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Linguistics Vanguard

A Multimodal Journal for the Language Sciences

Editors-in-Chief: Mingya Liu , Rebecca Starr and Georgia Zellou

Language: English

First published: June 20, 2015

Publication Frequency: 1 issue per year

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About this journal

Objective
Linguistics Vanguard is a new channel for high quality articles and innovative approaches in all major fields of linguistics. This multimodal journal is published solely online and provides an accessible platform supporting both traditional and new kinds of publications. Linguistics Vanguard seeks to publish concise and up-to-date reports on the state of the art in linguistics as well as cutting-edge research papers. With its topical breadth of coverage and anticipated quick rate of production, it is one of the leading platforms for scientific exchange in linguistics. Its broad theoretical range, international scope, and diversity of article formats engage students and scholars alike.

Topics
All topics within linguistics are welcome. The journal especially encourages submissions taking advantage of its new multimodal platform designed to integrate interactive content, including audio and video, images, maps, software code, raw data, and any other media that enhances the traditional written word. The novel platform and concise article format allows for rapid turnaround of submissions. Full peer review assures quality and enables authors to receive appropriate credit for their work. The journal publishes general submissions as well as special collections. Ideas for special collections may be submitted to the editors for consideration (linguistics.vanguard@degruyter.com)

Your Benefits

Your benefits:

Innovative multimodal platform for disseminating scholarship
Concise research articles as well as overview articles
Quick turnaround time from submission to review and acceptance to publication
Covers all areas of linguistics, including interdisciplinary research

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Reintroducing and testing the Probabilistic Sliding Template Model of vowel perception

September 29, 2025

Santiago Barreda, T. Florian Jaeger

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Normalization of the speech signal onto comparatively invariant phonetic representations is critical to speech perception. Assumptions about this process also play a central role in phonetics and phonology. Yet, despite the importance of these assumptions, popular normalization accounts continue to incorrectly assume that the relevant normalization parameters are “known” – for example, because the researcher can estimate them from a fully balanced set of recordings. Listeners, however, have to incrementally infer these parameters from the speech input. We reintroduce a seminal, but still underappreciated, model of this inference process – the Probabilistic Sliding Template Model of vowel normalization and perception (PSTM) – and show why researchers cannot afford to ignore it. We provide the R package STM, which makes it trivial to apply the PSTM to new data. We present the first quantitative assessment of the PSTM against human perception. We show that the model excels at predicting listeners’ vowel categorization behavior, clearly outperforming the popular Lobanov normalization.
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Learning and generalizing stress patterns with a sequence-to-sequence neural network

September 26, 2025

Brandon Prickett, Joe Pater

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We present the first application of modern neural networks to the well-studied task of learning word stress systems. We tested our adaptation of a sequence-to-sequence network on the Tesar and Smolensky (2000. Learnability in optimality theory . Cambridge, MA: MIT Press) test set of 124 “languages”, showing that it acquires generalizable representations of stress patterns in a very high proportion of runs. We also show that the neural network can learn lexically specified patterns of stress, something constraint-based approaches to stress acquisition require extra mechanisms to accomplish. And finally we demonstrate that the model, in an agent-based simulation, is biased toward systematic patterns of stress, despite having the expressive power to memorize its training data.
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Questions in monologues: an analysis grounded on ISO

September 26, 2025

Purificação Silvano, Giedrė Valūnaitė Oleškevičienė, Chaya Liebeskind, Mariana Damova

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The present study analyzes the types of interrogative, such as yes/no questions, wh-questions, or alternative questions, and their semantic and pragmatic functions in a multilingual parallel corpus of spoken monologues extracted from the TED Talks transcripts in five languages: English, European Portuguese, Lithuanian, Bulgarian, and Hebrew. The corpus was developed with English as the pivot language, and the examples are aligned in all five languages based on the occurrence of an interrogative. To conduct this study, we designed an annotation scheme that harmonizes two parts of ISO 24617 – Part 8: Semantic relations and Part 2: Dialogue acts. This framework enabled us to determine the discourse relations that questions establish with the segments to which they are connected and that precede them and their communicative function. In our analysis, we observed that, despite the monologic nature of the corpus, interrogatives are very frequent and diversified across the five languages. Our findings also reveal that the questions are mostly used with a pragmatic function and that the range of discourse relations is less varied. Additionally, the analysis disclosed some pertinent differences between the five languages concerning the translation choices.
Open Access
LLMs highlight the importance of interaction in human language learning

September 25, 2025

Ross D. Kristensen-McLachlan, Pablo Contreras Kallens, Morten H. Christiansen

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Recent years have seen large language models (LLMs) achieve impressive performance with core linguistic abilities. This can be taken as a demonstration that, contrary to long-held assumptions about innate linguistic constraints, language can be learned through statistical learning from linguistic input alone. However, statistical language learning in these models differs from human learners in a crucial way: human language acquisition evolved not simply as passive absorption of linguistic input but is instead fundamentally interactive, guided by continuous feedback and social cues. Recent advances in LLM engineering have introduced an additional step in model training that utilizes more human-like feedback in what has come to be known as reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF). This procedure results in models which more closely mirror human linguistic behaviors – even reproducing characteristic human-like errors. We argue that the way RLHF changes the behavior of LLMs highlights how communicative interaction and socially informed feedback, in addition to input-driven statistical learning, can explain fundamental aspects of language learning. In particular, we take LLMs as models of “idealized statistical language learners” and RLHF as a form of “idealized language feedback”, arguing that this perspective offers valuable insights into our understanding of human language development.
Open Access
Iamitive, perfect, and ‘already’ markers in Northwest Caucasian

September 25, 2025

Evgenia Klyagina, Anastasia Panova

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This paper provides a description of the four verbal suffixes in the Northwest Caucasian languages (- χ’a in Abaza, - χ’a in Abkhaz, - хе in Adyghe, and - č̣’e in Kabardian) that have functions of such categories as the perfect, iamitive, and ‘already’. The difference between these categories has been debated in the recent literature, and the Northwest Caucasian languages represent an ideal case for a detailed investigation of the fine-grained distinctions between markers that occupy different places in the perfect-iamitive-‘already’ semantic space while remaining within a group of languages with a similar typological profile. Furthermore, this study contributes to earlier discussions by focusing on a hitherto less explored affixal type of iamitive(-like) marker. Using diagnostics partly borrowed from previous studies, we analyze the aforementioned suffixes on the basis of elicited and corpus data. The results show that - χ’a in Abkhaz is closest to the perfect, - хе in Adyghe and - č̣’e in Kabardian are close to ‘already’, while -χ’a in Abaza fits quite well into the iamitive category. We also pay special attention to the interaction of these markers with available TAM forms. It turns out that in most languages these markers are restricted to past perfective forms of dynamic verbs.
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Incremental learning of lexically specific morphophonology: an integrative approach

September 24, 2025

Gaja Jarosz

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Acquisition and processing results indicate idiosyncratic, lexical knowledge interacts with productive, grammatical knowledge in systematic ways. Evidence from language processing demonstrates that higher frequency and less productive complex words are more likely to be retrieved holistically from the mental lexicon rather than being decomposed into constituents. Meanwhile, acquisition findings in both natural and artificial languages provide important evidence about the time course of learning and the role that lexical conditioning plays during development. Finally, work in experimental phonology demonstrates adult native speakers have productive knowledge of lexicalized morphophonological patterns, with learners extending lexical trends stochastically to novel forms. Although there have been significant computational advances in modeling the learning of such gradient grammatical generalizations, less attention has been devoted to modeling the joint learning of both the lexical and grammatical components of these systems, their interactions, and their connections to the processing and acquisition findings. This paper examines concrete predictions that two families of existing models of lexical and grammatical learning make across all three of these empirical domains. I show the models already align well with existing processing evidence on lexicalization effects, identify aspects of their predictions requiring further attention, and discuss implications for linguistic theory and computational modeling.
Open Access
How fast is fast and how slow is slow in mental simulation? Two rating studies on Estonian speed adverbs

September 23, 2025

Piia Taremaa

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The study explores the language-cognition interface through the semantics of Estonian speed adverbs. It hypothesizes that fastness, being more intense than slowness, is reflected in how adverbs are processed. The expectations are that fast adverbs (e.g., kiiresti ‘fast’) are attributed more extreme speed values than slow adverbs (e.g., aeglaselt ‘slowly’) and that meaning intensification through word formation (reduplication, simile compounding, adding prefixoids) enhances the speed-related meaning of fast adverbs more strongly than those of slow adverbs. Two rating experiments on 86 simple (e.g., kiiresti ‘fast’) and 84 complex adverbs (e.g., üli+kiiresti ‘extra fast’) refute these expectations, notably showing slow simple adverbs as more extreme in slowness than fast adverbs are extreme in fastness. However, meaning intensification – particularly through intensifying prefixoids (e.g., üli+kiiresti ‘extra fast’) and simile compounding (e.g., välk+kiiresti ‘lightning fast’) – amplifies the sense of fastness in both slow and fast adverbs. An exploratory follow-up study on response times shows that fast adverbs (particularly complex fast adverbs) are processed significantly more quickly than slow adverbs. This provides converging evidence for grounded cognition, while the results overall highlight the multifaceted nature of mental simulation, the importance of word-formation mechanisms in meaning reinforcement, and the asymmetries observed in speed adverbs.
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Medieval Chinese zì as a flexible phasal adverb: semantic unity and force-dynamic origins

September 11, 2025

Ryan Ka Yau Lai

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In Early Medieval Chinese, 自 zì came to convey ideas related to phasal polarity. This paper describes how zì expresses three meanings: unexpectedly early already , unexpectedly late still , and the idea that a positive phase at reference time began earlier than expected. These uses are argued to derive from an abstract phase extension meaning: zì denies the occurrence of a change of state, causing the situation to hold true for a more extended period than expected. This meaning is argued to account for the appearance of zì in adverb- zì sequences. Finally, the meaning is shown to have derived metonymically from an earlier force-dynamic use of zì denying that an additional force impinged upon the situation, which in turn originates from zì ’s reflexive-emphatic uses.
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Introduction to the special issue on ʻalreadyʼ expressions

September 2, 2025

Lidia Federica Mazzitelli, Bastian Persohn

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In this introduction, we outline the research question underlying this special issue: how do languages express ʻalreadyʼ and related notions, and how does this relate to the typological debate around the typological validity of the proposed category of “iamitive”? We also present the four studies in this issue, which, focusing on languages from diverse families and regions, offer contrasting perspectives on the iamitive hypothesis and contribute new data and criteria for its cross-linguistic assessment.
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Three strategies for Socratic inquisitiveness in reflective questions

July 10, 2025

Anastasia Giannakidou, Alda Mari

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We identify a new phenomenon of reflective questions as expressing aporia : a state of Socratic inquisitiveness that presumes that there is no authoritative answer a question. By formulating an aporetic question, the speaker has an awareness that inquisitiveness will persist and that there may be no epistemic authority that can give a complete and a definitive answer; for this reason, reflective questions are typically self-addressed and appear monological in nature. We discuss a variety of linguistic manifestations of reflection in Greek, Italian, English, and Korean, and identify three grammatical strategies: questioning possibilities, enlarging the set of initial options considered by the speaker, or restricting the set of possibilities while keeping intact the state of uncertainty. In our approach, reflection is a notional category that blurs the boundary between assertions and questions – whereby questions lose their information-seeking discourse function to rather convey modal meaning of enhanced, i.e., Socratic inquisitiveness.
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Corrigendum to: Sign recognition: the effect of parameters and features in sign mispronunciations

June 20, 2025

Carlo Geraci, Lena Pasalskaya, Sharon Peperkamp

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Questions in monological discourse in the Estonian parliament

June 12, 2025

Marri Amon, Marge Käsper, Anu Treikelder

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This paper investigates interrogatives in monological political discourse, specifically from reports presented in the Estonian Parliament from 2016 to 2024. These interrogatives, though produced orally before an audience, do not seek immediate answers and thus deviate from the canonical, information-seeking function of interrogatives. Our qualitative analysis focuses on their noncanonical nature and reveals several types based on their deviation from traditional interactional contexts. We categorize the questions into three types: information-eliciting by a knowledgeable speaker, rhetorical with implicit or obvious answers known to both speaker and audience, and inviting collective reflection where neither party knows the answer. The examples illustrate how these questions frame discourse, engage the audience, and convey criticism of or support for arguments. The study also explores sequences of questions, showing how clusters enhance rhetorical impact by expanding on previous inquiries. These questions serve diverse rhetorical purposes, such as structuring arguments, prompting reflection, and inviting action. Questions in political and expert communication play a crucial role in facilitating engagement and persuasion, with their noncanonical properties closely related to their discursive and pragmatic functions in monological settings.
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The (non)canonical status of the ka- passive in Balinese

April 11, 2025

I Nyoman Udayana, Gede Primahadi Wijaya Rajeg, Ida Ayu Made Puspani

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In Balinese, a noncanonical passive construction exists alongside the canonical passive. This noncanonical form shares some properties with the canonical passive but differs in key ways, particularly in expressing an unintentional agent. This study explores this construction, similar to the English get passive, by compiling a corpus of Balinese passives from storybooks and conducting grammaticality judgment tests. Results reveal that the ka- passive is incompatible with agent-oriented adverbials and purposive clauses, and contrasts semantically with the -a passive, which marks accomplishments. The ka- passive, associated with achieved states in Austronesian languages, often appears as a high-register or polite form, suggesting its (non)canonical status is gradient due to language change.
Open Access
Using ATLAS.ti for constructing and analysing multimodal social media corpora

April 10, 2025

Yuze Sha, Beth Malory

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Methods to enable comprehensive corpus analyses of multimodal data are imperative to furthering our understanding of social media and digital communication. In this study, we demonstrate how ATLAS.ti (version 24.2.0) can be used to construct such corpora and conduct corpus-assisted multimodal discourse analysis (CAMDA). The focus for such studies may be the exploration of complex patterns of co-occurrence, both intra- and inter-mode, or iterative corpus queries, especially when unexpected patterns move the research focus beyond initial research questions. In such cases, ATLAS.ti’s functionalities facilitate a triangulation of automatic pattern recognition and in-depth manual analysis. It supports a flexible, user-defined approach to the multimodal analysis of short-form social media datasets, overcoming traditional limitations such as analyses being restricted to emojis or preset thematic dimensions in current AI software. In this way, the proposed methodology enables in-depth CAMDA, as illustrated in the case study presented in this paper, which analyses the co-occurrences of evaluations and visual representations of social actors.
Open Access
Large corpora and large language models: a replicable method for automating grammatical annotation

April 10, 2025

Cameron Morin, Matti Marttinen Larsson

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Much linguistic research relies on annotated datasets of features extracted from text corpora, but the rapid quantitative growth of these corpora has created practical difficulties for linguists to manually clean and annotate large data samples. In this paper, we present a method that leverages large language models for assisting the linguist in grammatical annotation through prompt engineering, training, and evaluation. We apply this methodological pipeline to the case study of formal variation in the English evaluative verb construction “ consider X (as) (to be) Y”, based on the large language model Claude 3.5 Sonnet and data from Davies’s NOW and Sketch Engine’s EnTenTen21 corpora. Overall, we reach a model accuracy of over 90 % on our held-out test samples with only a small amount of training data, validating the method for the annotation of very large quantities of tokens of the construction in the future. We discuss the generalizability of our results for a wider range of case studies of grammatical constructions and grammatical variation and change, underlining the value of AI copilots as tools for future linguistic research, notwithstanding some important caveats.
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Quoting to deceive: fake quotes and political delegitimization in Spanish far right grassroots disinformation campaigns

April 8, 2025

Agnese Sampietro

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This paper focuses on the deliberate fabrication of quotations attributed to rival politicians by Spanish far right activists and their dissemination on social media (particularly Twitter/X). It argues that such practices can be viewed as attempts to undermine the credibility and legitimacy of political adversaries. The data were obtained from Al Descubierto (http://aldescubierto.org), an organization specializing in tracking disinformation spread in Spain by the far right. This study examines a collection of anti-government disinformation, specifically focusing on the content of fake quotes attributed to government officials or other left-leaning politicians. The analysis uncovers a calculated attempt to portray left-wing politicians as incompetent leaders, thereby undermining their legitimacy to govern the nation. Specifically, it shows that fake quotes can help present politicians as immoral and their policies as irrational. In short, these fabricated quotes are used to erode trust in governing institutions and delegitimize politicians and policy initiatives.
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Asymmetry in French speech-in-noise perception: the effects of native dialect and cross-dialectal exposure

March 27, 2025

Scott Kunkel

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Research has shown that speakers’ native production patterns can change after living in adulthood in a region where a second dialect (D2) of their native language is spoken, yet relatively little is known about how speech perception changes after postadolescent D2 exposure. This study explores this topic by examining how varying degrees of exposure to Quebec French and Hexagonal French affect comprehension of speech in these dialects. A speech-in-noise perception experiment was conducted among mobile and nonmobile speakers of Quebec and Hexagonal French to test the competing effects of native dialect and D2 exposure on cross-dialectal speech perception. Results show an own-dialect advantage for all groups in their comprehension of speech in noise, though this advantage is smaller for the mobile groups, particularly for the mobile Hexagonal French listeners. An effect of D2 exposure on D2 perception is also revealed for the mobile Hexagonal listeners but not for the Québécois listeners, indicating an asymmetry in cross-dialectal perception. These findings suggest that, while phonological representations for the native dialect remain robust, processing of D2 speech can improve after extended, postadolescent exposure to this dialect. Furthermore, the extent of this adaptation may be modulated by mobile listeners’ prior experience with this dialect.
Open Access
Annotation and linguistic analysis of claim types for fact-checking

March 25, 2025

Oliver Deck, Z. Melce Hüsünbeyi, Leonie Uhling, Tatjana Scheffler

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Among the news items circulating in social media, only some contain factual statements, and factual claims can be differentiated by their check-worthiness. We describe the check-worthiness annotation of a novel corpus of claims obtained from real-world submissions to a German fact-checking organization: the German Crowd Claims (GCC) corpus. We iteratively adapted existing annotation guidelines, introducing the novel category of incident/event and a third level of annotation for statements. Exploratory analysis of 35 linguistic surface-level features highlights sentence length as the strongest predictor of check-worthiness, but remains inconclusive for more specific annotation. We therefore investigated the performance of transformer-based models for check-worthiness detection on the GCC corpus, in which classification accuracy was increased by translating the dataset into English, augmenting the dataset by adding additional data from a related task, and enriching the semantics by including related ontology embeddings.
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Effects of crosslinguistic influence in definiteness acquisition: comparing HL-English and HL-Russian bilingual children acquiring Hebrew

March 18, 2025

Dana Plaut-Forckosh, Natalia Meir

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The present study investigates the impact of heritage language (HL) properties on the acquisition of definiteness marking in the societal language (SL), Hebrew, among two groups of HL speakers: HL-English and HL-Russian. Hebrew, English, and Russian differ in their definiteness encoding: Hebrew uses the definite article ha- exclusively for definite nouns, leaving indefinite noun phrases unmarked; English marks both definite and indefinite nouns; Russian lacks articles in its grammatical system. Using a narrative production task, four groups are compared: (i) monolingual Hebrew-speaking adults, (ii) monolingual Hebrew-speaking children, (iii) HL-English/SL-Hebrew bilingual children, and (iv) HL-Russian/SL-Hebrew bilingual children. Results show that the monolingual children exhibit adultlike patterns of definiteness use. Further pairwise comparisons indicate that when controlling for morphosyntactic abilities, the HL-English group resembles the monolingual Hebrew-speaking children, while the HL-Russian group lags behind. Detailed error pattern analyses reveal that the HL-Russian speakers are more likely to omit definite articles compared to the Hebrew-speaking monolinguals and the HL-English bilinguals. To conclude, the study provides evidence for the effects of crosslinguistic influence on SL article acquisition, showing that Hebrew definiteness acquisition is shaped by HL properties, corroborating previous findings.
Open Access
Researching dialects with high school students: a citizen science approach

March 18, 2025

Gergely Szabó, Noémi Fazakas, Zsuzsanna Kocsis, Fruzsina Krizsai, Fruzsina S. Vargha

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Citizen science as a form of inquiry inviting nonprofessionals into different phases of the research process appeared in linguistics in the last decade. However, few such projects aim to study dialectal features, even though renewal would benefit dialectology. This methodological paper explores possible ways of applying citizen science in research on dialects. A specific small-scale study is presented which was conducted in the 2023/2024 academic year in Hungary with high school citizen scientists living in the Northern (so-called Palóc) dialect area. In this study, experimental and citizen scientific methods were combined, resulting in a corpus consisting of unique dialect data suitable for the acoustic study of inter- and intra-speaker variation, recorded without the presence of professional researchers. Drawing on the experiences of this project, the article examines how the contribution to science and the contribution to the public, two important criteria of citizen science projects, were achieved. It is claimed that the project helped to enhance the scientific literacy of the participating high school citizen scientists, as well as their agency in the local public.
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Some innate characteristics of neural network models of morphological inflection

September 5, 2025

Sarah Payne, Jordan Kodner

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Neural network models of morphological inflection (NNMIs) have seen impressive improvements over the last several decades. These improvements, however, lie in raw accuracy and other practical issues. When the performance of these models is instead compared to that of child learners, many of the shortcomings of the classic models persist in today’s NNMIs: (1) they struggle with generalization across sparse paradigms, (2) they are prone to over-irregularization, and (3) they do not follow child acquisition trajectories. The persistence of these issues suggests that they reflect inherent or “innate” characteristics of NNMIs as a class which are distinct from the characteristics of human language learners. As such, even substantial practical improvements do not necessarily entail increased cognitive plausibility.
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Engaging to deceive: strategies of synthetic involvement in fake tweets

October 23, 2025

Sylvia Jaworska

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This study investigates the lexico-grammatical and graphemic features of synthetic involvement employed by fake news writers to engage audiences on Twitter (now X). Conceptually, it draws on the linguistic notion of involvement as a form of phatic communication but extends it to include features of digital discourse produced with the intent to manipulate and deceive – hence, synthetic involvement. Methodologically, the study adopts a comparative corpus-based approach to identify features of involvement in a dataset of 13,000 tweets produced by fake accounts operated by the Russian Internet Research Agency. In addition to language markers such as the frequent use of proper nouns, third person present tense reporting verbs associated with standard English, interjections, and personal and possessive pronouns, the study also identifies graphemic features that reflect deliberate attempts to fabricate authenticity, for example, the use of asterisks for inconsistent self-censorship to obscure offensive language. By revealing this wider range of features, the study contributes to the growing body of linguistic research on online disinformation, offering insight into how synthetic involvement is strategically constructed and deployed to deceive and manipulate public opinion.
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Rapport-building attempts in technology-mediated job interviews during the COVID-19 crisis

September 5, 2023

Melina De Dijn, Dorien Van De Mieroop

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The COVID-19 situation has turned job interview practices upside down: while it was common to organize face-to-face job interviews, there is now a surge in technology-mediated job interviews (TMJIs). This shift to a digital medium self-evidently affects these interactions and earlier research has indeed drawn attention to the – often negative – impact of technology on interactions. For job interviews in particular, the tendency for shorter “rapport-building stages” in TMJIs is regarded as an important disadvantage. In this article, we analyze TMJIs recorded after the start of the COVID-19 crisis from a multimodal discourse analytical perspective. We specifically focus on initial sequences that are hindered by technical issues, as the limiting impact of technology is most tangible in these segments. We found that the digital medium does not necessarily prevent rapport-building efforts. Furthermore, the COVID-19 situation turned out to offer interviewers an almost self-evident point of departure for rapport-building attempts which can be viewed in the light of more encompassing facilitative actions of the recruiters. Hence, this article demonstrates that interlocutors can agentively transform technology-related deficiencies into occasions affording opportunities for potential rapport-building, especially by drawing on the shared nature of the pandemic.
Open Access
Encoding Chinese metaphorical motion: a typological perspective

October 10, 2025

Shujun Chen

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Physical motion is a key source domain for structuring abstract concepts, giving rise to metaphorical motion. Previous studies have produced varying conclusions about whether the typological properties of physical motion apply to metaphorical motion. This discrepancy underscores the need for investigations that consider different target domains and genres. Additionally, the focus has been on typical S- or V-languages, while serial-verb languages like Chinese remain under-explored. To address the gap, this study uses a constructional approach to examine the typological properties of Chinese metaphorical motion across target domains and genres. The findings reveal significant intra-linguistic variation, influenced by factors such as the semantic properties of target domains, the pragmatic context, and the structural characteristics of Chinese.
Open Access
Questions in the TED-Multilingual Discourse Bank and the development of an annotation scheme

June 10, 2025

Deniz Zeyrek, Amália Mendes

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In this paper, we analyze question-answer pairs and stand-alone questions within the spoken discourse of TED Talks, specifically focusing on the TED-Multilingual Discourse Bank. Our aim is to reveal various characteristics of questions through an annotation approach. We have developed a taxonomy, referred to as the TAQ-TED, to categorize types of questions and examine their information transfer and dialogue control functions, drawing on the Dynamic Interpretation Theory++ taxonomy of dialogue acts and their attribution in accordance with the Penn Discourse Treebank annotation guidelines. We outline the taxonomy, present our annotation results, and provide a preliminary cross-linguistic analysis comparing English questions with their Turkish and Portuguese translations. The TAQ-TED represents a promising initial framework for annotating questions in monologic discourse across multiple languages.
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The expression of ‘already’ in Sàꞌán Sàvǐ ñà ñuù Xnúvíkó

September 5, 2025

Guillem Belmar Viernes

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This paper describes the uses of the adverbial particle tsàà , often translated as ‘already’, in Sàꞌán Sàvǐ ñà ñuù Xnúvíkó (Mixtepec Mixtec). The semantics of this expression overlap with those in previous descriptions of ‘already’ expressions and pattern similarly to so-called iamitives. Uses include marking change of state or that a state still holds in stative predicates, telic readings with dynamic predicates in their perfective forms, atelic readings with other aspects, and focus-marking-like uses in discourse. In addition, the paper introduces the negative form ntsǎîn ‘not yet’ and the syntactic structure neg + V = kà ‘not anymore, no longer’; as well as two very common constructions: (tá/tiémpù) tsàà na’á ‘before, long ago’ and tsàà yachi ‘almost’.
Open Access
This is how to recognize conspiracy theory–based alternative news media: a comparative analysis of style, text structure, and argumentation in alternative news media and mainstream news media

February 7, 2025

Yvette Linders, Jochem Aben, Margot van Mulken

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Conspiracy beliefs are associated with negative outcomes on a personal and societal level. Therefore, it is important to help people recognize texts that might spread conspiracy theories, such as news articles from alternative news media (ANM). In order to do so, insight is needed into the linguistic features of these types of articles. In this paper (i) stylistic, (ii) structural, and (iii) argumentation features are analyzed to see to what extent they might help readers in recognizing ANM. The results demonstrate that (i) ANM use more clickbait features per headline than mainstream media (MSM), but that some clickbait features are used by ANM and MSM alike; that (ii) the last paragraph in ANM often presents an evaluation or opinion, whereas last paragraphs in MSM usually present additional information; and that (iii) the way quotes are used as arguments seems similar at first glance, but a more detailed look might help readers recognize ANM news articles. These results can be used to design educational interventions to help readers in learning to distinguish different types of news sources and be more resilient towards conspiracy theories.
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Verbless questions in oral monologic discourse

August 1, 2025

Antonina Bondarenko

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Recent studies of written corpora have shown that the variation between the presence and the absence of the verb is a particularly sensitive issue for questions in English. Extending the analysis to oral monologic discourse, this paper explores the form and discourse function of verbless questions in a corpus of TED Talks. The results show a proportion of verbless questions to verbless sentences that is typical of dialogical written discourse, suggesting that TED Talks represent a speaker-controlled dialogically motivated type of discourse. The observed correlation with antecedent-based ellipsis suggests that verbless questions involve stronger speaker commitment and a lighter cognitive load on the addressee in terms of pragmatic implicature than verbless sentences. Verbless questions also tend to be marked solely by intonation, be immediately answered by the speaker, and assume interlocutive intent.
Open Access
Implicit pragmatic phenomena in headlines of Hungarian health-related fake news

January 30, 2025

Enikő Németh T., Zsuzsanna Németh, Katalin Nagy C.

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Fake news is often designed with clickbait headlines to reach a wide readership. The current work focuses on implicit pragmatic phenomena in fake news headlines, namely implicit arguments, implicit contents in speech acts, and implicatures, in order to add to the findings of earlier research on the topic. It provides a corpus-based analysis of Hungarian health-related fake news headlines. It concludes that (i) implicit arguments in headlines create an information gap and are only used as tools of manipulation to generate clicks; (ii) the intended perlocutionary effect of the headlines that appear as speech acts with incomplete propositional content or implicit illocutionary force is not the effective transfer of information but rather to evoke emotions manipulatively; (iii) the goal of the unfair use of implicatures may be to avoid responsibility. This study reveals that the special combination of explicit and implicit content in fake news headlines can create or widen an information gap, manipulate readers by generating psychological effects, convey false information, and stimulate peripheral processing.
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My Memoji, my self: prosodic correlates of online performed code-switching via avatar

January 23, 2025

Nicole Holliday

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Collecting code-switching data has long been a challenge for sociolinguists, because eliciting naturalistic alternations between one language or variety and another is often pragmatically difficult. Data for the current study comes from a social media thread dedicated to “code-switching”, representing a new way of using online recordings for analysis of sociolinguistic phenomena. In October 2019, a Twitter user posted a Memoji avatar video, soliciting responses that illustrate how individuals “code-switch” between “regular” and “work” voices. Responding users’ decisions about the design of their Memoji images provide sociolinguistic information frequently absent from online data; namely the user’s performance of race, gender, and style. Analysis focuses on prosodic differences between the “regular” and “work” styles for 142 user responses to the original post. Regression models reveal differences between users’ “home voices” and “work voices”; these include different pitch range settings by context, more monotone realizations in the work voices, and rise-fall and fall-rise patterns that differ between contexts. These results provide important information about how the same individuals may employ intraspeaker prosodic differences to construct racialized professional and personal identities. Additionally, they represent a new point of departure for studying the phonetic correlates of racialized style-shifting.
Open Access
Veracity and register in fake news analysis

April 14, 2025

Bashayer Baissa, Matteo Fuoli, Jack Grieve

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This article addresses two fundamental methodological challenges in linguistic fake news research: how to reliably classify news texts as real versus fake and how to control for register variation when building datasets for comparative analysis. We call for a rethinking of the veracity labels produced by fact-checking services. While fact-checkers remain a valuable resource for identifying fake news texts, their labels are more productively seen as a proxy for the communicative intent of the author, rather than as an absolute measure of veracity. This perspective emphasizes communicative intent as the only viable explanation for systematic linguistic differences between real and fake news and sidesteps the politically charged notion of truth. To address potential confounds caused by register and topic variation, we propose a multipronged comparative approach. This method analyzes fake news alongside real news on the same topic from a variety of news registers, allowing us to isolate linguistic differences driven by intent. We exemplify this approach by building a comparative corpus focused on climate change, vaccinations, and COVID-19, which we make available upon request for other researchers to use.
Open Access
Null pronoun interpretation probed via thematic role ambiguity: a case in Korean

November 20, 2025

Hyunah Ahn

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This study investigates how Korean speakers interpret a covert element in an ambiguous double-nominative psych-predicate construction (e.g., Cengmi-ka kekcengsulewun ka pota , ‘Cengmi must be worried/worrisome’). Prior research suggests that the thematic role (experiencer vs. stimulus) assigned to the sole overt NP Cengmi depends on whether the discourse topic shifts or continues, implicating discourse factors in null pronoun interpretation. We conducted a 2 × 2 self-paced reading experiment that manipulated topic status (shift vs. continuation) and thematic role (experiencer vs. stimulus) to probe whether the repeated name penalty (RNP) in the centering theory framework can explain these interpretations, as was argued in previous studies. Results indicate that the immediate penalty predicted by the RNP did not appear; effects emerged only after the psych-predicate, suggesting that simple NP-repetition effects cannot fully account for how participants resolved the ambiguity. Moreover, clear signs of the experiencer reading bias and context-dependent revision were observed. We discuss the implications of the findings and highlight the need for further research to clarify how comprehenders integrate and project discourse structure.
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Crosslinguistic constructions and strategies: where do concessive conditionals fit in?

November 10, 2025

Tom Bossuyt

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The present squib is concerned with Croft’s classification of comparative concepts, that is, concepts developed by typologists for crosslinguistic comparison. Croft distinguishes two kinds of comparative concepts: “constructions”, which are defined entirely in functional terms; and “strategies”, which are further specified by formal characteristics. More specifically, this squib is concerned with how the notions of construction and strategy are used in Croft’s discussion of a generally under-studied type of adverbial clause, viz. concessive conditionals. Concessive conditionals are quantified conditionals that express a set of antecedents: ‘if { p 1 , p 2 , p 3 , …}, then q ’. There are three subtypes: scalar concessive conditionals (SCCs, ‘even if’), alternative concessive conditionals (ACCs, ‘whether … or’), and universal concessive conditionals (UCCs, ‘wh-ever’). According to Croft, concessive conditionality in general is a construction, with SCCs, ACCs, and UCCs being strategies. This squib, however, proposes that it would be more consistent to treat the three subtypes as constructions rather than as strategies. More precisely, SCCs, ACCs, and UCCs are best seen as sub-constructions of an overarching concessive-conditional construction.
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Linguistic approaches to fake news research are growing and maturing: commentary on a special issue

October 13, 2025

Maite Taboada

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This first special issue of Linguistics Vanguard on the language of fake news offers multiple perspectives on the linguistic analysis of fake news and misinformation, with a range of approaches and methodologies, showing the sophistication and maturity of the field. The study of fake news is a flourishing area of research, with contributions from communication, media studies, data science, and natural language processing. The growing body of research in linguistics contributes careful qualitative analyses of the social context of production and interpretation of misinformation, coupled with well-documented techniques from corpus linguistics. This commentary provides a short retrospective of linguistic approaches to fake news and highlights the contributions from the papers in the issue.
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Multimodal language processing in school-aged Mandarin-speaking children: the role of beat gesture in enhancing memory for discourse information

January 23, 2025

Mengzhu Yan, Tianqi Xiong

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Communication is typically multimodal, meaning that communication involves the utilization of various cues from different modalities. While spoken words in the auditory modality primarily convey semantic information, gestures from the visual modality complement and enhance the communication process. However, the role of visual cues, specifically beat gestures, a type of non-verbal co-speech gesture used to emphasize certain information, in language processing remains largely underexplored. The present study, using a memory task where 90 Mandarin-speaking schoolchildren aged 6–9 viewed stories individually and were later asked about what happened in the stories, investigates the role of beat gestures in enhancing the memory for discourse information in Mandarin. The results show that words with beat gestures were generally recalled better for children of all grades, indicating that by age 6, Mandarin children have already acquired the ability to utilize beat gestures to encode a discourse. This study contributes significantly to our limited understanding of the significance of visual cues in multimodal language processing.
Open Access
Translating COVID-19 information into Yiddish for the UK Hasidic community

January 24, 2022

Zoe Belk, Lily Okalani Kahn, Kriszta Eszter Szendrői, Sonya Yampolskaya

Article number: 20200149

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This article documents a recent project translating COVID-19 information into Yiddish for the benefit of the Hasidic Jewish communities in London’s Stamford Hill and in Manchester in the UK. The translation work developed as a response to the urgent need for Yiddish-language resources specifically designed for the Hasidic community near the beginning of the pandemic. The translations were undertaken by a team consisting of linguists and native speakers of Hasidic Yiddish and took place within the framework of a research project funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council, dedicated to linguistic and sociolinguistic analysis of contemporary Hasidic Yiddish worldwide. In this article we discuss the sociolinguistic background to the translations and investigate the reasons why they were so urgently needed, before going on to address the issues encountered during the course of the translation process and the decisions taken in order to resolve them. These issues include the type of Yiddish chosen for the translations, the translation of medical terminology, gender-based linguistic differences affecting the translations, and specific cultural considerations that needed to be taken into account.
Open Access
Non-signers favor two-handed gestures when expressing inherently plural meanings

October 17, 2025

Carl Börstell, Ryan Lepic

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Sign languages have been shown to favor two-handed forms to express plural meanings, and in this paper we investigate whether this pattern is similarly found in silent gestures improvised by hearing non-signers. We use 100 concepts with corresponding plurality ratings as stimuli for a silent gesture elicitation task, in which five hearing non-signers are asked to improvise manual gestures for each of the concepts, and the elicited gestures are then coded for number of hands used (i.e., whether they are one- or two-handed). In line with previous findings from sign language research, we find that the silent gestures improvised by hearing non-signers favor two-handed forms when expressing plural meanings. Thus, we argue that the iconic pattern of mapping multiple articulators (the hands) to a plural conceptualization of meaning is salient in the visual modality, such that this pattern arises from general cognitive preferences available to gesturers and signers alike.
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Children’s emerging sociolinguistic expectations around social roles: a triangulated approach

February 17, 2025

Melissa Schuring, Laura Rosseel, Eline Zenner

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This paper adds to current work on developmental sociolinguistics and the sociopragmatic turn in anglicism research through a triangulated design meant to uncover children’s sociolinguistic expectations of social roles. A sample of 25 participants, aged between 7 and 13, completed three tasks probing assumptions on the use of English elements for three English-oriented roles (rapper, gamer, and soccer player) and two Dutch-oriented roles (prime minister and farmer). Specifically, participants took part in a closed rating task, a role-play performance task, and an open-ended interview. The results show that children share adult expectations of Dutch- versus English-oriented roles (RQ1), which they implement in their role performances, using more English words for the latter (RQ2). Participants, lastly, reflect on their performance to varying degrees, reporting changes to their language use in those performances, though only the oldest girls specifically mention English words (RQ3). Overall, the comparison of the participants and tasks invites a reflection on developmental pathways and on the relationship between metalinguistic awareness, sociolinguistic expectations, and the perception of boundaries between languages or varieties.
Open Access
Using ATLAS.ti to interpret keyword co-occurrence analysis: a case study on the representation of vaccin* across pseudoscience and conspiracy websites

February 14, 2025

Yuze Sha, Isobelle Clarke

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In this study we use ATLAS.ti to interpret the results of a keyword co-occurrence analysis (KCA) of fake vaccination news. Specifically, KCA is used to uncover the most dominant patterns of co-occurring keywords across a corpus of 37,676 texts from 235 pseudoscience and conspiracy websites that mention vaccin* . KCA enables researchers to examine linguistic patterns of fake news from multiple angles, including discourse, register, style, and attitude. Yet, the interpretation of KCA can be time-consuming, especially when texts are long. Consequently, in this study, we leverage ATLAS.ti’s code co-occurrence analysis functionality, which streamlines and accelerates the interpretation of KCA results by providing access to extended concordances that highlight the patterns of keyword co-occurrence. Taking the second most prominent dimension as a demonstration, we interpret this pattern of keyword variation across our vaccination corpus as distinguishing texts that are questioning the COVID-19 pandemic, especially in relation to higher power control, from texts that are discussing childhood vaccines, especially with respect to the dangers they pose. The implications of these linguistic repertoires in relation to fake news and anti-science strategies are discussed.
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Question sequences in English TED Talks

May 28, 2025

Michele Cardo, Agnès Celle

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Questions are used across discourse settings for a variety of purposes. The meaning and use of questions has been extensively studied in discourse types which feature multiple conversation participants. However, much research remains to be conducted on the function of questions in discourse settings which feature one main speaker, such as TED Talks. The current study is an attempt to fill that gap. We examine a corpus of 18 English TED Talks to understand how sequential questions fit into the larger discursive context of presentational speech. We argue that question sequences are used by TED speakers primarily to evoke salience and simulate interaction between the speaker and addressee. The salient use of question sequences reflects a level of monologue which is inherent in TED Talks due to the single-speaker presentational format. Concurrently, the interactive potential created by question sequences indicates that TED Talks contain some level of dialogue. Therefore, the analysis of salient and interactive question sequences calls into question the discourse classification of TED Talks along monologic–dialogic lines. Rather than prescribe a strict monologic classification of TED Talks, we argue that TED Talks should be considered to be in a discourse category which incorporates elements of dialogue in monologue.
Open Access
Phasal polarity in Totoli: aspect, restriction, and alternatives

September 8, 2025

Maria Bardají

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Several studies have shown that phasal polarity expressions, such as ‘already’ and ‘still’, tend to have various semantic and pragmatic extensions. This paper provides new data from Totoli, a western Austronesian language from Central Sulawesi (Indonesia), where phasal polarity expressions are also polysemous and polyfunctional. Besides the clitics = mo ‘already’ and = po ‘still’, which can be found in a cognate form in other Austronesian languages, Totoli exhibits a third clitic, = ga , which is rarely reported in the Austronesianist literature. What is particularly interesting about =ga is that its meanings seem to overlap with those of both =mo and = po . This paper analyzes the semantics of the three clitics, with a special focus on their areas of overlap. It proposes that the semantic and functional overlap has to do with the notion of restriction and that lexical aspect, and possibly exhaustivity, play an important role in the interpretation and disambiguation of the clitics’ meanings.
Open Access
From neural matter to rapid symbolic learning in brains and artificial neural networks: a brief overview and perspective

October 21, 2025

Rosario Tomasello

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Advances in artificial neural networks (ANNs) have revolutionized the way we work, learn, and acquire information, achieving human-level capabilities. Yet, ANNs differ fundamentally from the human brain in how symbolic knowledge is acquired, typically requiring extensive training to form stable internal representations. In contrast, the human brain exhibits exceptional ability to instantaneously map new words to their referents, a process known as “fast mapping”, considered a fundamental mechanism underlying symbol acquisition in early ontogeny. This review provides an overview of neurocognitive research on rapid symbolic learning and examines recent advances in computational modeling approaches aimed at replicating this capability. Models constrained by neurobiological principles known to exist in the human brain are discussed, providing a first step toward neural- and cortical-level explanations of rapid symbolic learning and opening new venues for identifying the neural mechanisms underpinning rapid word acquisition. Archiving these advances may be particularly relevant for guiding the development of sustainable, energy-efficient architectures. A major desideratum from a linguistic and pragmatic perspective involves investigating the neural basis of fast mapping across diverse communicative and pragmatic contexts, an area where current models still fall short.
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Frequency does not predict the processing speed of multi-morpheme sequences in Japanese

January 28, 2025

Hikaru Hotta

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This paper reports on a psycholinguistic experiment that examines frequency effects for multi-morpheme sequences in Japanese. While frequency effects for multi-word sequences are fairly well documented, crosslinguistic coverage on such effects remains scarce. Investigations into agglutinative languages can provide insights into whether frequency effects manifest across structural levels (morphological or syntactic). Drawing on the methodology of Arnon and Snider, this study investigates whether highly frequent, compositional multi-morpheme sequences in Japanese are processed faster than their non-frequent counterparts. The results fail to demonstrate significant effects of whole-string frequency on the processing of multi-morpheme sequences. The lack of frequency effects is discussed in light of (i) methodological changes from previous research to adapt the experiment to Japanese and (ii) structural properties of multi-morpheme sequences, which cut across the traditional notion of words.
Open Access
A comparative study of 时 si²/shi² in Meixian Hakka and Ancient Chinese using the Minimalist Program

March 3, 2025

Jiaqi Wu

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Although Meixian Hakka is a modern spoken dialect and Ancient Chinese only appears today as written text, aspects of Ancient Chinese have been preserved in modern Hakka. An example of this is 时 si 2 /shi 2 , for which few studies have examined the grammar. Moreover, to date, no studies have compared this word’s usage in Meixian Hakka with that of Ancient Chinese. Employing a Minimalist Program framework, this comparative study explores the uses and related structures of si 2 /shi 2 in Meixian Hakka and Ancient Chinese. Using data collected from texts and conversations, it reveals that si 2 /shi 2 can be a morpheme or a sentence component and can function as a topic marker. In these roles, si 2 /shi 2 has the same structure in both varieties, “topic si 2 /shi 2 rheme,” and its basic syntactic construction is [ TopP NP [ Top′ si 2 /shi 2 ] FocP]. Although most meanings of si 2 /shi 2 differ between Meixian Hakka and Ancient Chinese, in both cases the subjects are topics or parts of topics. Provided that the verbs agree with their subjects in person, number, and case, the specifiers in TopP can be either definite or indefinite. Finally, this study demonstrates the flexibility of a Minimalist Program framework, along with some challenges for the framework itself.
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Documentary linguists and risk communication: views from the virALLanguages project experience

March 10, 2022

Pierpaolo Di Carlo, Leonore Lukschy, Sydney Rey, Vasiliki Vita

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Linguists are seldom, if ever, engaged in work aimed at communicating risk to the general public. The COVID-19 global pandemic and its associated infodemic may change this state of affairs, at least for documentary linguists. Documenting languages may bring researchers in direct contact with communities speaking minority or marginalized languages and gain key insights into their communicative ecologies. By being both immersed in local networks and more or less knowledgeable about the community’s communicative habits, documentary linguists appear to be placed in a unique position to contribute to communicating risk in ways that are better tailored to the community and, therefore, potentially quite effective locally. Furthermore, adding work in risk communication to their agenda may also stimulate documentary linguists to find new models for “giving back” to the communities they work with. In order to provide a concrete example of how all this may play out in concrete terms, we illustrate the virALLanguages project.
Open Access
Did he lead monologues or did he talk to himself? How typological distance between source and target language influences the preservation of metaphorical mappings in translation

August 6, 2025

Wojciech Lewandowski, Mario Bisiada

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Speakers across the world describe a wide range of target domains (e.g., time, emotions) relying on similar metaphorical mappings that use motion as the source domain ( abstract concept is a moving entity: seven o’clock is approaching ; abstract concept is a location: rush into joy ). However, the extent to which these metaphorical mappings are preserved in translations remains largely unexplored. Our study examined metaphorical motion descriptions in novels written in German, Polish, and Spanish (150 descriptions per language) along with their translations into a language from either the same (intra-typological: German vs. Polish) or a different typological group (inter-typological: German vs. Spanish). We found that while translations generally retained the metaphorical mappings of the source language – regardless of transition type – some of the conceptual metaphors were lost in translation. Notably, intra-typological translations showed greater rates of preservation of the original mappings compared to inter-typological ones – suggesting an effect of language type. Our findings also highlight degree of novelty as an important factor affecting translation outcomes, with novel metaphors being more likely to be preserved than conventionalized ones.
Open Access
Language ideology as fake news

February 4, 2025

Adnan Ajšić

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Fake news has a long history despite coming to the fore of academic debates only recently. The current fake news epidemic is related to the rise in right-wing populism globally, while social media has been central to the rapid spread of misinformation and the corrosive influence of right-wing populist discourses thriving on online conspiracy theories and disinformation campaigns. But does this trend have identifiable historical antecedents? I argue that 1980s and 1990s Serbian nationalist propaganda, especially its deployment of pseudoscientific discourses on language with their underlying language ideologies, may be a direct antecedent and an instructive case study for our understanding of the current wave. The discussion is based upon a corpus of Serbian news published between 2003 and 2008, and the application of advanced methods such as exploratory factor analysis and topic modeling. The findings show that the Central South Slavic language conflict has been characterized by pseudoscientific argumentation deployed as (fake) news. I suggest that there is a link between Central South Slavic ethnolinguistic contestation and contemporary Western far right discourses, contending that pseudoscientific argumentation is a major type of fake news in the service of illiberal causes and should be a central element in analyses of the phenomenon.
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COVID-19 vaccine conspiracy theories, discourses of liberty, and “the new normal” on social media

March 11, 2025

Mark McGlashan, Isobelle Clarke, Matt Gee, Tatiana Grieshofer, Andrew Kehoe, Robert Lawson

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Public distrust in government, pharmaceutical companies, healthcare professions, and medical science and technology has been consistently linked with vaccine rejection. Policymakers, therefore, want to better understand links between distrust of institutions and vaccine refusal. This paper reports on a case study of posts (tweets) to the social media platform Twitter (now X) collected as part of the TRAC:COVID (Trust and Communication: A Coronavirus Online Visual Dashboard) project. The TRAC:COVID dashboard combines methods from corpus linguistics with various visualization techniques to enable users to explore approximately 84 million posts containing reference to COVID-19 published between 1 January 2020 and 30 April 2021 (encompassing the dates of UK coronavirus lockdowns). The dashboard and all sampling considerations (including an overview of the detailed search query used) are available at https://www.traccovid.com. Specifically, the paper analyses a subsample of posts that make reference to vaccines and contain at least one hashtag relating to various categories of dis/misinformation. By employing keyword co-occurrence analysis – a method for examining statistically significant keywords using multiple correspondence analysis – we find that these posts draw on various “discourses of liberty” to protest against perceived infringements on “health freedoms” through the imposition of new norms of behaviour (e.g., mask-wearing).
Open Access
From comparative to causal relations: the case of siccome ‘because’ in the history of Italian

June 6, 2024

Emanuela Sanfelici, Sira Rodeghiero

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This article investigates how adverbial causal clauses come into being by tracking the diachronic development of the lexical item siccome ‘because’ from Old to Contemporary Italian. We show that adverbial causal clauses introduced by siccome in Contemporary Italian originate from comparative-similative clauses. By describing the steps of this diachronic change, we demonstrate that in specific contexts the comparative-similative marker has paved the way for a comparison between two events entailing a causal relation. The change is formalized by adopting a free relative clause analysis (Cinque 2020a. On the double-headed analysis of “headless” relative clauses. In Ludovico Franco & Paolo Lorusso (eds.), Linguistic variation: Structure and interpretation , 169–196. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter) to comparative and causal clauses.
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Advances in research on questions in monologic discourse: introduction to the special issue on questions in monologic discourse

August 12, 2025

Agnès Celle, Amália Mendes

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This article is an introduction to a special issue titled “Questions in Monologic Discourse”. While non-canonical questions have received a lot of attention recently, most studies have taken dialogue as a discourse benchmark for analysis. This special issue gathers articles that do not assume communication to be restricted to information exchange. More specifically, this special issue focuses on questions that do not necessarily lead to an issue resolution from an addressee, either because these questions are reflective in nature or because the addressee is not assumed to know the answer. The aim of this special issue is to investigate the nature, role, and communicative functions of questions in monologic discourse across different genres and theoretical frameworks and in a crosslinguistic perspective.
Open Access
The analysis of utterances with imperative forms in Hungarian health-related fake news

February 24, 2025

Anett Árvay, Katalin Nagy C., Tibor Szécsényi, Enikő Németh T.

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This paper aims to contribute to the linguistic detecting of disinformation by providing a corpus-based form-to-function study of Hungarian health-related fake news. It starts from the hypothesis that there is a difference between fake and real news regarding the use of directives as a potential tool of exerting pressure on readers. The most direct and strongest strategy of performing directives in Hungarian is the use of a verb with an imperative suffix. However, the same suffix can also appear without any directive function in subjunctive structures. In order to determine which function utterances containing verbs with an imperative ending have, a manual pragmatic annotation was carried out in our MedCollect corpus. Three major groups of utterances were distinguished: (i) utterances with directive function, (ii) utterances with discourse function, and (iii) utterances without any directive or discourse function. The results support our hypothesis that fake news contains a significantly higher number of directives performed using this direct strategy due to a higher motivation of placing pressure on readers.
Open Access
A baseline for object clitic climbing in Italian

October 31, 2025

Francesco Gardani, Chiara Zanini

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Despite a considerable amount of research dealing with the phenomenon of object clitic climbing (OCC) in Italian, some aspects of the phenomenon are largely understudied. These include the rate of occurrence of OCC and its variational spectrum (relating to questions such as where in the Italian-speaking areas OCC occurs to which extent, and whether its occurrence covaries with specific linguistic and sociolinguistic factors). Data from 310 respondents were elicited through an online questionnaire, centered on a production task, and analyzed statistically. The data show that (a) OCC is a minority phenomenon, used in only 13 % of cases in our sample; (b) linguistic variables have no predictive value, except for the variable of verb type for the cohorts of speakers born after 1975; by contrast, (c) sociolinguistic variables are predictive: age is the most predictive variable, with linguistic background (place of residence before age 14 and geographic area of the spoken Italo-Romance variety) also relevant.
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Japanese and French specificational sentences with left-dislocation and the questions they induce

June 4, 2025

Makoto Kaneko

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This study examines the nature of questions induced in Japanese and French specificational sentences with left-dislocation. Despite their superficial similarities, the two constructions show the following differences. In Japanese, such constructions are almost exclusively found in monologic discourse, where the speaker speaks one-sidedly; a clear pause is required after the dislocated item, whose head is a lexical noun. In contrast, the French construction is mostly found in dialogues, and no pause is necessary after the dislocated sequence, whose head is typically occupied by a pronominal element. Building on these differences, this paper argues that: (i) In Japanese, the left-dislocated sequence introduces a topic, and the pause serves not only to signal a discourse boundary, as previously claimed, but also to provide the interlocutor with time to detect the contextual relevance of the introduced topic and to implicitly ask a question about it. Such a question may be explicitly articulated as an anticipated question. (ii) In French, while the left-dislocated sequence with a pronominal head should pick up a question shared among the discourse participants, it may introduce a topic when the head is a lexical noun. In these cases, the speaker may explicitly insert an anticipated question before the pronominal pickup.
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Semantic granularity in derivation

December 2, 2025

Richard Huyghe, Rossella Varvara

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This paper investigates the degree of semantic precision in derivational processes, a crucial yet underexplored aspect of word-formation semantics that influences our understanding of compositionality, competition, and polysemy in derivation. The study focuses on the case of verb-to-noun derivation in French, using both manual analysis and computational techniques to determine the level of semantic granularity that best captures the semantic properties of derivational processes. A sample of 2,190 derived nouns formed with 30 deverbal processes is manually analyzed, distinguishing between ontological and relational semantic types, with three levels of granularity applied to each. The various combinations of semantic types and granularities are tested against computational representations of derivational processes generated from distributional semantic models. The results indicate that not only relational but also ontological types participate in the semantics of derivational processes, and that derivation operates at a fine level of semantic granularity. More broadly, the study illustrates how expert analysis of large datasets can be fruitfully associated with computational methods to address key research questions in theoretical linguistics. It also advocates for a close integration of lexical semantics and derivational morphology in the study of complex words.
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Recurring patterns in tone (chain) shift

May 22, 2025

Cathryn Yang, Pittayawat Pittayaporn, James Kirby

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This study investigates directional constraints on diachronic tone chain shifts and their applicability to non-chain shifts. Twenty-eight chain shift changes from 12 Sino-Tibetan, Kra-Dai, Austronesian, and Otomanguean languages were compared to a sample of 118 non-chain shifts (including merger) from 54 Asian tone languages. Significant overlap was found: the reported chain shift changes were also the most frequently occurring changes in non-chain shifts. Recurring patterns emerged in both chain shifts and non-chain shifts: (1) tonal alignment slides rightward, with effects on contour shape, f0 excursion and f0 onset height; and (2) falling tones become higher while rising tones lower. These crosslinguistic diachronic trends show parallels to tone variation in connected speech, which suggests that the direction of diachronic tone change is phonetically grounded, constrained by articulatory and cognitive biases in speech production and perception.
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Gestural strategies in questions during monological discourse

May 26, 2025

Manon Lelandais

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This study identifies regular gestural correlates to questions produced in TED Talks. In dialogue, questions have been linked with eyebrow movement, head nods, beats, and palm-up gestures. However, it is not clear whether the same cues are found in monological discourse, where audience role and participation are constrained. We hypothesized that speakers would use gesture differently depending on question type (e.g., fronted item; declarative; verbless), syntactic status (direct; embedded; appositive), and localization in the talk (beginning; middle; end). We used videos in the TED repository, which were transcribed and annotated using ELAN for gestures and question type, syntactic status, and localization (6 h and 4 min, 1,108 questions, 17 speakers, variety: General American). We used chi-square tests to examine the relation between the proportion of gestures and question type, syntactic status, and localization. The results show that hand and head gestures are regularly produced as part of questions, but not eyebrow movement. The amount and nature of hand gestures are impacted by two variables (question type and localization), while head gestures are impacted by only one of them (syntactic status). Eyebrow movement is not impacted overall. We discuss how these gestural features map out the different discursive functions at play.
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Sensitivity to honorific agreement: a window into predictive processing

July 28, 2025

Haerim Hwang, Sun Hee Park

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Language processing involves active engagement with linguistic cues to predict future information while integrating available information in a bottom-up manner. Recent research in this area suggests that individual differences play a role in predictive processing. However, the exact ways in which individual factors contribute to these differences remain a topic that warrants further investigation. Additionally, most previous studies in this area have focused on English and European languages. The current study addresses these gaps, making use of the fact that the Korean honorific verbal suffix can be a predictive cue for an upcoming honorable referent, using both an offline sensitivity task and an online webcam-based eye-tracking task. The offline data analysis using hierarchical clustering reveals that Korean speakers exhibit individual differences in their sensitivity to the honorific verbal suffix. The eye-tracking data analysis using generalized additive mixed modeling shows that individuals with higher sensitivity tend to display more robust and faster predictive processing patterns. Theoretically, our results provide insight into the underlying mechanisms of predictive processing, highlighting the significance of individual factors. Meanwhile, our online data collection method offers a more inclusive approach to collecting psycholinguistic data.
Open Access
Experimental investigation on quantifier scope in Chinese relative clauses

February 4, 2025

Shaohua Fang, Hongchen Wu, Yang Zhao

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This paper presents empirical evidence on quantifier scope interpretation in doubly quantified Mandarin Chinese (Chinese) relative clauses, examined through a truth-value judgment task given to Chinese speakers. Our results demonstrate that Chinese speakers accept inverse scope interpretation in relative clauses, challenging scope rigidity claims for Chinese. This finding is supported by analyses conducted at both the group and individual levels. The observed variability in scope judgments suggests a two-grammar hypothesis: Chinese speakers’ preferences for interpreting scope may arise from insufficient and ambiguous evidence regarding specific quantifier scope interpretations in their linguistic input. Consequently, interpretations favored by one group may not be accessible to the other, leading to variability in scope judgment between Chinese speakers. Additionally, nonstructural factors such as the lexical properties of quantifier phrases have been found to modulate scope interpretations.
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How did COVID-19 impact the use of Japanese complex words with masuku ‘mask’ in 2020?

May 22, 2023

Kiyoko Toratani

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This paper examines how the situation caused by COVID-19 impacted the use of a well-entrenched word in Japanese: masuku ‘mask’. An inspection of data gathered from an online newspaper shows a sharp increase in token and type frequency in the use of complex words with masuku ‘mask’ in 2020 (mid-pandemic) compared to 2019 (pre-pandemic), implying the recurrence and variegation of mask-related topics in the media. Focusing on the varied types of complex words containing masuku ‘mask’, the paper offers a construction morphology account of how they distribute within a network of words. The most dominant means to expand the network was compounding, creating not only hyponyms of masuku ‘mask’ (i.e., using masuku as the head of the compound, as in ago-masuku ‘chin mask’) but also hyponyms of other well-entrenched words (i.e., using masuku as the non-head, as in masuku-gimu ‘mask obligation’). Beyond compounding, a playful use of language in blends led to the creation of a new path, albeit a small one. The paper argues the development of the word network involved both mundane and exceptional creativity.
Open Access
Fakespeak-RUS: building a corpus of Russian fake news

July 29, 2025

Elizaveta Kibisova, Silje Susanne Alvestad

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This article presents the methodology behind the creation of the Fakespeak-RUS corpus, a dataset of Russian fake and genuine news articles developed as part of the broader Fakespeak project. The most prominent challenge in compiling the corpus relates to the veracity of the articles. A previously used credibility-based approach, which relied on the reputation of news outlets, has been argued to be ineffective: even well-known fake news outlets occasionally publish truthful content, and vice versa. For the Russian data, the surge of low-credibility texts even in fact-checking requires attention to the expertise and potential bias of the fact-checkers. The carefully chosen solution for our corpus is to collect news articles labelled for veracity by the now Estonia-based, formerly Russian, independent fact-checking agency Provereno.Media. Another challenge, stemming from the diversity of the collected texts, lies in building a reference corpus of genuine news, which involves controlling for multiple variables, including source, register, size, authorship, and topic. To address this challenge and construct a quality reference dataset, we gather and verify genuine news articles from the same outlets as those included in the fake news corpus. The corpus is well suited for linguistic research on the language of fake news in Russian.
Open Access
Comprehension of conversational implicatures in L3 Mandarin

January 23, 2025

Yılmaz Köylü

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The current research is an extension and partial replication of Köylü (2018. Comprehension of conversational implicatures in L2 English. Intercultural Pragmatics 15(3). 373–408.) and it investigates the development of conversational implicatures in third language (L3) Mandarin. More specifically, this study explores whether learners with a first language (L1) Cantonese and second language (L2) English background are able to comprehend implied meaning in L3 Mandarin. 14 L1 Cantonese L2 English L3 Mandarin participants with a high intermediate level of Mandarin proficiency took part in the study. There was also a control group of 11 native speakers of Mandarin. Quantitative results based on a 20-item audiovisual interpretation task demonstrate that the L3 learners of Mandarin were not on a par with native speakers of Mandarin in arriving at an intended implicature for the test items. A qualitative analysis of learner responses indicates that the learners’ interpretation of conversational implicatures in L3 Mandarin, although usually successful, was also characterized by repetitions, literal comprehension, and recognition of a gap between the literal and the implied meaning, as well as unintended implicatures.
Open Access
GERMA: a comprehensive corpus of untrustworthy German news

February 10, 2025

Fabio Carrella, Alessandro Miani

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The proliferation of online misinformation undermines societal cohesion and democratic principles. Effectively combating this issue relies on developing automatic classifiers, which require training data to achieve high classification accuracy. However, while English-language resources are abundant, other languages are often neglected, creating a critical gap in our ability to address misinformation globally. Furthermore, this lack of data in languages other than English hinders progress in social sciences such as psychology and linguistics. In response, we present GERMA, a corpus comprising over 230,000 German news articles (more than 130 million tokens) gathered from 30 websites classified as “untrustworthy” by professional fact-checkers. GERMA serves as an openly accessible repository, providing a wealth of text- and website-level data for testing hypotheses and developing automated detection algorithms. Beyond articles, GERMA includes supplementary data such as titles, publication dates, and semantic measures like keywords, topics, and lexical features. Moreover, GERMA offers domain-specific metadata, such as website quality evaluation based on factors like bias, factuality, credibility, and transparency. Higher-level metadata incorporates various metrics related to website traffic, offering a valuable tool into the analysis of online user behavior. GERMA represents a comprehensive resource for research in untrustworthy news detection, supporting qualitative and quantitative investigations in the German language.
Open Access
Causal clauses as source of sentential complementation: cross-linguistic evidence and methodological issues

March 12, 2024

Rodrigo Hernáiz

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In many languages, causal clause markers can also function as – or are formally identical to – complement markers (e.g., Bulgarian če , Twi se , or Latin quod ). This isomorphism is often explained as the result of independent developments from a common source (interrogatives, relativizers, etc.). By contrast, it is also frequently accepted that in some cases the aforementioned identity originates in a type of structural change by which causal clauses are eventually reanalysed as factive complements. However, the nature of the proposed CAUSE > COMPLEMENT development, involving both semantic adjustments and syntactic integration, is not yet fully understood, and it remains unclear how recurrent this phenomenon might be from a cross-linguistic perspective. This article aims to shed light on these questions by analysing diachronic and cross-linguistic data and assessing some of the evidence given for the development of complementation from causal adverbial clauses. The observations reveal significant documentation gaps for postulated models of the emergence of complement clauses and highlight methodological issues that qualify previous explanations about the diachronic relationship between causal and complement clauses.
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Testing the effect of speech separation on vowel formant estimates

January 30, 2025

Joseph A. Stanley, Lisa Morgan Johnson, Earl Kjar Brown

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While recent advances in sociophonetic data processing have made it possible to analyze large datasets and audio not originally intended for linguistic analysis, overlapping speech in recordings with multiple speakers continues to be an issue that results in lost data. We evaluate whether current source separation models produce audio that is clean enough to produce reliable measurements for sociophonetic analysis. We compare formant estimates from a pair of pristine recordings and merged-and-separated versions of those same recordings using the Libri2mix, Whamr16K, and WSJ02mix source separation models. Based on auditory inspection of the separated files, visualization of vowel formant estimates, and statistical analysis, Libri2 performed best and WSJ02 was worst. While the mean formant measurements per vowel were usually small, differences for each observation were larger in unpredictable ways. We are cautiously optimistic about using these tools in sociophonetic analysis, so long as analysis is conducted on vowel means. We conclude with recommendations that researchers can implement when using source separation in sociophonetic research.
Open Access
The negative concord illusion: an acceptability study with Czech neg-words

February 19, 2025

Radim Lacina

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Languages such as Czech exhibit negative concord, a requirement for any neg-word (e.g., nobody ) in a clause to be accompanied by sentential negation. Theoretical treatments see this phenomenon as either a case of syntactic agreement or subsume it under negative polarity item (NPI) licensing. Interestingly, in the processing of both agreement and NPIs, the inclusion of a distractor element can induce comprehenders to accept otherwise ungrammatical sentences. We tested whether such grammaticality illusions also arise with negative concord. We ran an acceptability judgement study with native speakers of Czech to see whether the inclusion of an irrelevant negated verb in a relative clause caused them to accept an ungrammatical sentence with an unlicensed neg-word. This tendency was clearly seen in the speeded acceptability judgement task (Experiment 1), but not when participants had enough time for their answers (Experiment 2), a pattern typical for linguistic illusions. Our results thus show that there is indeed an effect – the negative concord illusion.
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The argumentative functions of strategic questions in Portuguese parliamentary speeches

May 28, 2025

Fabrizio Macagno

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A question is normally defined in linguistics considering its presumptive illocutionary function, namely eliciting an answer to acquire information. However, questions have several “nonstandard” functions beyond the information-seeking one. One of the most important uses of questions, almost neglected in contemporary literature, is the strategic one, consisting of altering the interlocutors’ commitment stores to support a specific viewpoint or challenge the opposite standpoint. However, what does this modification of commitments amount to, and how and why is it used in a discourse? This paper aims to analyze the variety of argumentative uses of different syntactic types of nonstandard interrogative utterances, focusing on the types of arguments they express and how they modify the commitments of the two parties. Through the analysis of the Portuguese corpus of parliamentary speeches of 2022 (ParlaMint 4.0), the most important argumentative functions that nonstandard questions play therein are presented and illustrated.
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The cognitive processing of nouns and verbs in second language reading: an eye-tracking study

February 25, 2025

Jiayi Jiang, Lingshan Huang

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This study explores the cognitive processing of nouns and verbs in second language (L2) reading, aiming to investigate the potential differences and their effects on comprehension performance. Twenty-five Chinese students read an English text while their eye movements were recorded. A reading comprehension test evaluated the participants’ L2 reading comprehension performance. The results reveal a significant difference in total reading time between nouns and verbs. Additionally, total reading time, gaze duration, and the number of fixations on both nouns and verbs are negatively correlated with L2 reading comprehension performance. These findings suggest that while the initial processing mechanisms of nouns and verbs may be similar, they diverge in late stages of processing.
Open Access
Effects of information structure on pronoun resolution: the number of pronouns matters

October 21, 2025

Jina Song, Elsi Kaiser

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This paper addresses underexplored questions about referential structure impacting pronoun interpretation in multiple-pronoun and single-pronoun contexts: whether and how referential structure effects in pronoun resolution interact with information-structural factors such as topicality and focus. Regarding referential structure effects, it has been argued that demoting a higher-salience referent, which is a subject antecedent, to a lower-salience object position leads to less coherent transitions, resulting in different pronoun interpretation patterns by referential structure type. To investigate whether and how information structure interacts with referential structure effects, we disentangle information structure from subjecthood. We use a picture-writing task, where we manipulated referential structure (One-Pronoun vs. Two-Pronoun sentences) and information structure (Subject-Topic/Object-Focus vs. Subject-Focus/Object-Topic) in a dialogue setup. The results replicate previously observed referential structure effects on pronoun interpretation. Crucially, we find that both subjecthood and information structure affect these effects, but demoting a subject-focus antecedent is more dispreferred than demoting a subject-topic antecedent. We discuss how our results contribute to providing evidence of information structure contributing to referential structure effects in multiple-pronoun contexts, which have been largely overlooked in most prior work on pronoun interpretation.
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Expletive negation in Italian temporal clauses: an acceptability judgement and a self-paced reading study

October 23, 2025

Anna Teresa Porrini, Veronica D’Alesio, Matteo Greco

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This work aims to investigate the role of negation when it fails to reverse the polarity of a sentence, thus becoming “expletive”. An example is offered by the following Italian sentence: Chiara è rimasta in casa finché Marco non ha chiamato la pizzeria per la cena (literally ‘Chiara remained in the house until Marco did not call the pizzeria for dinner’, meaning ‘Chiara remained at home until Marco called the pizzeria for dinner’). Although negation occurs, the sentence remains affirmative, and the negative marker fails to trigger all the semantic and syntactic phenomena usually associated with it. Here we implement two experiments, an acceptability judgement task and a self-paced reading paradigm, to test how expletive negation is understood and processed. Our findings reveal a complex picture of expletive negation in Italian. Acceptability judgements suggest that it increases sentence naturalness. The self-paced reading data show no additional processing cost associated with expletive negation, unlike standard negation. By integrating offline and online measures, our study represents a crucial step towards a more comprehensive understanding of expletive negation in linguistic processing, which seems to diverge from the processing of standard negation.
Open Access
Sociolinguistic research projects as brands

February 4, 2025

Suzanne Evans Wagner, Betsy Sneller, Jack Rechsteiner

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Sociolinguistic projects can benefit from brand management practices to meet their research goals. This is especially (but not exclusively) relevant for projects involving longitudinal relationships between the researcher and the community. Scholars may be skeptical of branding, because it can evoke the idea of institutions spending money on corporate image rather than on research or teaching support. Yet by curating their project’s brand as an indexical field, sociolinguists can bring more intention to their project vision. This intentionality in turn helps to save time and energy by making all decisions easier, and by improving communication to project stakeholders. The paper offers an overview of relevant public sector brand theory and gives examples from four recent sociolinguistic projects: MI Diaries, Accent Bias in Britain, Manchester Voices, and Our Dialects.
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Gender effects in Mandarin creaky voice evaluation: a matched-guise study

August 12, 2025

Aini Li, Wei Lai

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This study investigates how Mandarin listeners evaluate creaky voice across different gendered voices using a matched-guise design. In contrast to findings in American English, where female creak is often evaluated negatively, Mandarin listeners did not display different evaluations of creaky voice based on speaker gender. Personality traits associated with creaky voice, such as attractiveness, competence, likeability, intelligence, and wealth, did not show systematic gender effects in Mandarin, and these dimensions were found to be highly correlated through principal component analysis. These results suggest that the gender bias against creaky female voices observed in American English does not generalize to Mandarin, offering a potential explanation for previously reported crosslinguistic differences in creak identification between American English and Mandarin Chinese. The absence of gender-based social bias in Mandarin may account for listeners’ more phonetically driven identification of creak, making creak more identifiable in low-pitched male voices rather than high-pitched female voices. Taken together, the findings underscore the importance of incorporating social evaluation into speech perception studies and call for further social evaluation studies of creaky voice across various social dimensions and in crosslinguistic contexts.
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Situating speakers in change: a methodology for quantifying degree and direction of change over the lifespan

February 6, 2025

Elena Sheard

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Observations of late adopters catching up with early adopters of language change in a community indicate a potential connection between an individual’s earlier linguistic behaviour and their real-time response to language change. This article provides a means of empirically testing whether such a connection exists, for a given change, by introducing a methodology for obtaining measurements of individuals’ position relative to the change at an earlier time point (a “Cohort Index”) and the direction and extent to which they change over time (a “Difference Index”). Trend and panel data from Australians of Greek and Italian background is used to illustrate both indices for F1 and F2 measurements of fleece, a vowel that has undergone change in Australian English in recent decades. Individuals’ positions in the change for fleece as teenagers are revealed to significantly correlate with the direction and extent to which they have moved in the vowel space over a forty-year period. Specifically, speakers who were originally behind in the change for their generational and ethnic cohort have moved in the direction of change over time more than those who were already ahead. The analysis therefore lays the foundation for the Cohort and Difference Indices to be applied elsewhere.
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Communicative pressures influence the use of adverbs as well as adjectives: evidence from a crosslinguistic investigation

July 25, 2025

Yue Zou

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It has long been observed in previous research that language production is under the influence of communicative pressures. Language users tend to act efficiently and to structure their utterances to optimize communicative properties. In this study, based on the communicative efficiency hypothesis, we tested two predictions about the use of adjectives and adverbs, respectively. Specifically, it is predicted that pre-nominal languages should use modifying adjectives at a higher rate, and pre-verbal languages should use modifying adverbs at a higher rate. The predicted correlation about adjective ordering was indeed observed. However, contrary to the second prediction, our results indicate no significant difference in the use of adverbs between pre-and post-verbal languages. We argued that the different performances of adjectives and adverbs lie in the fact that event reference is more complex than entity reference: language users rely not only on adverbs, but also on objects in the events denoted by verbs (V). We revised our prediction by considering the relative placement of objects (O), and found that VO languages that favor pre-verbal adverbs do exhibit higher rates of modification.
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Is Zoom viable for sociophonetic research? A comparison of in-person and online recordings for sibilant analysis

February 22, 2022

Jeremy Calder, Rebecca Wheeler

Article number: 20210014

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This study is part of a larger project investigating whether Zoom is a viable data collection method for sociophonetic research, examining whether Zoom recordings yield different acoustic measurements than in-person recordings for the exact same speech for 18 speakers. In this article we analyze five spectral measures of sibilants (peak, center of gravity, standard deviation, skewness, and kurtosis) which have been shown to be conditioned by dimensions of identity like speaker gender and sexual orientation in much previous sociolinguistic research. We find that, overall, Zoom recordings yield significantly lower peak, center of gravity, and standard deviation measurements and significantly higher skewness and kurtosis values than in-person recordings for the same speech, likely due to a lower sampling rate on Zoom recordings. However, a preliminary analysis controlling for sampling rate across recording methods reveals the opposite patterns for nearly all measures, suggesting that Zoom stretches the spectral space when compared with the in-person recorder. Because the values of these measurements can lead analysts to draw social interpretations relating to a speaker’s performance of gender and sexual identity, we caution against comparing across Zoom and in-person recordings, as differences in measurements may result from the recording method used to collect the data.
Open Access
Online data collection to address language sampling bias: lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic

October 13, 2022

Rowena Garcia, Jens Roeser, Evan Kidd

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The COVID-19 pandemic has massively limited how linguists can collect data, and out of necessity, researchers across several disciplines have moved data collection online. Here we argue that the rising popularity of remote web-based experiments also provides an opportunity for widening the context of linguistic research by facilitating data collection from understudied populations. We discuss collecting production data from adult native speakers of Tagalog using an unsupervised web-based experiment. Compared to equivalent lab experiments, data collection went quicker, and the sample was more diverse, without compromising data quality. However, there were also technical and human issues that come with this method. We discuss these challenges and provide suggestions on how to overcome them.
Open Access
Lies in the lexicon: a corpus-based exploration of lexicon in truthful and deceitful narrative accounts

November 5, 2025

Victoria Johansson, Kajsa Gullberg, Roger Johansson

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Corpus linguistic studies have shown that lexicon varies according to linguistic register, and cognitive studies have demonstrated that lexical aspects play a significant role in determining the veracity of people’s accounts. Both lines of research underpin the present study, where the aim is to explore how overall lexical properties (lexical density and lexical diversity, and noun, verb, and adjective density) are related to the veracity of narratives. We make use of a corpus of 576 spoken and written narratives, especially collected with the purpose of investigating linguistic properties in truthful and deceitful accounts. Data were collected in an experiment involving 36 participants who viewed four elicitation films depicting minor misdemeanors, and subsequently recounted the events in both written and spoken formats, resulting in four narrative accounts (two truthful and two deceitful, in which they were asked to alter a critical event regarding “who did it”). The results reveal some significant differences in how verb, noun, and adjective density relate to veracity, but the results are inconclusive. A cautious interpretation is that narrators make use of different lexical strategies depending on veracity but that elicitation material may strongly influence the effects, stressing the difficulties in characterizing deceptive written texts.
Open Access
Shared processing strategies as a mechanism for contact-induced change in flexible constituent order

February 17, 2025

Savithry Namboodiripad

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This article argues for collecting primary data using psycholinguistic methods to better explain contact-induced change in constituent order. I compare the results of acceptability judgment experiments in Hindi-Urdu, Korean, and Malayalam, asking how ratings of the six grammatical orderings of subject, object, and verb might be affected by different contexts of experience with English. Two hypotheses are considered: (1) shared constructions: ratings of SVO, the canonical order in English, will vary with respect to language contact measures, or (2) shared processing strategies: overall ratings of noncanonical orders in each language will be affected by experience with English, a less flexible language. More contact with English corresponded to a greater difference in acceptability between canonical and noncanonical orders in Korean and Malayalam. For Hindi-Urdu, language contact was operationalized via agglomerative clustering, and SVO only behaved differently from other noncanonical orders in one of four participant groups. The shared strategies hypothesis is supported in all cases but one; this variation in results aligns with the variation found in nonexperimental studies of contact effects in constituent order. Taking a gradient approach to measuring both language contact and constituent order is thus a crucial step toward specifying descriptions and explanations of contact-induced syntactic change.
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Evaluating learning trajectories of neural morphology acquisition models

September 8, 2025

Jordan Kodner, Salam Khalifa, Sarah Payne, Zoey Liu

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Computational models of morphology acquisition have played a central role in debates over the nature of morphological representations since the origin of the “past tense debate” in the 1980s. The apparent success of recent artificial neural network architectures for morphological inflection in natural language processing has revitalized this debate. However, despite their often good performance, the actual suitability of these advanced neural networks as models of human morphology acquisition remains uncertain. We argue that much of this confusion stems from inconsistent methods of training and evaluation. In this work, we demonstrate that more careful dataset creation and an evaluation combining quantitative analysis and comparison with human development puts the evaluation of neural models on firmer ground.
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Tag questions in English and Portuguese monologues: types, features, and functions

October 27, 2025

Purificação Silvano, María Gómez González, João Cordeiro

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This study investigates the characteristics of variable and invariable tag questions in monologues, comparing their usage in British English and European Portuguese. Through a corpus-based analysis, this paper provides valuable insights into the grammatical and functional properties of these linguistic constructions in spoken monologues in both languages. The findings reveal that tag questions are less frequently used in monologues than in dialogues, reflecting their interactional nature. However, their occurrence is notably higher in European Portuguese than in British English across both monologic and dialogic speech. Furthermore, tag questions in European Portuguese exhibit greater frequency and diversity in monologues, whereas in British English, they are less common and exclusively consist of variable tag questions. While some differences in the functional and grammatical features of variable and invariable tag questions were identified, these variations were not particularly pronounced. The analysis also highlights the limited availability of tag questions in the monologues dataset in English, underlining the need for further research to comprehensively explore these constructions across languages.
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Is Zoom viable for sociophonetic research? A comparison of in-person and online recordings for vocalic analysis

February 28, 2022

Jeremy Calder, Rebecca Wheeler, Sarah Adams, Daniel Amarelo, Katherine Arnold-Murray, Justin Bai, Meredith Church, Josh Daniels, Sarah Gomez, Jacob Henry, Yunan Jia, Brienna Johnson-Morris, Kyo Lee, Kit Miller, Derrek Powell, Caitlin Ramsey-Smith, Sydney Rayl, Sara Rosenau, Nadine Salvador

Article number: 20200148

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In this study, we explore whether Zoom is a viable method for collecting data for sociophonetic research, focusing on vocalic analysis. We investigate whether recordings collected through Zoom yield different acoustic measurements than recordings collected through in-person recording equipment, for the exact same speech. We analyze vowel formant data from 18 speakers who recorded Zoom conversations at the same time as they recorded themselves with portable recording equipment. We find that, overall, Zoom recordings yield lower raw F1 values and higher F2 values than recording equipment. We also tested whether normalization affects discrepancies between recording methods and found that while discrepancies still appear after normalizing with the Watt and Fabricius modified method, Lobanov normalization largely minimizes discrepancies between recording methods. Discrepancies are also mitigated with a Zoom recording setup that involves the speaker wearing headphones and recording with an external microphone.
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Attitudinal negotiation: the analysis of online commentary videos about an international event on Chinese social media platform bilibili.com

August 29, 2025

Nana Zhou

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This article proposes a paradigm of attitudinal analysis of commentary videos on a social media platform to illustrate attitudinal negotiation about a particular international event. It adopts a research-driven approach to evaluate verbal expressions of commentary videos concerning Japan’s discharge of nuclear-contaminated water into the sea posted on Chinese social media platform bilibili.com. The results show that the original appraiser might not be verified, but replaced by the influencer as the secondary appraiser, which features the subjectivity of social media. The appraised targets can be textually tracked or semantically interpreted. Their clusters unfold the development of themes in different phases and stages in digital discourses. The attitudinal value can be affected by sociocultural or ecological factor, the previous or subsequent utterances, or sarcasm. The clusters of attitudinal values could imply massive homogeneous groups in social media communication. The article offers insights for attitudinal analysis of other international events on social media.
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Do readers perceive various types of knowledge expressed through evidentials in news reports with different degrees of certainty?

August 5, 2025

Yu-Yun Chang

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In the written medium, evidentiality encodes intersubjective knowledge shared between the writer and a third party who is also aware of the events occurring at the time. Journalists often use evidential markers to convey this intersubjective knowledge to readers in news reporting. Such knowledge helps to mitigate journalists’ assertiveness and enables readers to reconstruct the reported information. This study examines readers’ judgments of the knowledge expressed through various types of evidential categories in news reports. Sentences were retrieved from English and Chinese corpora, constructed in previous studies, containing news events presented with evidential markers and accompanied by readers’ certainty judgments regarding these events. The evidential markers are annotated into six categories commonly observed across languages from a typological perspective. Both quantitative and qualitative analyses are conducted to examine differences in the distributions of English and Chinese readers’ judgments across these evidential categories. Additionally, potential factors influencing how readers of different languages perceive news events are identified. This study empirically contributes to understanding whether different types of knowledge are perceived differently across languages.
Open Access
Direct pseudo-partitives in US English

February 5, 2025

Kurt Erbach, Remus Gergel

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We present a corpus study looking at direct and indirect pseudo-partitives in US English and show that not only is there regular use of direct pseudo-partitives, but there is only positive evidence of their use with measure/portion readings as opposed to container+contents readings. We account for the data with an analysis in which of is a functional particle in measure/portion readings but is a lexical item specifying a contain relation in container+contents readings.
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Narrating the doctoral journey on Chinese social media: chronotopes and scales in user interaction on Xiaohongshu

July 21, 2025

Leslie Huishan Li

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In this study, I apply the notions of chronotope and scale in social semiotic multimodal discourse analysis to investigate user interaction on a specific social media platform in China: Xiaohongshu. More specifically, I analyze semiotic resource deployment, chronotope mixing, and scaling strategies in home pages, posts, and discussions created by users who label themselves and are labeled by the platform as doctoral students. This article showcases how interpersonal connections of distance and intimacy are established among bloggers, followers, and discussants, as well as how these individuals represent and negotiate characteristics and statuses concerning the doctoral community. Chronotopes, as time-space-identity configurations, are invoked and deployed as communication resources for interactants to self-present and position themselves in contrast to or aligned with certain memberships and communities. It is within and through accumulated community discourse as such that social meanings, values, and identity performance are constantly (re)constructed. This article contributes both to the application of chronotopes and scales in multimodal discourse analysis and to the multimodal analysis of social media communication with a focus on nuanced semiotic interactions in deference to the doctoral community.
Open Access
Is deeper always better? Replacing linear mappings with deep learning networks in the Discriminative Lexicon Model

November 13, 2025

Maria Heitmeier, Valeria Schmidt, Hendrik P.A. Lensch, R. Harald Baayen

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Recently, deep learning models have increasingly been used in cognitive modelling of language. This study asks whether deep learning can help us to better understand the learning problem that needs to be solved by speakers, above and beyond linear methods. We utilize the Discriminative Lexicon Model introduced by Baayen and colleagues, which models comprehension and production with mappings between numeric form and meaning vectors. While so far, these mappings have been linear (linear discriminative learning; LDL), in the present study we replace them with deep dense neural networks (deep discriminative learning; DDL). We find that DDL affords more accurate mappings for large and diverse datasets from English and Dutch, but not necessarily for Estonian and Taiwan Mandarin. DDL outperforms LDL in particular for words with pseudo-morphological structure such as chol + er . Applied to average reaction times, we find that DDL is outperformed by frequency-informed linear mappings (FIL). However, DDL trained in a frequency-informed way (“frequency-informed” deep learning; FIDDL) substantially outperforms FIL. Finally, while linear mappings can very effectively be updated from trial-to-trial to model incremental lexical learning, deep mappings cannot do so as effectively. At present, both linear and deep mappings are informative for understanding language.
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Semantic change and socio-semantic variation: the case of COVID-related neologisms on Reddit

March 15, 2024

Quirin Würschinger, Barbara McGillivray

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COVID-19 has triggered innovations in science and society globally, leading to the emergence or establishment of formal neologisms such as infodemic and working from home ( WFH ). While previous work on COVID-related lexical innovation has focused on such formal neologisms, this paper uses data from Reddit to study semantic neologisms like lockdown and mask , which have changed in meaning due to the pandemic. First, we identify words that have undergone meaning changes since the start of the pandemic. Our approach, based on word embeddings, successfully detects a variety of COVID-related terms that dominate the resulting list of semantic neologisms. Next, we generate community-specific semantic representations for the communities r/Coronavirus and r/conspiracy , which are both highly engaged in COVID-related discourse. We analyse socio-semantic variation along two dimensions: an evaluative dimension, based on amelioration/pejorization, and the loyalty/betrayal dimension of Moral Foundations Theory. Our findings reveal that the detected semantic neologisms exhibit more negative and betrayal-related associations in r/conspiracy , a subreddit critical of COVID-related sociopolitical measures. Mapping the community-specific representations for the term vaccines on a shared semantic space confirms these differences and reveals more fine-grained denotational and connotational differences between the two communities.
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Instance memory models as a general computational framework for exploring language processing: bringing the lexicon to life

August 29, 2025

Brendan T. Johns, Randall K. Jamieson, Matthew J.C. Crump, Michael N. Jones

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Instance models have been successfully applied to a range of problems including memory, language, attention, learning, action, decision-making, and categorization. According to instance theory, the individual experience constitutes the fundamental unit of knowledge and knowledge of the general emerges during parallel retrieval from memory. Until recently, applications of instance theory to the problem of language were constrained to small and contrived laboratory experiments. However, recent advances in large-scale computational modeling have allowed the approach to be applied at scale to the large and complicated problem of natural language. With those demonstrations now in hand, we argue that the framework can present an articulate mechanistic underbelly to usage-based theories of language that highlights the role of specific language experience in general language behavior. Overall, this article argues that instance memory models provide an opportunity to gain insight into and deepen our understanding of language as a dynamic and contextually embedded process, serving to bridge the gap between cognitive psychology and the language sciences.
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Quantitative relationship between distribution of sentence length and dependency distance in Spanish

April 18, 2025

Jinlu Liu, Nan Yang, Haitao Liu

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Sentence length, defined by the number of words contained in a sentence, has always been of great concern in linguistic research. Many studies have been conducted on the distribution of sentence length in specific languages. To further explore the characteristics and patterns of sentence length and their relationship with dependency distance in Spanish, we use the SUD syntactic treebank and conduct a quantitative analysis within the theoretical framework of dependency grammar. It is found that the sentence length distribution of Spanish follows a positive negative binomial model, and there is no significant difference in sentence length distribution among different mean dependency distances (MDDs), but the distribution of the number of sentences in different sentence length intervals follows a normal distribution. In Spanish, sentence length and MDD interact with each other – the longer the sentence is, the greater the MDD is, and vice versa – which is consistent with previous research findings. Also, as sentence length increases in Spanish, short-distance dependencies decrease, but remain within a certain range of fluctuations, which confirms once again that language is a complex and self-adaptive system driven by humans.
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The Ultraviolet Bleach corpus

April 12, 2022

Natalia Knoblock, Ryan Malkin

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This paper presents a new corpus of computer-mediated communication on the topic of Trump’s comments about household disinfectants and ultraviolet light as cures for COVID-19. The corpus, named the Ultraviolet Bleach (UVB) corpus, contains message board comments devoted to Trump’s suggestions. It was collected in May 2020 and consists of twenty-six files, with a total size of 2,344,164 word tokens. The paper includes frequency lists of words and clusters, keywords, and keywords in context, identified with the help of the corpus management software Sketch Engine. The corpus highlights the “receiving end” of political communication since it involves reactions to Trump’s televised briefing, and it will be of interest to researchers of political communication, populist and conspiratorial discourse, public opinion, and language aggression.
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Long English objects and short Chinese objects: language diversity shaped by cognitive universality

March 3, 2025

Chunshan Xu, Haitao Liu

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Based on samples from two corpora, we found that Chinese objects tend to be much shorter than English objects, and that unlike in English, Chinese subjects and objects tend to have similar lengths when their information status is controlled. These differences can be explained in terms of a universal need for dependency distance minimization (DDM), reflecting different strategies of sentence organization to meet the universal constraint of working memory. These DDM-driven syntactic diversities may be irrelevant to grammaticality, but contribute to the smoothness of sentences, because they are shaped by the universal need to reduce the cognitive burden during comprehension. It is perhaps in these common cognitive and functional constraints that we are to find true language universals, universals embodied in linguistic diversity.
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Attention-LSTM autoencoder simulation for phonotactic learning from raw audio input

September 8, 2025

Frank Lihui Tan, Youngah Do

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This paper presents a learning simulation of phonotactics using an attention-based long short-term memory autoencoder trained on raw audio input. Unlike previous models that use abstract phonological representations, the current method imitates early phonotactic acquisition stages by processing continuous acoustic signals. Focusing on an English phonotactic pattern, specifically the distribution of aspirated and unaspirated voiceless stops, the model implicitly acquires phonotactic knowledge through reconstruction tasks. The results demonstrate the model’s ability to acquire essential phonotactic relations through attention mechanisms, exhibiting increased attention to phonological context which shows higher phonotactic predictability. The learning trajectory begins with a strong reliance on contextual cues to identify phonotactic patterns. Over time, the system internalizes these constraints, leading to a decreased reliance on specific phonotactic cues. This study suggests the feasibility of early phonotactic learning models based on raw auditory input and provides insights into both computational modeling and infants’ phonotactic acquisition.
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How the cause and purpose syncretism was lost: the tale of two Russian subordinators

November 20, 2025

Sergey Say

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In early nineteenth-century Russian, two complex subordinators – dlja togo, čto(by) and zatem, čto(by) – exhibited syncretism between cause and purpose. Over the course of the century, this syncretism was lost: while the purpose uses remained frequent, the causal uses largely decayed by the end of the nineteenth century. Based on quantitative corpus data, I trace this shift over the course of the nineteenth century. I argue that the two interpretations were weakly differentiated at the beginning of the century, but gradually became firmly tied with a mood distinction. Eventually, the subjunctive purpose construction, which involves čtoby , remained robust, while its indicative causal counterpart, which involves čto , went out of use. This divergence is explained by the paradigmatic associations with related constructions: notably, the preposition dlja lost its causal meaning, contributing to the decline of dlja togo, čto ; and the interrogative purpose adverbial začem contributed to the retention of the purpose subordinator based on zatem . Finally, the default simplex purpose subordinator čtoby reinforced the complex purpose constructions containing čtoby , especially in focused contexts.
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Vowel formant track normalization using discrete cosine transform coefficients

August 20, 2025

Josef Fruehwald

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This paper provides an overview of the discrete cosine transform (DCT) as a method for smoothing vowel formant tracks, as well as a procedure to take any speaker normalization method that has been defined for formant point measurements and define an equivalent method to be applied directly to DCT coefficients. This procedure is followed for three established normalization methods, and the difference between DCT normalization and formant point normalization is found to be marginal.
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How long is too long? Production-internal and communicative constraints in the coding of conditionality in Spanish

January 30, 2025

Laura M. Merino Hernández, Matti Marttinen Larsson

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This study analyzes to what extent communicative accounts, in contrast to production ease ones, can predict the variable coding length of conditional constructions in Spanish. If coding length is determined by communicative efficiency, we anticipate more accessible antecedents to be more parsimoniously encoded and less accessible ones to be more explicitly encoded. Insofar as coding length is determined by production-internal processes, longer coding is expected when speakers experience production difficulties. A Bayesian mixed-effects multinomial regression of 977 conditional constructions indicates that coding length is chiefly regulated by the speaker’s communicative goals in that highly accessible antecedents are realized with shorter forms, and more inaccessible antecedents involve longer coding. We propose a speaker-hearer efficiency cline of conditional constructions that ranges from maximally explicit coding, which is less efficient for the speaker but easier to parse for the hearer, to maximally inferential coding, which is more efficient for the speaker but increases the inferential cognitive load of the hearer. Moreover, we find support for the view that pragmatically indirect conditionals are frequently redundantly coded. Because indirect speech act resolution is cognitively heavy for the listener, speakers seem to counterbalance the higher processing costs exerted by them through longer coding.
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A quantitative method for syntactic gradience: words, phrases, and the constructions in between

January 30, 2025

Zhen Wu

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Syntactic gradience has been studied mainly from a qualitative perspective. In this paper, I propose a new method, based on the process of multi-criteria decision-making, that can quantify the word-phrase gradience against the standardized morphosyntactic continuum. This method may be applied to both synchronic and diachronic research, with the discrepancies between compounds and idioms and the lexicalization of compound pronouns in English examined as illustrations.
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On the role of metaphors in COVID-related political communication: an examination of Jacinda Ardern’s metaphorical language in managing the health crisis

July 25, 2023

Marta Degani

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In comparison to many other countries across the world, New Zealand stands out as a positive example of successfully dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic during its first outbreak. A pivotal role in this has been attributed to Jacinda Ardern, New Zealand’s prime minister, who has been praised for her effective communication throughout the crisis and her capacity to connect empathetically to the people. The present study explores Ardern’s crisis discourse by focusing on her use of metaphors to talk about COVID-19, its transmission, and the measures adopted by the New Zealand government to contain its spread. This analysis, which adopts the framework of Critical Metaphor Theory, aims at disclosing which metaphors were used by Jacinda Ardern and whether there is anything exceptional in these metaphors and their usage that could relate to Ardern’s successful management of the health crisis in its initial phase. The data consists of eight post-Cabinet press conferences given by Ardern from the beginning of the outbreak at the end of February 2020 to the day when she declared that community transmission was over (27 April 2020).
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Yeah, but how? Operationalizing the functions of the discourse-pragmatic marker yeah

January 22, 2025

Ben Gibb-Reid, Chloé Diskin-Holdaway

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Discourse-pragmatic markers (DPMs) such as yeah are known for their multifunctionality, leading to challenges in coding for function in quantitative analyses. We provide an account of the incremental creation of a functional taxonomy for the DPM yeah using a decision tree and multilevel inter-rater reliability testing. Author 1 and rater 1 initially achieved a low agreement rate of 51 %, but upon consultation and adaptation of the taxonomy, came to an agreement of 95 %. Rater 2 used the revised taxonomy and achieved an agreement rate of 81 % (for primary [P] functions) and 91 % (for P and secondary [S] functions). Rater 3 achieved an agreement rate of 56 % (P) and 67 % (P + S) with author 1 + rater 1, but a higher agreement rate with rater 2 of 74 % (P) and 83 % (P + S). We draw on top-down and bottom-up, data-driven approaches, and discuss the future of DPM operationalization.
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On the synchrony and diachrony of causal jako-że-clauses in Polish

July 29, 2025

Łukasz Jędrzejowski

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In this article, I examine causal clauses in Polish introduced by the complementizer jako że/iż ‘because’ (lit. ‘as that’). Synchronically, I argue that jako-że/iż -clauses can express distinct reason relations operating on different semantic levels. By focusing on their content interpretation, I provide evidence showing that jako-że/iż -clauses are syntactically integrated adverbial clauses. The main arguments for this claim come from information-structural movement to the left periphery of the matrix clause and quantificational binding. Diachronically, I show that jako could already be used as a causal C-head in Old Polish (up to 1543), and that the declarative complementizer że/iż ‘that’ was incorporated into the causal clause structure in the transition from Old to Middle Polish.
Open Access
Salient Language in Context (SLIC): a web app for collecting real-time attention data in response to audio samples

August 12, 2025

Chris Montgomery, Gareth Walker, Harry Woods

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This article introduces Salient Language in Context (SLIC), a web application designed for collecting real-time attention data from listeners in response to audio samples. SLIC enables researchers to capture timestamped attention points as listeners engage with spoken language, allowing for an innovative approach to studying real-time perception of speech. The application facilitates the collection of both quantitative and qualitative data, providing researchers with not only precise reaction timing but also listener justifications for their responses. SLIC addresses long-standing challenges in sociolinguistics and perceptual dialectology by enabling researchers to examine which linguistic features capture attention, when they do so, and how listeners interpret them in context. The technical aspects of SLIC are discussed in the article and include its secure online infrastructure and integration with scripts written for Praat, which allow for efficient data visualization and interpretation. A case study using SLIC demonstrates its effectiveness in examining listener perceptions of segmental features in Liverpool English, revealing distinct patterns of attention and commentary strategies. By providing a robust method for investigating real-time language perception, SLIC has a broad range of potential applications.
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Exploring the effect of semantic diversity on boundary permeability in verb/noun heterosemy using deep contextualized word embedding

November 13, 2025

Gui Wang, Bin Shao

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This study investigates the relationship between semantic diversity and boundary permeability in verb/noun heterosemous words in English. Using sense data from the Oxford Dictionaries API and the Corpus of Historical American English enhanced by contextualized word embedding, we quantified semantic diversity using Shannon entropy and measured boundary permeability as the relative proportion of verb/noun uses. Results reveal a significant positive effect of overall semantic diversity on boundary permeability, i.e., words that have more senses or balanced sense distributions show greater cross-categorical flexibility. Furthermore, we find asymmetric effects between noun and verb semantic diversity: noun-sense diversity positively affects permeability, while no meaningful effect was detected for verb-sense diversity. This asymmetry, combined with our finding that higher permeability is driven by increased verb usage, provides strong quantitative evidence for a directional preference in English conversion from noun to verb. To our knowledge, this study offers the first large-scale empirical support for theoretical accounts of directionality in English conversion, demonstrating that semantic diversity functions as a critical indicator of a word’s conceptual flexibility.
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Discourse effects in processing Chinese reflexive pronouns

August 14, 2025

Yue Zhao, Darcy Sperlich

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Reflexive pronoun resolution in Chinese is well known to be affected by discourse context, as antecedent choice can be guided to a long-distance or local antecedent. How discourse affects the real-time processing of reflexive resolution, however, is not well understood, especially over different reflexive types. This research investigates two reflexives, 自己 zìjǐ ‘self’ and 他自己 tāzìjǐ ‘him/herself’, to understand if discourse influences their processing differently, as only tāzìjǐ has a preference for a local antecedent. Recent research has shown that there appears to be competition between discourse bias towards long-distance binding and preference for locality. Utilizing a self-paced reading experiment, we test if context biased towards a long-distance antecedent affects the processing of the reflexives as compared to without context. We find that context affects both reflexives immediately, contrary to what has been found in the literature. Our findings suggest that there is no competition, with discourse context guiding antecedence effortlessly. Moreover, our approach is couched within neo-Gricean pragmatic theory, simplifying our understanding of reflexive processing in Chinese without necessitating a conflict between syntax and pragmatics.

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Editors-in-Chief

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Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany

Rebecca Starr
National University of Singapore, Singapore

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University of California, Davis, CA, USA

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University of Osnabrück, Germany

Abigail C. Cohn
Cornell University, NY, USA

Jeff Good
University at Buffalo, NY, USA

Area Editors

Jenny Audring (Leiden University, The Netherlands) [morphology, typology, construction grammar, Germanic]
Wenhao Diao (University of Arizona) [second language learning, sociolinguistics, Chinese]
Daniel Duncan (Newcastle University) [sociolinguistics, sociophonetics, morphosyntactic, varieties of English]
Alice Gaby (Monash University, Australia) [Australian Aboriginal languages, cognitive linguistics, linguistic anthropology]
Roey J. Gafter (Ben-Gurion University, Israel) [sociolinguistics, language variation and change, language & ethnicity, Hebrew]
Lauren Gawne (La Trobe University, Australia) [Gesture, linguistic anthropology, communicating linguistics (lingcomm), Tibeto-Burman languages]
John Gluckman (University of Kansas, USA) [syntax, morphology, fieldwork, African languages (Bantu), Germanic languages]
Mie Hiramoto (National University of Singapore, Singapore) [sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology, gender & sexuality]
Ellen Hurst (University of Cape Town, South Africa) [sociolinguistics, language variation, pragmatics. Bantu languages, multilingualism]
Vsevolod Kapatsinski (University of Oregon) [usage-based linguistics, computational cognitive science, experimental and quantitative methods, Russian and English]
Nikolas Koch (Ludwig-Maximilians-Univerität Munich, Germany) [usage-based construction grammar, first and second language acquisition, Bilingualism, German, English]
Jordan Kodner (Stony Brook University, USA) [computational linguistics, language change, child language acquisition, English, Latin]
Mohamed Lahrouchi (CNRS / University Paris 8, France) [phonology, morphology, interface with syntax, Afroasiatic Languages (especially Berber and Semitic)]
Yuhan Lin (Shenzhen University) [sociolinguistics, language variation and change, sociophonetics, Chinese languages]
Mingya Liu (Humboldt University, Germany) [semantics, pragmatics, experimental linguistics, Chinese languages, English, German]
Robert Mailhammer (Western Sydney University, Australia) [historical linguistics, morphology, phonology, Australian Aboriginal languages, Germanic languages]
Hamid Ouali (University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee) [Syntax, Morphology, Language change, Berber, Modern Standard Arabic, Arabic dialects]
Margaret Renwick (University of Georgia, USA) [phonetics, phonology, sociophonetics, varieties of English, Romance languages]
Ioanna Sitaridou (University of Cambridge, UK) [language contact, historical linguistics, variation and change, Greek, Romance languages, Anatolian languages]
Joseph A. Stanley (Brigham Young University) [Sociophonetics, language variation and change, dialectology, methods, varieties of English]
Annemarie Verkerk (Universität des Saarlandes) [typology, corpus linguistics, phylogenetics, quantitative methods, Indo-European, Bantu]
Kofi Yakpo (The University of Hong Kong) [language contact, areal typology, language documentation, Atlantic Basin contact languages (Afro-European creoles and colonial varieties), West Africa (Kwa, Gur, West Benue-Congo), Indo-Aryan]
Yao Yao (Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong) [phonetics, speech production, phonetic variation and sound change, Chinese languages, English]

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June 20, 2015

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eISSN: 2199-174X

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