Volume 8, Issue 2 -

Rapid alteration (dynamisation), increased specialisation (differentiation) and growing variety (decentralisation) are considered to be essential tendencies in current professional communication and already implemented in the training regulations of different professions. The present article sets the term for professional communication in contrast to the conceptual more difficult term for jargon. Further and referring to this basis, the three mentioned tendencies will be depicted and discussed in relation to the professional training for automotive mechatronix engineers.

The present paper presents the findings of a study comparing the formulations of introductions of academic articles across disciplines. A multidisciplinary corpus of 20 articles from linguistics, medicine, the natural sciences, economics, and sociology is examined. The analysis comprises two general steps, the first being macro-, the second being microstructural. Macrostructurally, the explicit formulations of the moves conducted in the introductions are singled out. These formulations are in turn examined microstructurally in regard to syntax (typology), verbs (valency, grammar-semantics interface, pragmatics) and lexicology (text commentary, lexical deixis, modal expressions). The results are evaluated against the backdrop of possible underlying stylistic patterns of formulation. Subsequently, suggestions for the feasibility of the results within the teaching of German as a (foreign) academic language are made.

In the paper two statistical methods are presented for the analysis of the reversibility of the component order in binomials (conjoined expressions, freezes). Based on the frequency of binomials, occurring in variable component order, a binomial test and an asymptotic test is applied to give statistical evidence of the significance of the reversibility. By the means of these two tests in a sample of Slovene binomials the group of conditionally irreversible binomials is obtained.

The main goal of the present paper is to demonstrate the usefulness of some modern cluster analytic techniques in linguistics by means of data from a longitudinal study of language shift of a Romanian community living in Hungary (Borbély 2016). Based on this sample we attempted to explore statistically valid and linguistically meaningful homogeneous types, which characterize bilingual adult persons of a Romanian community in Hungary. Cluster analyses identified seven main types of language shift. It was also shown that the way from the monolingual Romanian to the monolingual Hungarian state is not a linear process. This may give a chance to a successful intervention to slow down the process of assimilation and language shift. Our analyses demonstrated also the usefulness of the MORI indices (Vargha Bergman & Takács 2016) in determining a proper cluster number, and in the validation of a cluster structure, mainly with the application of a correlated random multidimensional normal data set.

As transition from the Early Modern Age to the Modern Age, the 17th and the 18th centuries are seen as historic period with tremendous relevance for the historical development of the German language – from a social and culture-historical perspective. The often transfiguring interest in different regions of Asia, as well as Arabic or Chinese regions, is seen as special phenomenon of this age. The present article aims to analyse the result of this in the German linguistic reflection of baroque and enlightenment. After outlining some supporting documents of Asian languages in general, especially supporting documents of Arabic and Chinese will be analysed in detail. The research focusses here on word usage, genealogy and typology, linguistic characteristics, as well as comparison and evaluation.