Volume 9, Issue 1

This paper aims to explore the use of the tap allophone [ɾ] in Received Pronunciation (RP) in word-internal and linking /r/ contexts over three decades (1940s–1960s) and considering three age cohorts (<35 years old, 35–54 years old, and ≥55 years old). A spoken corpus of formal register materials was compiled to conduct further perceptual and acoustic analysis and classify the articulation of /r/ into tap versus no tap. Results show a decreasing tendency of tap production across decades, and the initial stage of its replacement by the approximant variant. From a sociolinguistic perspective, tapped /r/ may have potentially changed its status, from an indicator to a marker. The fact that the tap allophone has become a sociolinguistic marker can encourage future research on intra-speaker variation. Women and middle-aged speakers (35–54 years old) are the ones leading this sound change, opting for the innovative approximant. This may be due to professional pressures or aspects of social identity, yet further research is needed. Furthermore, the word-internal context seems to favour the production of taps, which could be due to the general low frequency of linking /r/ and the formal register of the materials.

The present study quantitatively investigates the structural features of English written VP-ellipsis (VPE) and VP-substitution (VPS) under the theoretical framework of dependency grammar. Results show that: (a) Both VPE and VPS are human language mechanisms that follow the least effort principle; (b) Dependency distance of segmental and discontinuous linguistic units under the influence of VPE and VPS conform to the right-truncated Zipf-Alekseev distribution; (c) Dependency-based indices are effective in distinguishing similar structures of VPE and VPS, especially the Do-Support in ellipsis and Do + X in substitution. The study not only explores the regularity of partial segments of human language under the mechanisms of VPE and VPS, but also offers quantitative evidence for distinguishing confusing structures in VPE and VPS, which may aid in raising the retrieving precision of similar linguistic structures in corpora.

In a number of Bantu languages, object marking is correlated with a definite or specific interpretation of the agreeing object DP, and similar claims about the semantic effects of object marking have also been made for Zulu (Nguni; S42). This paper examines these claims by applying a range of diagnostic tests for (in)definiteness and (non-)specificity to sentences with object-marked objects in Zulu. The paper’s first finding is that agreeing objects in Zulu can violate the uniqueness requirement that holds for definite expressions, and can therefore appear in contexts in which definite DPs are not tolerated. The second finding is that object-marked objects in Zulu can take narrow scope in relation to intensional verbs and negation, in which case they are interpreted as (scopally) non-specific. Object marking in Zulu therefore cannot be regarded as a morphosyntactic device to mark definiteness or specificity. Rather, it is suggested that the interpretative effects of object marking follow from information structure: agreeing DPs in Zulu are obligatorily dislocated and hence appear outside the focus domain (the vP). Consequently, an agreeing object in Zulu is incompatible with semantic focus, which implies that it can (but crucially, does not have to) be interpreted as denoting a discourse-familiar referent.

The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, it proposes a compositional semantic analysis for approximative kaada in Classical Arabic which has the property of being a clause-level rather than predicate-level operator: [KAADA α] is paraphrased as [α is false but there exists β close to α such that β is true]. The analysis is based on the integrated semantics of Penka (Penka, Doris. 2006. Almost there: The meaning of almost. Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 10. 275–286) in which the negativity component of kaada is interpreted as part of its lexical meaning within a situation semantics framework. It also makes a novel use of the concept of semantic closeness among situations in terms of the intuitively appealing dimension of the relative completion of an event. Second, the paper presents and analyzes an instance of a puzzle noted by most descriptive Classical Arabic grammarians (see, for example, al-Ahmad, Ayman. 2021. Dalalit KAADA l-manfiah fi l-Qurʾaan l-kareem. Journal of the Association of Arab Universities for Literature 9(2). 838–859) in which negated kaada has an interpretation where the negativity implication disappears altogether. The paper offers a solution to the puzzle based on a previous suggestion made by Kilbourn-Ceron (Kilbourn-Ceron, Oriana. 2016. Embedded exhaustification: Evidence from almost . Journal of Semantics 34(1). 43–60) in which an instance of embedded exhaustification appears to apply in approximatives in certain contexts in such a way that the negativity inference is obscured.

This paper attempts to explore the extent to which imperatives, linguistically manifested in direct commands, attention-getters, and let-constructions, function as persuasion strategies in one of the speeches of President El-Sisi of Egypt. The main objective of this paper is to test the hypothesis that imperatives, irrespective of their type, do not necessarily require a verbal or physical response, as is the case with their ordinary semantic function; however, they go beyond their common semantic functionality towards specific pragmatic purposes, targeting the communication of particular political meanings in discourse. Two main findings are revealed in this paper: first, El-Sisi uses imperatives to motivate his addressees’ pragmatic competence rather than to elicit their verbal performance. Second, the three forms of Arabic imperatives are persuasion strategies employed in the speech to initiate a cognitively communicative channel through which intended meanings are communicated to interlocutors.

The last decades have seen major advances in the study of gestures both in humans and non-human primates. In this paper, we seriously examine the idea that there may be gestural form types that are shared across great ape species, including humans, which may underlie gestural universals, both in form and meaning. We focus on one case study, the hand fling gesture common to chimpanzees and humans, and provide a semantic analysis of this gesture.

This study quantitatively examines the first five universals of Greenberg’s basic word order typology based on 74 large-scale annotated corpora from two perspectives. The results show that (1) the dominant orders extracted from corpora concur with those retrieved from the World Atlas of Language Structures (henceforth, WALS ) and provide knowledge of dominant orders to languages absent in the WALS , demonstrating the feasibility of adopting corpora to determine dominant orders in typological studies; (2) approaching word order as a discrete variable suggests that the relative order of adjective and noun cannot be predicted by the relative orders of object and verb and genitive and noun, which means the violation of Greenberg’s related universal; (3) approaching word order as a continuous variable also indicates the violation of this universal; and (4) the language samples based on the annotated corpora database further demonstrates that languages that are in line with this universal are rare and internally heterogeneous. Our findings suggest the possibility of drawing typological conclusions based on the frequencies and probabilities extracted from corpora materials and demonstrate that a more cautious adoption of the well-known universals is needed, indicating the importance of viewing word order features from various perspectives to better capture the characteristics of natural languages.

Previous research has shown that bilinguals process nouns that have the same grammatical gender in their two languages faster than nouns that differ in gender between L1 and L2. This finding, referred to as the gender congruency effect, has so far only been documented in L2. Hence, the aim of the present study was to examine whether late unbalanced bilinguals would also show gender congruency effects in their L1. To that end, 44 L1 Polish/L2 German bilinguals were tested in a gender decision task in Polish, which included gender-congruent and gender-incongruent nouns. The results revealed a robust gender congruency effect in L1, which was limited to bilinguals with very high L2 proficiency. This indicates that bilinguals activate grammatical gender information in L2 when accessing gender in L1, providing that they are highly proficient in L2. More broadly, the study demonstrates that foreign language knowledge can affect native language performance in exclusively native contexts. Finally, as a first attempt to examine grammatical gender access in Polish, this study shows that feminine gender is accessed faster compared to masculine and neuter, suggesting that the ending -a is the most reliable gender cue in Polish.

Two measures for assessing English vocabulary knowledge, the Vocabulary Size Test (VST) and the Word Familiarity Test (WordFAM), were recently validated for web-based administration. An analysis of the psychometric properties of these assessments revealed high internal consistency, suggesting that stable assessment could be achieved with fewer test items. Because researchers may use these assessments in conjunction with other experimental tasks, the utility may be enhanced if they are shorter in duration. To this end, two “brief” versions of the VST and the WordFAM were developed and submitted to validation testing. Each version consisted of approximately half of the items from the full assessment, with novel items across each brief version. Participants ( n  = 85) completed one brief version of both the VST and the WordFAM at session one, followed by the other brief version of each assessment at session two. The results showed high test-retest reliability for both the VST ( r  = 0.68) and the WordFAM ( r  = 0.82). The assessments also showed moderate convergent validity (ranging from r  = 0.38 to 0.59), indicative of assessment validity. This work provides open-source English vocabulary knowledge assessments with normative data that researchers can use to foster high quality data collection in web-based environments.

The goal of the current work was to develop and validate web-based measures for assessing English vocabulary knowledge. Two existing paper-and-pencil assessments, the Vocabulary Size Test (VST) and the Word Familiarity Test (WordFAM), were modified for web-based administration. In Experiment 1, participants ( n  = 100) completed the web-based VST. In Experiment 2, participants ( n  = 100) completed the web-based WordFAM. Results from these experiments confirmed that both tasks (1) could be completed online, (2) showed expected sensitivity to English frequency patterns, (3) exhibited high internal consistency, and (4) showed an expected range of item discrimination scores, with low frequency items exhibiting higher item discrimination scores compared to high frequency items. This work provides open-source English vocabulary knowledge assessments with normative data that researchers can use to foster high quality data collection in web-based environments.

We report the results of a cross-modal priming study investigating the processing of opaque compound words, when followed by figuratively and literally related primes, in L1 (Polish) and L2 (English). Additionally, the half-divided visual field paradigm was used to verify which cerebral hemisphere is responsible for semantic decomposition, and whether the language status will lead to different activation patterns. The left hemisphere is generally believed to process the more salient or conventional meanings of figurative expressions, and the right hemisphere their less salient or unconventional meanings. However, this assumption has not so far been verified for compounds. The results suggest that both the figurative and the literal meanings of opaque compounds were processed significantly faster by the left hemisphere in the case of L1 Polish. No statistically significant differences were obtained for L2 English. At the same time, English compounds were overall processed significantly faster than Polish compounds.

Little is known about when children understand the function of anaphoric referring expressions to signal different degrees of accessibility of discourse referents. This visual world study investigates German-speaking three- to four-year-olds’ online processing and offline interpretation of repeated names and personal pronouns in a context where reference is made to highly accessible discourse referents. Repeated names are markers of low accessibility, whereas personal pronouns are preferentially used to refer to highly accessible referents. For online processing, results showed a significant effect of referring expression: children looked at the target picture more often after hearing a personal pronoun than after hearing repeated names. Offline results revealed no significant differences between the two conditions. We conclude that German-speaking preschool children are sensitive to the function of accessibility markers during online processing, and suggest that the difference between online and offline results may be due to the different task demands.

Sensory experience rating (SER) is a subjective semantic variable that measures the extent to which a word generates a sensory experience when a reader processes the word, and it has been explored in English, French, and Spanish. The present study collected the SERs of 1,130 Chinese words and explored the correlation between SER and other lexical and semantic variables. SER was significantly associated with concreteness, age of acquisition (AoA), context diversity, and word frequency. The results confirmed both the reliability and the validity of SER. However, SER failed to predict lexical decision performance in reaction time and accuracy rate. It is possible that SER is not as powerful in influencing word recognition as previous studies have assumed, at least for Chinese.

Based on data drawn from two corpora collected in Orléans, France, in two waves (ESLO 1, 1968–1971; ESLO 2, 2008–) over a 40-year period, this paper investigated the use of quoi as a discourse marker (DM) in the speech of 234 French native speakers. Our results indicate that the DM quoi has increased in frequency in the more recent corpus. The distribution of its discursive functions has changed between the two corpora. Meanwhile, we also demonstrate that the DM quoi is mainly used in final position and this tendency continues to increase in ESLO 2. Regarding the relation between function and particle position, the planning function is the only function favored by medial position in ESLO 1, while in ESLO 2, the quantification function also becomes one of the favored functions in this position. We suggest that this might indicate potential competition for the same position. Meanwhile, we also point out that the benchmarking function is quasi-categorically used in final position in ESLO 2. The relation between functions and positions changes between the two corpora.

We analyse variation in vowel production within monologues produced by speakers in a quiet, well-controlled environment. Using principal component analysis (PCA) and generalized additive mixed models (GAMMs), applied to a large corpus of naturalistic recordings of New Zealand English speakers, we show that the first formant of monophthongs varies significantly with variation in a speaker’s relative amplitude. We also find that amplitude variation is used, potentially agentively, to mark the beginning and ending of topical sections within single-speaker monologues. These results have significant methodological consequences for the study of vocalic variation in the context of research on speaker style and language variation and change. While laboratory research has shown a connection between variation in F1 and amplitude in loud environments or with distant interlocutors, this has not been seen in quiet environments with unscripted speech of the sort often used in sociolinguistcs. We argue that taking account of this variation is an important challenge for both within-speaker investigation of stylistic covariation and across-speaker investigation. In the latter case we recommend, as a minimal step, the inclusion of a measure of relative amplitude within regression models.

The neural architectures of language models are becoming increasingly complex, especially that of Transformers, based on the attention mechanism. Although their application to numerous natural language processing tasks has proven to be very fruitful, they continue to be models with little or no interpretability and explainability. One of the tasks for which they are best suited is the encoding of the contextual sense of words using contextualized embeddings. In this paper we propose a transparent, interpretable, and linguistically motivated strategy for encoding the contextual sense of words by modeling semantic compositionality. Particular attention is given to dependency relations and semantic notions such as selection preferences and paradigmatic classes. A partial implementation of the proposed model is carried out and compared with Transformer-based architectures for a given semantic task, namely the similarity calculation of word senses in context. The results obtained show that it is possible to be competitive with linguistically motivated models instead of using the black boxes underlying complex neural architectures.

This study explored linguistic resources that people employ to express their perceptions and opinions of a fragrance. Several natural language processing (NLP) techniques were used, including sentiment analysis, topic modelling, and supervised classification. The data were collected from the website of Fragrantica, popular among perfume lovers, and the reviews pertained to a niche market fragrance. The findings from the sentiment analysis revealed that the positive reviews contained a greater percentage of lexis referring to the social world, social processes, sexuality, leisure, and mental states. In the negative reviews, the prevalent lexis concerned health, illness, and social conflict. The topic modelling analysis indicated that the positive reviews centred on issues related to the experience of wearing the perfume, its sensual character, and its olfactory qualities. The negative reviews focused on skin chemistry, the perfume notes, and physical reactions to the scent. The supervised classification analysis indicated notable differences in the frequency ratios of some lexical items in the positive and negative reviews.

A central task in empirical and quantitative language studies is the extraction of linguistic constructions important to linguistic theory and application. The great number and variety of such constructions increasingly necessitates computer-assisted extraction, which often proves challenging as it entails a simultaneous analysis of multiple layers of linguistic information latent in large-scale corpora. To address this, we present Constraction, an open-source tool for the automatic extraction and interactive exploration of linguistic constructions from arbitrary textual corpora. Constraction features a generic algorithm that integrates customizable layers of linguistic annotation (e.g., lexical, syntactic, and semantic) to identify constructional patterns of varying sizes and abstraction levels. Its browser-based interface allows users to configure various extraction parameters and enables visual, interactive exploration of the extracted patterns. We demonstrate the utility of Constraction through case studies and discuss its potential applications in language research and pedagogy.

Scientists of multimodal communication have no established policy or default tool for sharing de-identified audiovisual recordings. Recently, new technology has been developed that enables researchers to de-identify voice and appearance. These software tools can produce output in JSON format that specifies bodypose and face and hand keypoints in numerical form, suitable for computer search, machine learning, and sharing. The Red Hen Anonymizer is a new tool for de-identification. This article presents the Red Hen Anonymizer and discusses guidelines for its use.

Linguistic synesthesia links two concepts from two distinct sensory domains and creates conceptual conflicts at the level of embodied cognition. Previous studies focused on constraints on the directionality of synesthetic mapping as a way to establish the conceptual hierarchy among the five senses (i.e., vision, hearing, taste, smell, and touch). This study goes beyond examining the directionality of conventionalized synesthetic terms by adopting a Conceptual Metaphor Theory approach (i.e., the Conceptual Mapping Model) to test if conventional synesthetic directionality still holds when it comes to novel metaphorical expressions. The subjects, 308 native English speakers, are asked to judge the degree of commonness, appropriateness, understandability, and figurativeness in order to measure the degree of comprehensibility of novel synesthetic metaphors. Our findings demonstrate that novel synesthetic metaphors that follow conventional directionality are considered more common, more appropriate, and easier to comprehend than those that violate conventional mapping principles; they are also judged as more literal than those that do not follow conventional directionality. This study explores linguistic synesthesia from the perspective of comprehension of novel synesthetic metaphors, posits a pivotal position for mapping principles in synesthetic directionality, and supports an embodied account of linguistic synesthesia.