Volume 12, Issue 1

This paper explores two types of degree modifiers in German, namely total and voll . While most degree modifiers are usually placed inside an NP, total and voll frequently appear in a position outside of an NP, giving them the function of intensifiers rather than pure modifiers. Hence, they become NP-external intensifiers. Previous studies have suggested that these NP-external intensifiers either take an adjective inside the subsequent NP in their scope, or, if there is none, the NP head. Based on corpus data from the deCow16B, we suggest an alternative interpretation where the scope of the intensifier always ranges over the subsequent NP as a whole, irrespective of it containing an adjective or not. We suggest that this can be described based on prototype effects and underdetermination, whether there is an adjective present or not. The NP denotes an exemplar of a (prototypical) category: the category membership is understood as scalar and the NP is intensified on this implicit scale.

Reference to current discourse is often cited as a definitional criterion for classifying linguistic units as metapragmatic . However, there is no consensus in research on the precise meaning and limits of this criterion. In this paper, a cognitive-linguistic perspective is adopted to address this issue by focusing on how interactants conceptualize discourse. A synthesis of Langacker’s (2001) current-discourse-space model ( CDS model ) and the notion of pragmatic frames is used to analyze metapragmatic practices in a television discussion. The analytical annotation process shows that metapragmatic markers ( MPMs ) evoke specific kinds of frame structures including the instantiation of pragmatic frames . Based on the annotation of the entire transcribed discussion, it will be argued that the visualization of discourse sequences in the CDS model and the examination of the specific frame structures evoked by MPMs contribute to a better understanding of the core of metapragmaticity. The paper concludes with a pilot study that uses quantitative methods to demonstrate the analytical potential of a cognition-centered categorization of MPMs. It is shown that the use of MPMs reflects different interactional roles (i.e., host or discussant) and the conversational strategies used to shape the conceptualization of argumentative discourse to pursue specific interactional goals.

The concept of paradigm has been used extensively in many areas of linguistics throughout the past century, such as language education or historical linguistics. It is therefore quite surprising that paradigms have mostly been disregarded when it comes to cognitive language theories. Recently however, more and more researchers have started to advocate for the introduction of paradigms into cognitivist frameworks to be able to account for certain phenomena in language that would be hard to explain otherwise. But whilst there is agreement on which phenomena could best be explained through the notion of paradigm , there is a lot of disagreement regarding the way in which paradigms would be mentally represented, and how they would relate to the rest of the mental lexicon. This paper will discuss a few reasons to believe that paradigms are part of our grammar, present two previously proposed examples for modelling paradigms from a cognitivist perspective, highlight possible issues regarding their psychological plausibility, and explore how further research on modelling paradigms could be aided through an alternative domain-general approach which proposes that paradigms are cognitively equivalent to non-linguistic categories.

Expressions in which the word for a body part is also used for objects can be found in many languages. Some languages use body part terms to refer to object parts, while others have only a few idiosyncratic examples in their vocabulary. Studying the word forms referring to body and object concepts, i.e., colexifications, across languages, offers insights into cognitive principles facilitating such usage. Previous studies focused on full colexifications in which the same word form expresses two distinct concepts. Here, we utilize a new approach that allows us to analyze partial colexifications in which a concept is built out of the word forms for two separate concepts, like river mouth . Based on a large lexical database, we identified body and object concepts and analyzed 39 colexifications across 329 languages. The results show that word forms for body concepts are used slightly more frequently as a source for object names. However, the detailed examination of directional tendencies and colexifications of word forms between body and object concepts reveals linguistic variation. The study sheds light on meaning extensions between two concrete domains and showcases the synergies that arise through the combination of existing data and methods.

In this paper I discuss the variation among the directional cases in Udmurt (Permic, Uralic). Udmurt has a spatial case system consisting of seven cases in total, of which four are directional cases. Two of the directional cases, elative and egressive, express the source of an action, and two, illative and terminative, the goal of an action. Previous accounts have established that the distinguishing factor between the pairs is the expression of some limit. Egressive and terminative are used to express beginning and end limit, respectively, whereas elative and illative are seen not to express a limit. This kind of distinction in a spatial case system is typologically extremely rare. Especially a case dedicated for starting limit seems not to be attested anywhere else than in the Permic languages, Udmurt, and its closes relative Komi. The explanation for the variation between the cases given in previous research, namely that egressive and terminative express a limit, whereas elative and illative do not, seems not to be general enough, however. Especially, in the spatial domain there are examples where, e.g., illative is said to express the endpoint of movement, and terminative the end limit of a movement, but the depicted situations seem basically identical. Therefore, I suggest that there is a more general tendency of using the limit cases to construe an event as bounded from the beginning or the end, respectively, whereas the non-limit cases is used when the construal does not include a boundary of the event, or the boundary is backgrounded. To explore this possibility, I conduct a qualitative analysis of the senses of each case, as well as a quantitative analysis exploring the effects of different aspects of verbal semantics on the choice between the limit and non-limit cases in the spatial domain. The dataset is 500 manually annotated and analyzed examples of Udmurt literary language, mostly newspaper texts. The process is done manually, as the automatic annotation of the original corpus yields too many false positives when queried for instances of cases. The qualitative analysis is conducted by the Principled Polysemy approach, which yields reliable results on the semantic structure of spatial elements in general. The quantitative analysis is done by implementing a random forest analysis on the dataset. Random forest is chosen for the method because the dataset is somewhat small, and the data points cannot be considered independent. The qualitative analysis reveals that the limit cases are indeed used to express senses like the beginning or end of a timespan or a change in amount, which seem to incorporate a boundary of the event. In contrast, the non-limit cases are used to express senses where the boundary is implied but backgrounded. The quantitative analysis reveals that the semantics of the verb indeed do play a role in the choice between the limit and non-limit cases in the spatial domain. However, due to the nature of the data and the chosen methodology it is not possible to say how exactly the semantics of the verb affect the choice between cases. Nonetheless, the results firmly point to the direction that the difference between the limit and non-limit cases should be analyzed as a difference in the construal of the events, which then have special cases depending on the exact situation expressed.

Metaphor occupies a central role not only in language use, but also in language change and evolution. Specifically, semantic extension motivated by metaphor plays an important role in extending the lexicon of languages. It is this process that enables the emergence of one of the key properties of modern languages, namely that they are open-ended, systematic, polysemous, structured semiotic systems. Here, we review results from three approaches whose integration presents an important cornerstone for an interdisciplinary account of the role of metaphor in the evolutionary dynamics of language: (1) Historical linguistics and diachronic semantics (2) Computational approaches and natural language processing, and (3) Experimental semiotics. Research in historical linguistics has shown that metaphor is a major mechanism of semantic change. Diachronic semantic analyses have not only mapped detailed historical trajectories of semantic extension motivated by metaphor, but also identified common metaphoric pathways of change as well as shared cognitive principles underlying them. Computational approaches and natural language processing have used findings and data from historical linguistics in attempts to automate the detection of metaphoric semantic change and to build data-driven models models of the principles underlying it. Experimental semiotics is a paradigm in which participants have to create novel communication systems in the absence of language. It represents an experimental design that can investigate cultural linguistic evolution and the emergence of metaphors and metaphorical extensions under controlled laboratory settings to shed light on the interactional and cognitive principles involved in it. Combining results from these approaches represents an important first step towards an interdisciplinary, integrative account of the role of metaphor, and processes of polysemous meaning extension more generally, in the evolutionary dynamics of language.

Conceptual metaphor theory has been criticized due to its emphasis on concepts instead of words and its top-down direction of analysis. In response to these criticisms, this paper employs a new strategy, utilizing established mathematical modeling methods to allow a systematic, quantitative analysis of the entire dataset produced by the Mapping Metaphor project at the University of Glasgow. This dataset consists of 9609 words performing 18916 metaphorical mappings between 414 domains. The data is represented as a network consisting of 414 nodes, the domains, connected by shared words. Words are represented by groups of directed mappings between all domains in which they occur. This is made possible by the use of a directed hypergraph representation, a tool commonly used in discrete mathematics and various areas of computer science but not previously applied to the metaphorical meanings of words. Examining the dataset as a whole, rather than focusing on individual words or metaphors, allows global patterns of behavior to emerge from the data without pre-filtering or selection by the authors. Outcomes of the analysis relating to the distributions of source and target domains within the network, the growth mechanisms at work in the spread of metaphorical meanings and how these relate to existing concepts in CMT are discussed.

Acknowledgment sections are a rich but underused resource for understanding how language is used for social purposes (such as expressing gratitude and communicating social relations networks), and how conventions and patterns emerge in this process. This paper presents a usage-based case study combining qualitative and quantitative methods for analyzing a dataset of >300 acknowledgment sections from medical dissertations written in German. In our quantitative analysis, we gauge keywords and key n-grams and assess the relative position of recurrent words in each text. Our analysis shows that this text type has developed clear conventions, with acknowledgments in the professional domain being followed by a usually smaller set of expressions of gratitude associated with the private domain. In addition, our quantitative analysis suggests recurrent patterns that can be linked to specific socio-pragmatic functions. For instance, an analysis of n-grams attested in text segments associated with the professional vs. the private domain shows some differences with regard to the typical patterns chosen in those segments. Our analysis also raises a number of future research questions, thus showing that acknowledgment sections are a highly interesting object of study that deserve to be investigated in more detail.

The article presents findings from both quantitative and qualitative research regarding the resolution of cross- and multi-modal anaphoric references to objects in two Sherlock Holmes movies directed by Guy Ritchie. The goal is to illustrate how words referring to objects are linked to images depicting the objects as well as sounds produced by the objects to constitute coreferential chains with respect to the viewers’ perception. The theoretical assumptions draw concepts primarily from cognitive linguistics (such as mental spaces, compression, frame-metonymic relations), with additional notions adopted from (verbal) semantics, pragmatics, visual semantics, and film studies. A cognitive account of regular and associative cross- and multimodal anaphora is suggested, along with a model for the representation of cross- and multi-modal coreferential chains for future manual and automated annotation tools. Overall, the work emphasizes the importance of considering both verbal and nonverbal cues in understanding anaphoric references in cinematic contexts by highlighting the cognitive processes involved while viewers integrate information from different modes.

One of the central assumptions in Cognitive Linguistics is that the cognitive mechanisms underlying our language use are domain-general and thus apply to human behavior beyond language. Examples of such cognitive mechanisms are, among others, our ability to focus attention, to memorize and categorize, as well as processes related to chunking, generalization, and inhibitory control. Testing this core assumption, however, is often difficult, as it requires us to move beyond linguistic research and to actively look for links between our language use and other areas of human cognition. This paper is an illustration of what such links could look like, particularly focusing on links between research on (Dutch-German) language contact and expert behavior. In doing so, it shows (a) that there are many shared links, for example, regarding the cognitive mechanisms of entrenchment and chunking, and (b) that these shared links (as well as potential differences across the fields) can be used to improve our linguistic theorizing. In particular, I argue that linguistic research can benefit from the insights from research on expert behavior, especially from its more advanced insights modelling individual variation, and that the shared links can help us to test the core assumption that the cognitive mechanisms underlying our language use are indeed domain-general.

In the beginning stages of language acquisition, children primarily learn language from their parents or main caregivers. Studies have shown that adults use a specific way of speaking when talking to young children, called child-directed speech (CDS). This type of speech has distinct characteristics across different aspects of language. Additionally, older siblings also communicate with their younger brothers and sisters. Studies suggest that even three- and four-year-olds change how they talk when interacting with younger children, like their siblings. Studies have shown that children’s speech patterns resemble those of adults, whether they grow up in monolingual or bilingual environments. However, research on bilingual language acquisition often focuses on how siblings influence the language development of younger children. In this study, we explore how children adapt their language in bilingual settings and focus on the older sibling. Specifically, we compare the speech of an older sibling, who speaks both German and Russian, when talking to their younger sibling and when talking to their parents. The study revealed the following: The girl demonstrated linguistic adaptations typical of child-directed speech in both Russian and German when interacting with her younger brother. However, these adaptations were not consistent across all linguistic categories analyzed, revealing some differences between the two languages. Notably, Katharina did not exhibit more child-directed speech features in one language over the other. Adaptive behavior was present in both Russian and German in categories such as MLU, MLU5, question constructions, and imperatives. In Russian, adaptation was also evident in coordinate constructions but not subordinate constructions, while the opposite pattern was observed in German.