attach to the Complementiser Phrase layer. In terms of their hierarchical order, discourse-oriented adverbials are higher than subject-oriented and verb-oriented modifiers in the articulated clause structure. This conclusion suggests that scopal theories along with language-specific rules may provide a unified generalization and straightforward account of the cross-linguistic distribution of adverbs and adverbials.

In recent years, there has been an increased attention and interest in quantitative and statistical models of language contact and language diffusion in space. This article presents an improved model, multivAreate 2, to estimate spatial and contact relations between languages and dialects based on work by Guzmán Naranjo and Mertner ((2022). Estimating areal effects in typology: A case study of african phoneme inventories. Journal of Linguistic Typology 27(2), 455–80) and Ranacher et al. ((2021). Contact-tracing in cultural evolution: A Bayesian mixture model to detect geographic areas of language contact. Journal of the Royal Society Interface 18(181), 1–15). We test our model on three different datasets: Balkans, South America (Ranacher et al. (2021). Contact-tracing in cultural evolution: A Bayesian mixture model to detect geographic areas of language contact. Journal of the Royal Society Interface 18(181), 1–15), and the Americas (Urban et al., (2019). The areal typology of western middle and south america: Towards a comprehensive view. Linguistics 57(6), 1403–63). We show that this new model can address shortcomings found in previous models, and it offers some useful tools for researchers working on contact and areal linguistics.

This article studies the morpho-phonetic instability of interactives through the example of Gorwaa interjections. The analysis of 91 constructions demonstrates that, in Gorwaa, interjections are highly unstable: the number of idiolectal interjections is much larger than that of shared interjections, and the interjections of both sets form clusters – spaces composed of constructions connected through the family resemblance of a formal and functional type. The formal modifications are achieved through prolongation, replication, alternation (of phones/features), and concatenation, and are related to changes in meaning and the polysemy inherent to interjections. Overall, the interjective category is modeled as a dynamic/fuzzy network of related (formally/functionally) constructions. The grammatical profiles of shared and idiolectal interjections are identical and corroborate the validity of the prototype of interjections. The refinements proposed include a preference for [j] over [w], a tendency toward (extra-)high tones and decreasing tonal patterns, the use of gutturals and clicks as the most common extra-systematic sounds and that of clicks as genuine consonants in non-click languages, the iconic foundation of some interjections and their relationship to babytalk, as well as the close relationship of interjections with the |A| place of articulation.

The processes of objectification of rational and irrational types of knowledge in the cultural semantics of toponyms as a product of the mental activity of the subject (individual and ethnolinguistic collective) are considered. The analysis is carried out on the material of toponyms that involve colour values, numerals and phytonyms, mythonyms, etc. The rational type of knowledge contains rich empirical information with diverse cultural semantics. The irrational type of knowledge represents mythological, esoteric, animistic, religious ideas, superstitions, customs, and various folk beliefs with profound ethnosemantics. In rational knowledge, various aspects of the economic and practical life of nomads in the development of the surrounding reality are detailed. The irrational type of knowledge concentrates on value orientations, stereotypes and prejudices, and moral and ethical norms of the nomadic Kazakh ethnic community in the past, represented in the cultural semantics of the language matrix of folk geographical names. For the first time, the ethnoecological, ethnobotanical knowledge of the Kazakh people is presented in the language matrix of toponyms, in which the emphasis is shifted not to lexical features, but to the cultural aspect, to cultural semantics.

Recent research has highlighted the existence of expletive(-like) elements in various languages that are related to discourse, serving as fillers for designated topic/focus positions and/or contributing specific discourse–pragmatic effects. Such elements pose a number of challenges and opportunities, both for our overall conception of expletives and for our understanding of the syntax–discourse interface, although work in this area to date has mainly focused on the phenomenon in individual varieties. In this study, we critically survey the current state-of-the art on this topic and discuss four main areas where we see particular challenges and opportunities for research: (i) categories and definitions, (ii) typological correlations, (iii) theoretical modelling and (iv) language change. Overall, this article brings together a broad array of empirical findings and theoretical approaches on the phenomenon of discourse-related expletives and highlights the many avenues for future work in this area.

This article investigates the historical development of the linguistic writings on Vietnamese tense marking. The scholarship on Vietnamese tense marking is unique as it is shaped by both linguistic and non-linguistic influences: foreshadowed in the seventeenth-century missionary grammars, turned prescriptive during the French colonisation of Vietnam, bifurcated during the Cold War, and since 1986 converged with rapid developments in tense-aspect-mood (TAM) theories. In this article, I critically examine and (re-)interpret the claims on Vietnamese tense marking made by the relevant grammatical writings during these periods and consolidate the scholarship into three emerging themes: transcategorial complexity; covert–overt complexity; and prevalence of TAM. I show that TAM theories have predominantly been the only theoretical framework for analysing a group of multifunctional particles. This prevalence of TAM theories arises not only because (i) how each of the earlier grammars of Vietnamese on the topic was referenced, misinterpreted, or ignored due to certain historical and socio-political milestones, but also because (ii) the influence of certain linguistic ideologies overshadows the other two themes and ultimately the pragmatic functions of those particles. These two reasons form a unique scholarship on Vietnamese tense marking, the basis of which is grounded firmly on continuously expanding TAM theories.

This study argues that conjectural or non-intrusive questions are not only conveyed by future forms, as often discussed, but may be induced, combined with contextual factors, by past forms. Conjectural and non-intrusive questions are, respectively, uttered when the addressee is assumed as ignoring the answer and when she isn’t forced to answer. What is claimed to be conjectural or non-intrusive includes i) polite questions involving the French market imperfective past and its Japanese counterpart; ii) recall questions involving an evidential past in some languages. In the former case, the market past is claimed as referring to a moment when the shopkeeper made a conjecture about the customer’s need based on her observation: the politeness comes from highlighting, by using the past tense, the existence of this conjecture for the sake of the customer. In the latter, the evidential past is analyzed as referring to a moment when the speaker obtained the relevant information from others. The proposed hypotheses are supported by the fact that the two questions are incompatible with expressions forcing the addressee’s answer, and by the fact that the past form is combined with some conjectural expression obligatorily in both cases in Japanese and optionally in German recall questions.

The present study adopts a typological approach to investigate intersubjective uses of the Finnish clitic markers =hAn and =se , which are derived from third-person pronouns, within the emerging framework of engagement. The methods encompass two data gathering approaches: 1) a qualitative survey involving actual Finnish language users through a questionnaire to identify functions, and 2) a quantitative survey examining co-occurrences between the clitic markers and subject persons using the Suomi24 Sentences Corpus 2001–2020 for usage-based frequencies. The data analysis focuses on the interrelations with a subject person, drawing parallels with other languages which exhibit similar phenomena of pragmatic extension from referential uses towards engagement marking. The results reveal that the two Finnish clitics semantically inherit their referential meanings from their lexical forms and further extend them towards marking interlocutors’ intersubjectivity, enriching the engagement system of Finnish. A distinct difference related to the subject person becomes evident. On the one hand, =hAn as a recognitional marker more frequently co-occurs with first person, signalling the speaker’s involvement in epistemic management as a speech act participant responsible for managing inclusive attention and shared information with the hearer. On the other hand, =se as a contrastive marker co-occurs more frequently with third person in general and with second-person statements which involve the speaker’s observed information and its exclusivity.

Among the different ways to approach discourse-structuring patterns, semantic basic figures ( Grundfiguren in German) are a versatile tool that helps to understand the semantic framework of discourses. Topoi, metaphors, and other argumentative and figurative elements can be traced back to such basic concepts. My essay identifies and analyses repetitions and variations in the realisation of two such figures – ‘difficulty’ and ‘austerity’ – in a corpus of concert reviews of Jean Sibelius’ Fourth Symphony. I show how these concepts are first established and how they can be found in both verbatim repetitions and lexical and constructional variations over a period spanning several decades. My approach is based on the observation that a constantly varied repetition of certain patterns and similarly structured semantic frames is effective in coining the image of an artwork in public discourse and reaching an intersubjective understanding of its meaning and content. This applies all the more when those patterns are linked to previously established cultural (auto-)stereotypes.

This article discusses the properties of interrogative structures biased in the set of their possible answers by the particle po in Camuno. In declarative structures, po signals that according to the speaker, a proposition p is surprisingly controversial in the utterance world w . In interrogative structures, the same particle identifies the only subset of 〚 p 〛 f [\kern-2pt[ {p]\kern-2pt] }^{f} , the set of focus alternatives to p , that can satisfy the existential presupposition introduced by the question. However, po additionally signals that such a subset is non-factual, i.e., controversial, in w . A characterization of po as an element operating on sets of alternatives offers an important tool to investigate the numerous pragmatic readings conveyed by po and account for the restrictions in its distribution. The semantic properties of the po- interrogatives can, in fact, capture the mirative and counterfactual readings also attested in cognate forms in neighboring varieties. Thus, this analysis represents an important step in exploring a possible unified account.

We present evidence for an overlap in the discourse functions of Spanish cómo que XP ‘how that complementizer ’ and French comment ça ∅/XP ‘how that demonstrative ’ interrogatives. We argue for three shared discourse functions: clarification requests, mirative questions, and expressions of disagreement. We show that these functions are cued by an interplay of morpho-syntactic and contextual factors. At the morpho-syntactic level, whether grammatical person shifts (is indirectly cited) compared to the previous turn and whether additional linguistic material (the ‘remnant’) is present after ‘how that’ were found to be important predictors of discourse function. At the contextual level, whether and how the speaker continues her turn after the interrogative is our most significant predictor. We quantify the degree to which these and other cues allow for a prediction of the discourse functions and find that the resulting model predicts more clarification request uses and fewer mirative and disagreement uses than empirically attested. This indicates that some cues for these two readings are missing from our model. We propose that prosody might be one of them.

Despite the fact that various functions of repetition in discourse have been studied, we have decided to continue our exploration of the role of phonetic and lexical repetitions in the pragmatics and cognition of text and discourse focusing our attention on the epic texts and modern literary discourses across languages. The reason why we have decided to analyze both epic texts and modern literary discourses across languages is our intention to reveal the pragmatic nature of intersubjective behaviors regardless of time and place. In addition, phonetic and lexical repetitions play a crucial role in the cognition of these texts and discourses as they cause associations by stimulating knowledge in the human mind. Thus, our article’s goal is to analyze the ways why and how the sender uses these very important explicit linguistic devices to produce pragmatic and cognitive effects on the audience of the epic texts, as well as on the participants of modern fictional discourses in English, Azerbaijani, and Russian. Throughout the history, phonetic and lexical repetitions have gradually become key devices in producing pragmatic and cognitive effects in literary discourses across languages. The examples from Beowulf , The Book of Dede Korkut , as well as from modern fictional and poetic discourses in Azerbaijani and English clearly demonstrate this trend. We can draw a conclusion that as human’s life experience and his/her intellectual level gradually develops, the functions of these repetitions in discourse expand and gain a new meaning. Repetition is a choice made by the sender of any text, first of all, based on his/her subjective individual rather than social preferences. That is why the use of repetition in discourse motivates intersubjective behaviors regardless of time and place.

The aim of the article is to analyze the calls to the Estonian Emergency Response Centre, focusing on instances where callers reduce the severity of incident or emergency in their first turn. The data comprise 39 calls from the Corpus of Emergency Calls of the University of Tartu. The analysis reveals that callers employ mitigating words and negative turn-initial utterances to reduce the severity. These words indicate the caller’s uncertainty about the information provided or suggest that the reported incident or emergency is minor. The utterances are syntactically and semantically (but not prosodically) completed clauses followed by a second part of the clause construction containing specific information about the caller’s issue. Functionally, these utterances serve as assessments falling into three groups based on the information they project. Some assessments project uncertain information, explicitly expressing uncertainty about the information or using the epistemic marker ma=i=tea ‘I don’t know’. The second group of assessments project information about an incident that the caller does not qualify as an emergency. The last group projects a potential incident or emergency using variants of the utterance ei juhtund midagi ‘nothing happened’. In addition, we offer explanations for why callers reduce the severity of the incident or emergency and demonstrate that reducing severity does not lower the probability of sending assistance. This indicates that call-takers do not rely on callers’ assessments when deciding whether the help is needed.

As a social action, requesting confirmation involves presenting a proposition to be (dis)confirmed and seeking another’s (dis)confirmation of the proposition. This article provides an overview of the lexico-syntactic and prosodic resources used by participants to perform requests for confirmation (RfCs) and to respond to RfCs in Mandarin face-to-face interactions. Drawing on statistical results of the frequencies of a variety of linguistic resources in RfC sequences, this study shows that declaratives are the most frequently used syntactic forms for RfCs in the Mandarin data. Tags, such as shiba ‘right?’, are also frequently used by the speaker to seek (dis)confirmation from the recipient. The RfCs in the data also exhibit one prominent prosodic pattern. That is, a larger number of RfC turns in Mandarin end with falling pitch movement with very moderate slope from mid (M) to low (L). This prosodic pattern stems from the interplay between tones and intonation in Mandarin. In the responses to RfCs, a majority of them are confirmations. Also, response tokens, such as dui ‘right’ and en ‘en’ with falling intonation, are used highly frequently in responses to RfCs in the Mandarin data. Findings in this study afford cross-linguistic research on RfC sequences.

As part of a cross-linguistic investigation of request for confirmation (RfC) sequences, this article provides an overview of distributional tendencies associated with Korean RfC sequences based on an examination of 200 tokens of RfC excerpted from audio- and video-recorded face-to-face ordinary conversations. Various grammatical and contextual features associated with RfCs are analyzed, e.g., as interactional resources for grounding RfCs in inferencing, rendering them modulated in action, or connecting them to prior talk/action. They include negative polarity markers, connective particles (e.g., - nuntey ‘circumstantial’), modal markers (e.g., - keyss ‘I suppose’), and sentence-ending suffixes (SESs) such as - na (‘dubitative), - ney (‘noticing’), and ‘pseudo-tags’ - ci/cianha, which are composed of - ci (‘committal’). Features of responses to RfCs are examined in terms of response type (e.g., confirmation, disconfirmation, or neither) with special reference to the form and distribution of response tokens, which include not only unmarked interjections such as ung/yey (‘yes’) and ani(-yo) (‘no’), but also kule -marked indexical forms (e.g., ku(leh)ci ‘certainly it is’). The findings shed light on the role of SESs, modal markers, and discourse particles as stance-marking resources that crucially shape the function of RfCs, and the compositional features of response turns that constitute or frame a responsive action to RfCs.

This article presents the quantitative findings from a comparative study of request for confirmation (RfC) sequences in British English (BE) and American English (AE). The study is part of a large-scale cross-linguistic research project on RfCs in ten languages. RfCs put forward a proposition about which the speaker claims some knowledge but for which they seek (dis)confirmation from an informed co-participant. The article examines linguistic resources for building RfCs and their responses in the two English varieties. RfCs are analyzed with regard to their syntactic design, polarity, modulation, inference marking, connectives, question tags, and the prosodic design of confirmables and potential question tags. Responses to RfCs are analyzed with regard to response type, the use, type and position of response tokens, (non-)minimal responses in turns with a response token, response prefacing, and repeat responses. BE and AE are found to resemble each other closely in most categories. A major exception is their prosodic design, however. Specifically, the preference for the final pitch pattern of RfCs differs markedly in the two varieties: BE shows a strong preference for final falling pitch; AE shows a preference for final rising pitch. This suggests that the two varieties have routinized distinct intonation patterns for expressing epistemic (un)certainty in RfCs.

In request for confirmation (RfC) sequences, interlocutors negotiate their social positions regarding access and rights to knowledge. The article presents an overview of a quantitative analysis of 200 RfCs and their responses in German conversations to highlight the relevant linguistic resources speakers of the language deployed to position themselves vis-à-vis a confirmable proposition. In German RfCs, modal particles and tags play an important role in expressing the requester’s epistemic stance; explicit inference marking is used less frequently. Responses usually include response tokens (among others doch as a token specialized for disconfirming negatively formatted RfCs) and an expansion. The article shows that such expansions do important work to tailor the response to the situated informational needs of the requester in a cooperative way beyond the constraints of type-conformity.

This article examines request for confirmation (RfC) sequences in Low German (LoG) conversation, a dialect variety of German. The study is based on both a quantitative analysis of 200 RfC instances and a qualitative analysis of selected excerpts in the framework of conversation analysis (CA). As for the question design of RfCs, declarative and phrasal formats, as well as modulations and tags prevail in the LoG data. Concerning the response design, LoG is characterized as a polarity system in which language contact with the high variety plays a decisive role in the answer possibility space. In particular, High German response tokens are predominantly used as unmarked response types, while LoG response tokens are deployed as marked types. Moreover, LoG seems to be a language between the poles of token- and repeat-type languages. Full repeats index different degrees of ‘markedness’ in LoG interaction. Contrary to previous studies on polar answers, repeats in LoG are frequently deployed as unmarked responses in subordinate lines of actions. Repeats are also used as more marked answers after understanding displays. This article attempts to stress the importance of investigating non-standard languages and variety contact in CA, thereby addressing the monolingual bias in research on polar questions.

The article presents a description of request for confirmation (RfC) sequences in everyday conversation in Egyptian Arabic. Through a quantitative analysis of 200 sequences excerpted from telephone calls, the analysis is concerned to identify the main design features of RfC sequences and their context-sensitive distribution and use. Analysis reveals that RfCs in Egyptian Arabic often do not bear special syntactic or prosodic marking. Lexical devices, such as inference markers, tag questions, and modulation markers, make explicit the specific epistemic position of the requesters. RfCs mostly attract confirmations. These can be accomplished by minimal responses; however, in most cases, a more elaborate format is used. Greater epistemic independence is suggested in confirmations in which no token is used. Non-minimal responses seem to be normative in the case of disconfirmations. Responders can also employ dedicated means for declining to provide a dis/confirmation. The findings of this study support the view of RfC sequences as a complex site for the display and negotiation of knowledge and social positioning.

This article describes the resources employed by speakers of Yurakaré (isolate, Bolivia) for formulating and responding to requests for confirmation (RfCs). In Yurakaré, RfC turns are predominantly formatted with positive polarity and falling final intonation. Confirming responses to positive polarity RfCs and disconfirming responses to negative polarity RfCs with truth-conditional negation show a preference for repeat format. Moreover, Yurakaré exhibits a functional differentiation of repeat vs response token format in confirming responses to positive polarity RfCs, a repeat being the default format for plain confirmations of RfCs that introduce a new proposition into the discourse. The Yurakaré data presented in this article contribute to our knowledge of the cross-linguistic response possibility space, providing evidence for the capability of repeats to convey plain and unmarked confirming responses, contesting theories of interaction that propose response tokens to universally constitute the unmarked format for confirming responses across languages.

This study reports quantitative findings from a study of 205 Hebrew request for confirmation (RfC) sequences, as part of a comparative Pragmatic Typological project across ten languages. Based on video recordings of casual conversation, this is the first systematic survey of such sequences in Hebrew. We examine linguistic and embodied resources for making an RfC (syntactic and prosodic design; polarity; use of modulation, inference marking, connectives, and tag questions) and for responding to it (response type; use, type, and position of response tokens (RTs); (non)minimal responses; repeat strategies; nodding and headshakes). We find that Hebrew RfCs lack interrogative syntax and are overwhelmingly marked by rising final intonation, frequently marked as inferences, rich in types of connectives and modulators, but infrequently feature tag questions. In responses to RfCs, Hebrew presents a comparatively high rate of disconfirmation, which is often also relatively unmitigated, corroborating Linguistic Anthropological descriptions of Hebrew conversational style. RTs are used in over half of responses, while full repeats are relatively rare. Occasionally, nods and headshakes are found unaccompanied by speech, as exclusively embodied responses. We expand on two negating RTs: the dental click (an areal feature) and the forceful ma pit'om ‘of course not’ (lit. ‘what suddenly’).

This article provides a first description of request for confirmation (RfC) sequences in spoken Czech. Based on 204 sequences from video-recorded ordinary conversations, it provides a quantitative overview of the main syntactic, lexical, prosodic and sequential features of both requests for confirmation and their responses. RfCs in Czech are typically of declarative clausal format, realized in positive polarity, and receive a confirmation. The epistemic asymmetry between the speaker of the RfC and their interlocutor seems to be mainly expressed and negotiated by a complex taxonomy of tags appended to the confirmable, response tokens, and syntactically non-minimal responses. These features represent promising topics for future, more qualitatively oriented investigations of RfCs in spoken Czech.