Volume 53, Issue 3

This paper provides a minimalist account of the syntax of the discourse particle ʁedɪ in North Hail Arabic, a variety spoken in Saudi Arabia. It adopts standard minimalist approaches, Chomsky’s (2000, 2001) Agree, Rizzi’s (1997) Split CP hypothesis and Richards’s (2001) Tuck-in to address the syntactic behaviour of this particle. It is argued that, endowed with an interpretable/unvalued [TOP] feature and uninterpretable/unvalued φ-features in the sense of Pesetsky and Torrego (2007) and Bošković (2011), ʁedɪ is merged in the left periphery, spelling out the head feature of the Familiar Topic Phrase in the sense of Frascarelli and Hinterhölzl (2007), whence it probes the constituent with the matching features in situ. Hence, the argument that discourse particles link syntax to discourse and contribute to the interpretation of the associated sentence (Biberauer et al. 2014). The desirable outcome is that movement is only forced in cases of multi familiar topics. This provides a plausible explanation that movement is conceptually conceived of as a functional relation established between the probe and the goal as a record for the semantic/information-structure interpretation at the interface system. Facts drawn from cliticization, phases, and multiple familiar topics are taken as convergent evidence bearing out these assumptions.

This paper examines the acceptability of several types of extraction out of the nominal domain (Left Branch Extraction – LBE, deep LBE, extraordinary LBE, double AP LBE, extraction of NP-complements, extraction across a numeral) in Polish and its relevance for the current views on the nominal structure of the “NP”/“DP” -languages. The point of departure is an overview of the abovementioned extraction types. Next, a succinct summary of an acceptability study of these constructions conducted on a population of 183 native speakers of Polish is provided. While the results confirm the cross-linguistic observation that the extractions in question are generally ‘discourse-triggered’, their acceptability in Polish seems to be relatively low and reveals fairly interesting differences between the specific constructions (e.g., LBE-wh vs. LBE-demonstratives). These may have broader implications for the ongoing debate concerning the optimal shape of the nominal structure in (languages like) Polish, as they seem to provide (at least circumstantial) arguments for a more elaborate sequence of projections on top of the NP.

This study is a phonological analysis of the process of vowel shortening in Persian. The aim was to find out whether there are any rules governing the different cases of vowel shortening in simple and complex words of formal standard Persian, and to analyse the conditions under which the long vowels /a, i, u/ change into the corresponding short vowels /æ, e, o/. In doing so, data were gathered from a 75000-word contemporary dictionary of Persian, and all the instances undergoing vowel shortening were extracted. Analysing the data showed that the change of /a/ into [æ] is the most frequent type of vowel shortening in Persian. In addition, it turned out that vowel shortening rarely occurs inside simple words in the formal standard form of the language (only in 35 entries out of 519 words in total; i.e. 6.7%); while on the contrary, in complex words it happens quite frequently. Furthermore, regarding the phonemic environment in which vowels undergo shortening, it was found that vowel shortening is most frequent before the glottal consonant /h/, next frequent before nasals /n/ and /m/, and then before /r/. The process also occurs rather frequently in morpheme-final positions in affixation. Lastly, it turns out that another important factor in vowel shortening is the syllable structure of the word; as the super-heavy and ultra-heavy syllables of Persian tend to lose one mora and become lighter in certain positions in the word.

This study aims to investigate whether administering DCT in the form of elicited emails would give different results than written DCT. In particular, the study aims to compare two types of simulations, written-for-written as in elicited email and written-for-oral as in written DCT. To investigate, the DCTs were given to 53 college students, divided into two groups. While a group filled in a written DCT including two request situations, another group made the same requests via emails they sent directly to their professor’s email address. The data was analyzed in terms of whether they included opening and closing, choice of moves and density of requests. The findings show that requests in email data included significantly more closing sequences, were longer and included more moves. Moreover, the choices of moves were significantly different in opening and support sequences. Findings suggest elicited emails may be an alternative approach to simulate reality. As a significant amount of daily and professional conversations take place via electronic mediums today, any attempt in training and assessment in language use should avoid a mismatch between natural reality and its simulation.

This article reports an empirical study of the functions of pragmatic force modifiers (PFMs) in English as a lingua franca (ELF) use in academic discussions. PFMs are pervasive in spoken language but have been under-researched in contexts of multinational and polylogic communications. The aim of this study is to investigate how different event types affect the use of PFMs in ELF discourse. PFMs used in the academic discussions are identified and their distributions in different event types of the Corpus of English as a Lingua Franca in Academic Settings are explored. The functions of the PFMs in different event types are then examined and discussed. Results reveal that ELF speakers use well-specified PFMs to fulfill appropriate functions in different event types under the genre of academic discussions, i.e. flagging suggestions and downplaying criticism in conference discussions, marking elicitation and tailoring explanation in lecture discussions, expressing commitment and certainty in doctoral defense discussions, and projecting personal opinions in seminar discussions. It is argued that although PFMs are linguistic devices commonly used in academic discussions, their functions are sensitive to specific event types. At least, the present study concludes that these context-sensitive uses are clearly in evidence in ELF speech.

This paper offers further insights on the role of language contact in the reorganization of grammar based on data from two Modern Greek contact-induced dialects: Italiot varieties in contact with both the local Romance varieties and Standard Italian, and Cappadocian, in contact with Turkish. A contrastive investigation reveals interesting correlations and particularities in the reorganization of inflection of the examined systems. Acknowledging that simplification is not triggered solely by contact, we claim that the attested phenomena can be accounted for as temporary complexifications that head toward and ultimately result in simplification within the paradigmatic relations. The amount and type of complexity diverge significantly depending on the (in)compatibility factor among the systems in contact. Furthermore, in terms of loss, addition and replacement of features, our data show that, although replacement and loss are the most prevalent strategies used at the level of morphology, addition is also very likely to occur when structural incompatibility is involved.

The study aimed at testing Polish children’s and adult’s ability to identify and interpret three different contrastive focus types; narrow final focus, narrow non-final focus, and broad focus. In the first experiment eight-year-old children (N = 15) and young adults (N = 15, age range 19–23) were asked to spot the focus in short utterances, and produce contrastive elements in response to three types of inputs with three distinct focus types. In the second experiment eight and four year old children (N = 14 and N = 15, respectively) and young adults (N = 16) listened to two types of utterances – with final contrastive and non-final contrastive focus and were asked to select a picture that best matched the implied meaning of the auditory input. Although in each group there were individuals with ceiling results and chance results, on average the adults outperformed the children in all the tasks. Implications of the findings for testing prosody development are discussed.