Question-word interrogatives-plus-vocative-based markers in Greek

Construction Grammar is a theory of linguistic knowledge, diversified into a family of theories that share an interest in the concept of construction. From the point of view of construction grammar, a construction is a form-meaning pairing. In Construction Grammar the concepts of form and meaning go beyond the conception of traditional syntax and semantics: form encompasses the set of phonological, morphological and syntactic features that characterize linguistic utterances; meaning, in turn, includes semantic, pragmatic and discursive features. Constructions are not limited to word combinations: a sentence or a phrase is as much a construction as a word or a morpheme is. Moreover, constructions are structured at different levels of abstraction. Thus, there are maximally saturated constructions such as Salome had John killed and maximally schematic ones (e.g., the causative construction [X verb Y Z] “X causes Y to reach Z”). Between the schematic causative construction and the one explicitly formulated with words, there are other more or less saturated constructions such as “X made kill Z” or “X made INF Z”. Construction Grammar aims to account for the network of constructions that comprise the linguistic knowledge of speakers. These constructions, collected in the constructicon, constitute a continuum between lexicon and grammar which allows us to postulate the same analysis for any construction. Also, Construction Grammar deals with constructions that are part of core grammar, as well as with others considered peripheral.

This study examines the pragmatic and prosodic aspects of the Greek negative directive ðe mu les? (neg pn.1sg.gen say.2sg.prs) ‘tell me’ (lit. ‘don’t you tell me?’), bringing together conversation-analytic informed Interactional Linguistics and Construction Grammar, and drawing on naturally occurring data from audio-recorded conversations and telephone calls. It is shown that the negative directive ðe mu les? construction is used as a discourse marker that signals disjunctive topic change and displays specific prosodic properties, which are partly inherited from polar interrogatives and offer frames for the interpretation of the construction in talk-in-interaction. The study enhances our understanding of the ways in which prosody pairs with constructions and contributes to action formation.

This study aimed to analyze the implementation of the Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning (POGIL) model with the Socioscientific Issues (SSI) of environmental pollution in an effort to improve students’ scientific knowledge. The population in this research was 53 grade VII students at a junior high school in Bandung. The research used a quasi-experimental design with 24 multiple choice questions as the research instrument. The experimental group was taught through the POGIL model with the SSI context, while the control group was taught through a scientific approach. Based on data analysis, the n-gain category of scientific knowledge of the experimental class in content knowledge, procedural, and epistemic domains were dominant in the medium category of 50%, high of 46%, and high of 73%. The n-gain category of the control class in content knowledge, procedural, and epistemic domains was dominant in the low category of 52%, low of 41% and high of 67%. The result obtained from the t-test on normal and homogenous data showed that there was a significant difference. Based on the data analysis, the scientific literacy skill of students who received POGIL with SSI was better than students who received the scientific approach, and the attainment of students’ scientific knowledge domains was in the high category. Keywords: implementation, inquiry learning, socioscientific issues, environmental pollution, student Literacy

Due to the complexity of Chinese modal system in terms of function-form relation, misuse of Chinese modal verbs is quite common among learners of Chinese from other countries. Based on the concept-oriented approach, this paper aims to investigate how learners of Chinese as a foreign language choose modal forms to express the concept of modality in terms of function-to-form mapping, so as to shed light on the teaching of modal use. Modal forms investigated in this study are five Chinese modal verbs whose functions are categorized into three conceptual domains: the Speech Act Domain, the Event Domain and the Epistemic Domain. Six learners of Chinese from Poland were recruited to participate in a modal test which comprised of 24 pairs of modal sentences in English and Chinese. They were asked to think aloud while they chose Chinese modal verbs to match the functions expressed by the English modal verbs. Based on the think-aloud data, it is found that in all the three conceptual domains participants have perceived ambiguities between modal verbs which express similar functions, especially in the Epistemic Domain. Competition between these modal verbs arose in their mind where ambiguity was perceived in the process of function-to-form mapping. Qualitative analyses of the think-aloud data revealed that Epistemic Domain is the most difficult domain for the participants in terms of function-to-form mapping, and “Hui/Neng” is the most confusing pair of Chinese modal verbs which may require more explicit instruction. Apart from studying the cognitive processing of modal forms and the cognitive ambiguity between them, this think-aloud case study also manifested the influence of social context on second language acquisition. It carries pedagogical implications for modal acquisition and indicates a socio-cognitive perspective for future studies on modality.

In German talk-in-interaction it can be observed that so-called loose appositions are frequently used as a grammatical resource for performing selfinitiated self-repairs in the domain of reference. In the current paper, it is argued that this kind of appositional pattern can be described as a grammatical construction which indicates that the incorporated grammatical elements give alternative ‘reference instructions’ for building up compatible conceptualizations of one and the same entity with respect to different epistemic domains. Thereby it offers the possibility to incrementally adjust the design of reference instructions to divergent knowledge states of the interlocutors. The use of appositional constructions is thus frequently linked to aspects of epistemic stance regarding a lack of common ground. Hence, it is argued that aspects of the local management of epistemic asymmetries can be considered part of the pragmatic specifications of the construction. These specifications are sometimes made explicit through the use of lexical markers like also ‘that is’ so that the extended pattern which contains such markers might be called a metapragmatic construction.

Construction grammar and conventional discourse: A construction-based approach to discoursal incongruity

In the present study, lexicalized forms of the Russian perception verbs are treated from the construction grammar perspective. The lexicalized forms were drawn from the modern dictionaries of Standard Russian and supplied with appropriate usage examples from the Russian National Corpus. The paper presents a detailed overview of the forms concerned, encompassing both their formal and semantic features. Each lexicalized form is argued to be a construction, in the special sense accorded to the term in construction grammar. Moreover, not only lexicalized forms as listed in the dictionaries but also their specific instantiations (allowing for the variability of the verb form and the addition of extra elements, e.g., particles) are claimed to be constructions. The paper particularly focuses on the analysis of manifold relations between constructions. In construction grammar, this problem has been given scanty coverage, scholars largely concentrating on taxonomic relations between more and less schematic constructions. This particular type of relations can be said to manifest itself in the links between lexicalized forms and their instantiations. However, the data at hand make it possible to identify a number of other relations. These include the links between lexicalized forms and the corresponding verb as well as semantic relations including homonymy and polysemy, complete and partial synonymy. Taken together, they form an integrated network of relations, both formal and semantic. This is natural, given the fact that the corresponding verbs belong to the same lexical group. The paper argues for the term constructional family to be used in such cases. The constructional family is thus a subset of constructional networks.

Purchasing risky investments can be a means to create individual wealth. When faced with uncertainty about the investment outcome, individuals search for information on risk-reducing strategies. Most studies focus on digital information and advice-seeking information. This study extends the investigation of information search to discuss heuristics reliance, a simplified information search method. We also examine the effect of risk aversion on our extended information search model. Specifically, this article reports on two dimensions of direct (e.g., stocks/options) and indirect (e.g., mutual fund) investment. We test our model with a sample of 378 experienced investors by self-reported measurement. Data analysis is performed in two-step analytical procedures. The first stage, confirmatory factor analysis is conducted to assess the validity of the measures. The second stage, the structural relationships are examined by path analysis. The findings show the significant direct effect of risk aversion on stocks/options investment choices, but a great indirect effect of risk aversion on mutual fund choices through information search. Individuals with more risk aversion are more likely to search information. More advice-seeking information searching and heuristics reliance through demands of digital information positively influence mutual fund investment preferences. The results demonstrate the value of enhancing the sophistication and accuracy of the information that a counselor provides, especially for investors who are risk averse. This study also has an implication for ethical issues.

The papers in this volume study linguistic structures in the context of their interactive functions and usages; they concentrate on grammatical constructions for the positioning of self and others. Using empirical analyses of positioning constructions, the authors show that forms and functions of grammatical structures in everyday interactions are closely interwoven with the conditions for the production and reception of spoken language. This leads to the methodological conclusion that linguistic phenomena - understood as constructions of varying complexity - cannot be decontextualised but are to be examined in their particular interactional contexts. In the present analyses, therefore, attention is paid both to the mediality and actional reference of linguistic phenomena and to the dialogicity, sequentiality and temporality of the development of linguistic constructions. In order to take account of the tension between the stabilisation of grammatical constructions and the process of their actualisation in interactions, the authors combine methods from Interactional Linguistics with insights from usage-based positions of both Construction Grammar and Cognitive Grammar.

This chapter explores the left periphery of Dutch utterances. Four positions hosting pragmatic markers (PMs) are distinguished: the first sentence position (P1), a position following P1 and two positions respectively preceding and following a left dislocated constituent. We hypothesize that there are correlations between these positions and pragmatic functions like discourse coherence, subjectivity and intersubjectivity. A short look is taken at asyndetic clusters of pragmatic markers in the left periphery, we also assume functional motivations for the linear ordering of PMs in the cluster. The goal of the chapter is primarily descriptive, inspired by functionally oriented frameworks, in particular Construction Grammar, Functional Discourse Grammar and Interactional Linguistics. The illustrative data are mainly taken from CGN, the corpus of spoken Dutch.

In English, sequences consisting of the verb have, a noun phrase and a past participle vary in meaning. This meaning variation has been discussed both in the context of grammatical description and language change, mostly based on a handful of examples. This study seeks to combine theoretical and methodological approaches from construction grammar and interactional linguistics in the description of this meaning variation. Theoretically, this implies distinguishing between abstracted meaning potential and situated meaning of linguistic elements. Methodologically, this means taking both a coarse-grained view by means of a quantitative corpus-based approach that abstracts over a number of instances and a fine-grained view by means of qualitative analysis of talk-in-interaction.

Throughout much of the twentieth century, modern linguistics suffered from a written language bias (Linell 2005): the general thinking about language, as well as the descriptive concepts and categories developed for linguistic research, were tailored to language as it appears in writing. Interactional Linguistics, by contrast, grew out of an interest in spoken language and a desire to see it studied in its natural habitat: in social interaction. Interactional linguists took seriously the observation that “some of the most fundamental features of natural language are shaped in accordance with their home environment in co-present interaction, as adaptations to it, or as part of its very warp and weft” (Schegloff 1996b:54). They pursued this observation to its logical conclusion: namely, that as a consequence language must be analyzed in the home environment of co-present interaction. The idea was to apply the same empirical methods that had been so successful in revealing the structure and organization of everyday conversation, the methods of ethnomethodological Conversation Analysis, to explore the structure and organization of language as used in social interaction. From the cumulative results of such exploration, it was hoped, a new theory of language would emerge. Naturally, in order to explore language in its home environment, Interactional Linguistics needed and continues to need an appreciation of the structure and organization of interaction. For this, it is heavily indebted to Conversation Analysis, whose practitioners over the years have laid bare the structural underpinnings of coordinated interaction in social contexts. However, as the “founder” of Conversation Analysis, Harvey Sacks, explained early on, he was not interested in ordinary conversation because he had any “large interest in language,” but rather simply because it was easy to record and because these recordings could be listened to again and again (Sacks 1984:26). Conversation analysts are primarily interested in understanding how interaction works, in uncovering the mechanisms of, for example, how turns at talk are coordinated, how actions are constructed and recognized, and how they are made to cohere in sequences of interaction. Interactional linguists, by contrast, do have a “large interest” in language, because they believe that turns, actions, and sequences are accomplished and made interpretable by the systematic use of linguistic resources; consequently, they make the linguistic forms deployed by ordinary speakers in everyday and institutional encounters the focus of their attention.

Construction Grammar has gained prominence in linguistics, owing its popularity to its inclusive approach that considers language units of varying sizes and generality as potential constructions – mentally stored form-function units. This Element serves as a cautionary note against complacency and dogmatism. It emphasizes the enduring importance of falsifiability as a criterion for scientific hypotheses and theories. Can every postulated construction, in principle, be empirically demonstrated not to exist? As a case study, the author examines the schematic English transitive verb-particle construction, which defies experimental verification. He argues that we can still reject its non-existence using sound linguistic reasoning. But beyond individual constructions, what could be a crucial test for Construction Grammar itself, one that would falsify it as a theory? In making a proposal for such a test, designed to prove that speakers also exhibit pure-form knowledge, this Element contributes to ongoing discussions about Construction Grammar's theoretical foundations.

PurposeThis paper aims to explore health and lifestyle information seeking behaviour by examining the connection between purposive information seeking and information encountering.Design/methodology/approachData on purposive seeking and information encountering, gathered from postal surveys in 2002 and 2007, were compared. Random samples of 1,000 Icelanders, aged 18 to 80 were used. The response rate was 51 per cent in 2002 and 47 per cent in 2007. Based on the purposive seeking in 22 sources, k‐means cluster analysis was used to draw four clusters of participants: passive, moderately passive, moderately active and active.FindingsThe results from 2007 and 2002 revealed the same kind of information seeking. The findings indicate that information encountering is an integral feature of information seeking behaviour. Information is encountered more often than sought on purpose by all clusters. Clusters that were active in purposive information seeking were also active in information encountering and those who were passive in either of the two styles of information seeking were also passive in the other.Research limitations/implicationsThe response rates are considered satisfactory in postal surveys. Nevertheless, when missing data in the cluster analysis are also considered it raises a question about the validity of the findings. The findings of the studies, however, are strengthened by the fact that respondents reflect the population fairly well.Practical implicationsImproved knowledge of information seeking and how different groups within society can be reached more effectively is important for health promotion and public health practice.Originality/valueThe paper uses quantitative methods to examine the connection between purposive information seeking and information encountering.

Cancer is still one of the leading causes of death worldwide. Statistical data show that more than 130,000 people in Ukraine receive this diagnosis as a sentence every year. Cancer can affect any organ and eventually the whole body. In most cases, cancer is a tumor affecting epithelial, mucous, muscle, fat, and bone tissues. Also, processes related to malignant formations can occur in the blood and lymph. The main mechanism that triggers the process of formation of neoplasms is a violation of growth and, accordingly, cell division. They begin to grow uncontrollably, multiply, and can also migrate, spreading to nearby tissue structures, and later degenerate into atypical (malignant) ones. Cancer is one of the most life-threatening diseases. Literature data show that more than 90 % of cancer patients die due to chronic metastases. Cancer therapy involves the use of drugs that block the growth and spread of cancer cells by affecting certain molecular structures involved in the growth, progression, and spread of cancer. The diversity of the use of means for cancer therapy, namely, hormone therapy, the use of angiogenesis inhibitors and apoptosis inducers, has provided scientists with various options for finding effective means to fight this disease. Aim. The aim of the work is the analysis and systematization of new data on the anticancer activity of 1,2,4-triazole derivatives and the selection of the most promising directions for further scientific research based on the results of the analysis. Materials and methods. The study employed various methods, including analysis, information search, bibliosemantic analysis, descriptive techniques, and generalization. Research materials primarily comprised literary sources containing information on the promising array of new biologically active compounds, particularly 1,2,4-triazole derivatives, known for their targeted anticancer properties. Results. A literature search was carried out, 1,2,4-triazole derivatives with antitumor activity were analysed, characterized and summarized. Based on the study of available information and conducting an information and patent search, it was established that the market of Ukraine is insufficiently saturated with 1,2,4-triazole-containing drugs with anticancer activity of domestic production. It was determined that the development of new effective drugs based on 1,2,4-triazole and potential drugs with clearly directed anticancer activity requires a systematic approach both in conducting synthetic tests and screening new compounds for further structural optimization of molecules. Conclusions. The analysis of scientific literature in recent years devoted to the study of the anticancer activity of 1,2,4-triazole derivatives convincingly proves the prospect of further research in this direction. Numerous publications indicate the possibility of constant improvement of molecules with regard to the presence of anticancer activity. Domestic and foreign authors have clearly and argumentatively proven the perspective of the scientific direction for the creation of new original drugs to combat various oncopathologies.