Volume 57, Issue 2

Adopting a socio-pragmatic view on linguistic choices, this study aims to show how proper names come to function as an ideologically-significant resource for identity construction, impression management, and the negotiation of meaning-making. Drawing upon twelve opening addresses from the penalty phase of capital trials, the research identifies the forms, functions and frequencies of the naming choices that the prosecution and defense use to reference the defendants and victims. The findings reveal characteristic patterns in the two sides’ speeches both in terms of the naming choices and purposes for which such choices are (not) used. It is argued that, despite the defense’s attempts to neutralize the damaging effects, this value-laden practice potentially construes distance and exaggerates differences between the person on trial and the victims, and shapes the relationship between the defendant and jury in such a way that hinders empathy and understanding, thereby becoming one of the aggravating factors itself.

This research investigates the functions of the verb ‘to say’ in the Jordanian Arabic dialect of Irbid (JADI). Relying on a 250,000-word corpus, we propose that the speech verb ‘to say’ in JADI has one main lexical function (i.e. introducing direct or indirect speech) in addition to three functions which the verb develops, i.e. expressing the speaker’s mental state, signalling indirect evidentiality, and revealing the speaker’s incredulity towards the accompanying utterance. We show that in these three developed functions, the verb lost one or more of its lexical properties, because of an (initial or advanced) grammaticalization process whose effects are clearly manifested by the function of the verb as an incredulity marker, in which case the verb is semantically bleached, phonologically reduced, and de-categorized. Following Traugott (1989), Wang et al. (2003) and Hsieh (2012), among others, we propose that the grammaticalization path of the speech verb in JADI into these three functions are motivated by pragmatic inference and (inter)subjectification. The directionality of the grammaticalization process is also shown to be implemented from propositional (through textual) to expressive functions.

This study concentrates on the alternation between two dorsal fricatives: [x] and [ç] in Modern Standard German. The primary source of data for the analysis include both native German words and loanwords. Moreover, the discussion encompasses some strictly related processes such as g- spirantization [g] > [x]/[ç], e.g. Ber [ç] ‘mountain’ and Ta [x] ‘day’, and coronalization [ç] > [ʃ], e.g. mi [ʃ] ‘me’ found in various German dialects and colloquial variants. Finally, since it is responsible for the appearance of both alternants in an identical context, e.g. Frau [ç] en ‘woman, dim’ and rau [x] en ‘to smoke’, a brief look is taken at the historical development of the diminutive suffix chen . It is argued here that in contemporary German there are two palatovelar fricatives [ç] which differ in their internal organization of the melodic content. In loanwords and in the diminutive suffix -chen , [ç] is lexically specified for palatality, while after front vowels and coronal sonorants the same fricative shares the palatality element with the preceding segment. The analysis is couched in a recent version of Element Theory and it proceeds on two assumptions: a) front vowels and coronal sonorants [l ʁ n] in German are defined by the resonance element |I| and b) [ç] is a complex segment containing two resonants |I| and |U|.

The current study adds to research investigating the influence of bilingualism on third language (L3) acquisition, more specifically the assumption that the two previously acquired languages enhance the acquisition of an additional language. We here rely on data from 1,409 bilingual (Russian-/Turkish-German) and monolingual (German) students of grades seven and nine, sampled in schools across Germany. The relevant literature yields mixed and controversial results regarding bilingual advantages, yet it also suggests that L3 acquisition is a multidimensional process potentially affected by various linguistic and extra-linguistic factors. Thus, we examine the relationship between English proficiency (L2 or L3), reading comprehension in German and the heritage languages Turkish and Russian along with cognitive ability and socio-economic status by using several multi-group path analyses, a type of structural equation modelling. The proposed structural equation model of English proficiency can be successfully fitted for all participants investigated, i.e. for both the monolingual and bilingual learners, with the exception of the Turkish-German group when analyzed separately. Overall, the results do not suggest any obvious bilingual facilitation effects or general differences across the learner groups, yet minor differences between the monolingual and bilingual groups in various componential relationships are detected.

The goal of this paper is to investigate the relationship between focus and the inferences that listeners derive from utterances. While the function of focus is to generate a set of alternatives to the focused element, it can also evoke the implicature that the statement does not hold for the contextual alternatives, which is referred to as exhaustive meaning. Whether focus is exhaustive is a matter of cross-linguistic variation. This paper aims to assess exhaustive inferences in Serbian triggered by focus in situ marked by prosodic prominence and in the preverbal position, canonical sentences with neutral intonation, and the exclusive particle samo ‘only’. The participants were presented with the recorded test items, after which they were asked to express their judgement about the possibility of the contextual alternatives using a scale. The results indicated that there was no interpretative difference regarding exhaustive meaning between the sentences with the focused words marked with prosodic prominence and those with unmarked intonation. However, the sentences with the preverbal focused target word were judged as significantly more exhaustive than the canonical sentences with default intonation. Finally, the sentences with the focus particle samo were interpreted mostly as not allowing other contextual interpretations.

This article presents a list of English–Turkish cognates and false cognates which was compiled from a corpus of over 80,000 words in dictionary entries. The list contains 2411 English words that are either cognates or false cognates in Turkish. It was revealed that there are at least 1287 cognates, excluding all proper nouns of people, places, and things; and 1124 false cognates, 96 of which share at least one sense of meaning in each language, and thus are partial false cognates. The total number of English–Turkish cognates and false cognates suggests that cognate status between the two languages is around 3%. For cognates, the rate is 1.6%, and for false cognates the rate is 1.2%. The current database of English–Turkish cognates and false cognates can be used to prepare reading texts that contain words from the list presented here, and to investigate how they affect reading comprehension, guessing from context, and language learning or processing of a language issues. It can be also used as a resource for researchers investigating the bilinguals of English and Turkish, and learners who study Turkish and/or English as a second or foreign language. The list provides a useful basis for further research into the lexical, linguistic, and psychological issues.