Communicative Grammar Research Articles

A multimodal and cross-cultural analysis of farmhouse holidays websites. A comparison between Italy, Germany and Austria

This project aims to analyse the language of tourism as a specialized discourse as well as to investigate the way cultural orientations affect tourists’ choices in the before-travelling stage. To this end, a multimodal approach has been applied to the promotion strategies implemented on websites of farmhouses in Italy, Germany and Austria. Websites as hybrid media (Antelmi 2007, p. 218) are particularly worth investigating due to their multimodal nature. Not only words, but also nonverbal elements play a crucial role in producing meaning and are here thereby taken as useful tool to decode culture. A corpus-based investigation of the texts from the websites will then integrate the data of the multimodal analysis, in order to make assumptions about the persuasive strategies within the two cultures and their linguistic realisations. Findings have been interpreted through the framework of ‘Cultural Communication Grammar’ (Manca 2016b), which provides a classification of the ways cultures express different strings of meaning in communication and relies on other theories provided by intercultural studies (Hofstede 2001; Hall 1982, 1983). Early results already reveal significant differences between the cultural systems involved and also in reference to how verbal and nonverbal language are at work in the promotion of farmhouse holidays in the countries involved.

Перевод русских номинативных предложений на китайский язык: семантический и структурный аспекты

The work aims to develop an adequate paradigm for translating the Russian nominative sentences into Chinese. The article pays special attention to connection between semantic features of a noun in the nominative case as a part of the Russian nominative sentence and its representation in the Chinese translation. Scientific novelty of the work lies in adopting the contrastive approach to a special study of the Russian nominative sentences with personal-subjective determinants from the perspective of the Russian communicative grammar. The article presents an attempt of carrying out an interlinguistic comparative analysis. The main semantic and structural features of the Chinese correlates corresponding to the Russian nominative sentences are identified. The attained results have shown that the Russian nominative sentence is translated into Chinese in the form of local, possessive and qualitative constructions, depending on semantics of a noun in the nominative case and on the type of a prepositional-case subject.

In search of linguistic meaning

The aim of the article is to define the relationship between the meaning included in an utterance and its formal shape. The author based his discussion on the study of natural communication. The notion of meaning is in the article associated with that which in communicational grammar is referred to as cognitive configuration. It is expressed through texts, but texts indicate the meaning a sender intends to send in only a conventional manner. The author stressed the mechanism of the emergence of meaning in the process of paraphrasing utterances and its consequences for the practice of translation. He included the notion of discoursive meaning assuming that every discourse has specific individual self-organisation rules without considering which communication within it would not be possible.

The category of aspect vs. meaning

The article offers an analysis of the perfective aspect within the approach of communicational grammar. The author provided an overview of selected verbs with a communication-based analysis of those which consist of recreating predicate-argument systems and their combinations (the so-called communicational scenarios) to indicate the impact of aspect on the resulting configuration of meaning. The text also includes examples of the analysis of metaphorical expressions.

Does standard interpretation exist? Empirical verification of selected assumptions of communicational grammar

The article poses a major study question: “Does standard interpretation exist?” In the methodology of communicational grammar, to which the author refers, standard interpretation is defined as a generalised pattern of the analysis of a communication by a virtual recipient, which consists of constructing basic, mutually cooperating elements of meaning. An empirical test was applied to the assumption that, despite the fact that the reception of a communication is a subjective process, its course is to some extent pre-determined, since a recipient, at certain stages of interpretation, progresses through specific standard references, common for most speakers of a language, while the later subjective extension of the interpretation will not contradict those standards. The article presents the results, the aims, methods, and the results of a survey study conducted to verify the assumption about the existence of a standard interpretation, one of the major assumptions of communicational grammar being developed by A. Awdiejew and G. Habrajska.

Bez sensu as an act of communication

The article presents a communication-based analysis of the function of the ‘bez sensu’ [meaningless/ pointless/makes no sense etc.] phraseme. The author discusses the conversational and discursive opportunities for using it. He applies the methodology of communicational grammar, which enables the analysis of communications at the ideational and interactive levels. Within the semantic level, ‘bez sensu’ removes the value of the trivialised semantic standard. In conversations, it is the reaction to scripts which contradict natural logic and the common-sensical cause-and-effect course of things. An important function is the bringing forward of scripts of failure, wastefulness, redundancy, and lack of benefit or expected or actual harm. At the interactive level, the ‘bez sensu’ expression fulfils the function of support for the argumentative power of a communication; it is also a measure of undermining an argumentation – it emphasises the frailty of its premises. In axiological strategies, ‘bez sensu’ is a major component of emotive acts and the building block of the emotional tension between interlocutors. In this instance, it is mostly used to bring forward the experience of a negative emotion. One negative outcome of using the ‘bez sensu’ expression is the introduction distance to interpersonal contact, and in some cases the sense of intellectually debasing the sender of a communication. The article includes several examples of media-based political statements with the ‘bez sensu’ expression, which are used for discrediting political opponents.

Using Task-Based Language Instruction (TBLI) to Improve Preparatory Stage Pupils' Communicative Grammar Performance

The aim of the study was to improve preparatory stage pupils' communicative grammar performance using task-based language instruction. The study problem was the low scores of the first year preparatory stage pupils' communicative grammar performance obtained from the pre-research. The participants of this study consisted of (N=60). Pupils enrolled at the first year preparatory stage at Kafr-Saqr Preparatory School for Girls, Sharkia Governorate, Egypt, in the academic year (2018-2019). They were randomly divided into two groups: Experimental group (N=30), and control group (N=30), during the treatment period, first-group participants received task-based language instruction, while second-group participants received instruction through traditional method. Firstly, pupils were administered a pre-test, then a post-test was administered to evaluate whether the progress between pre and post-test results were meaningful or not. The analyzed results clearly demonstrated the significance contribution of Task-Based Language Instruction to the EFL first year preparatory stage pupils' communicative grammar performance. Hopefully, these findings would be beneficial to those studying and teaching English to L2 learners.

Синтагма — коммуникативті грамматиканың нысаны

The article reviews syntagmatic research and defines syntagma as psycholinguistic, semantic-syntactic, semantic-intonational, functional unit. It is indicated that lexical mixing and syntactic dismemberment are the result of syntagmatic studies. At the same time, this article gives a definition of the role that syntagma plays in communicative grammar. Syntagma is divided into two broad categories: subjective and objective substances. It is characterized as the main category that defines the model of communicants, reveals the essence of communicative meaning, and reveals the types, form, speech situation and the meaning of the oral and written speech correlation

HOMOGENEOUS COLLATERAL SUBORDINATION IN MATHEMATICAL DISCOURSE IN RUSSIAN AND ROMANCE AND GERMANIC LANGUAGES

1. The purpose of this article is to study the structural and semantic particularities of multicomponent complex sentences with homogeneous collateral subordination in mathematical discourse and to conduct comparative analysis in the Russian and the Romance and Germanic languages. The article deals only with the structures that include object and attributive components. The authors identify the common patterns of functioning of these structures in the style used in exact sciences, as well as the differences in each of the languages. 2. The following methods are used in the work: the fundamental method is the structural and semantic analysis, which is considered to have been created by N.S. Pospelov and L.Yu. Maksimov, as well as the basic principles of communicative grammar; the transformational and textological analysis to identify the implicit differences in structure and semantics of the complex sentences under investigation; linguistic description based on the principle of induction; the statistical method to process the material and identify the frequency of the structures under investigation. The method of continuous sampling is used to collect the material. 3. As a result of the study, the authors have identified the particularities of the functioning of the structures in the style of exact sciences: the presence of the same/different conjunctions/connective words, the syntactical relations between the main clause and the subordinate clause, the consistency/inconsistency between the number of conjunctions and the number of subordinate clauses. Mathematical discourse has a certain effect on the structural and semantic qualities of these structures in the studied languages: they have a clear structure and their components are compact and have a standard structure. The structures under investigation have wide expressive possibilities and clear semantic relations which makes it easier to process complicated material. 4. This study can be useful for specialists who deal with both linguistics and mathematics. The study can be used in comparative analysis of texts in other fields of the functioning of the Russian and the Romance and Germanic languages, when writing new mathematical works, when translating scientific works into foreign languages, when conducting textological studies in other languages and when teaching linguistic subjects. 5. The scientific novelty of the study consists in the fact that this is the first instance of detailed analysis of the structure, semantics and the particularities of the functioning of multicomponent complex sentences with homogeneous collateral subordination in the style of exact sciences in the Russian and the Roman and Germanic languages. The structural and semantic varieties of the studied structures have been identified. The data have been provided on the frequency of their usage in mathematical works, the productivity of various types of connection of the main and the subordinate clause and the ratio of tense-aspect forms of the predicate in the main and the subordinate clauses.

Assessing English Grammar Assessment and Feedback: A Case Study of King Khalid University (KKU) Students

This article investigates strategies to improve communicative grammar feedback effectiveness. The motivation for the study is that instructing communicative grammar has been regarded as crucial to the ability to use language by English language learners (ELL). As the fundamental organizing principle of language, grammar plays a critical role in establishing communicative tasks, proficiency, and accuracy. It facilitates the syntactic system of the language, the structure which holds the language together. Moreover, a recent research literature review supports the contextualized grammar effectiveness, especially with EFL learners’ instruction, and has a considerable impact on the writing performance of adult English language learners (ELL). A renewed interest in grammar from teaching, learning and research perspectives has created the need for new approaches to assessing the grammatical ability of the ELL and evaluating the outcome of the assessment. The objective of this study is to provide insight into how to motivate English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students to welcome the assessment of their grammar in the student-centered and teacher-guided environment. It has been made based on the research, performed at the King Khalid University with basic level students, taking Intensive English Grammar course at the KKU. The article questions whether assessing Grammar appropriately in a well-organized, effective manner leads to the productive steps forward for EFL learners. Ultimately, the information obtained endorses, that the targeted grammar feedback tailored to the needs of the students of the particular EFL levels, should be organized in a certain constructive positive and practical way to meet the content of the instruction, and, finally, fit the target of the University education.

ЛЕКСИЧЕСКИЙ ПОДХОД В ОБУЧЕНИИ: АНАЛИТИЧЕСКИЙ ОБЗОР

The lexical approach is a modern direction in teaching a foreign language. The pedagogical significance of the lexical approach is in teaching communicative grammar, which unites the content of teaching English and its formal features. The purpose of the paper is to give a systematic literature review on the lexical approach described in a Russian-language literature for the period from 2015 to 2020. Using systematic literature review methodology, the relevant inclusion criteria were formulated. The articles were identified and analyzed in accordance with the research questions (RQ): RQ1 – dynamics of publications; RQ2 – authors; RQ3 – type of publication; RQ4 – research topic. The dynamics of publication activity shows a steady increase in the number of publications in the Russian-language field. Author analysis shows a significant preponderance of Russian authors; a weak point is that only a few authors have two or more publications on the subject under analysis. A review of the type of publication shows a small number of journals with high impact factor; the vast majority of publications are articles in conference proceedings. These publications represent the experience of the authors, but the type of publication does not imply deep elaboration and analysis. Further, three goals of publications on lexical approach are the dominant ones. They include: lexical approach as a teaching method; application of lexical approach in foreign language teaching; the study of specific language units using the lexical approach. The results obtained highlight lacunar topics and define further research.

Bilocation - Dislocation - Xlocation : The Apocalypse of Place in Eamonn Wall’s Poetry

Contemporary Irish-American poet Eamonn Wall, commuting between continents, has experienced a new form of exile, made of impermanence and mutation. His poetry, which shows this new relation to places, has had to find a language capable of expressing the continuous transformations of landscape as his multiple journeys have led him to apprehend it: no longer stable and delimited. One of Russian émigré Mark Rothko’s band paintings revealed to the poet the motion language he was looking for to express his New Irish experience of places that run into each other. Beyond the static and stating possibilities of communicational grammar, Wall’s poetics undoes the fixity of places, blasts their monumentality and initiates a new way of apprehending the places of the world: in relation to each other. His innovative poetry thereby taps and continues the great Romantic tradition of Wordsworthian “Nature” writing. Both François Jullien and Édouard Glissant will be convoked to read this poetics of transition and relation.

Assessing English Grammar Assessment and Feedback: a Case Study of King Khalid University (KKU) Students

This article investigates strategies to improve communicative grammar feedback effectiveness. The motivation for the study is that instructing communicative grammar has been regarded as crucial to the ability to use language by English language learners (ELL). As the fundamental organizing principle of language, grammar plays a critical role in establishing communicative tasks, proficiency, and accuracy. It facilitates the syntactic system of the language, the structure which holds the language together. Moreover, a recent research literature review supports the contextualized grammar effectiveness, especially with EFL learners’ instruction, and has a considerable impact on the writing performance of adult English language learners (ELL). A renewed interest in grammar from teaching, learning and research perspectives has created the need for new approaches to assessing the grammatical ability of the ELL and evaluating the outcome of the assessment. The objective of this study is to provide insight into how to motivate English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students to welcome the assessment of their grammar in the student-centered and teacher-guided environment. It has been made based on the research, performed at the King Khalid University with basic level students, taking Intensive English Grammar course at the KKU. The article questions whether assessing Grammar appropriately in a well-organized, effective manner leads to the productive steps forward for EFL learners. Ultimately, the information obtained endorses, that the targeted grammar feedback tailored to the needs of the students of the particular EFL levels, should be organized in a certain constructive positive and practical way to meet the content of the instruction, and, finally, fit the target of the University education.

Effizienz der Methode Lernen durch Lehren (LdL) – Ergebnisse eines Experiments

Constructivist learning approaches emphasize the interface of learning by doingand student participation, as well as the efficiency of the learning process. Research findings have also demonstrated that students learn more effectively from each other (Hattie 2013). The aim of the experiment conducted was to verify the efficiency of the “learning through teaching” method (LTT) (Martin 1985), in which students assume some of the teacher’s tasks. The experiment was conducted during the third semester of the “grammar in communication” course at the faculty of Applied Linguistics at Maria Curie-Skłodowska University. The result confirmed that, after a semester, the group working with the learning through teaching method had higher achievements than the control group. Thanks to a qualitative survey, some prospects and limits of the method could be determined. It also provided feedback for intern, process-oriented evaluation, which makes it possible to optimize course design in the future.

Communicative and Linguistic Method of a Narrative Text Analysis/ Komunikacyjno-lingwistyczna metoda analizy tekstu narracyjnego

The article aims at presenting a method rooted in philological science in order to analyze freeform interviews with elements of narration. The method presented is a compilation of two methods: communicative grammar and narratology. Both of the aforementioned methods were created in order to analyse narrative texts. In the case of the former method, the discipline in which particular texts were created is of no importance. The latter method, on the other hand, is used mainly for literary analyses. The communicative grammar method originated from Polish linguistics, provides a possibility of conducting in-depth linguistic analyses. When used for interview analyses, communicative grammar may help a researcher overcome their subjective approach and get, as close as possible, to the contents uttered by a respondent indirectly. Application of the discussed method also facilitates the process of overcoming cultural differences between a researcher and a respondent. The article presents methodological assumptions of both discussed methods as well as different ways of using the methods for analysis of interviews conducted from the perspective of social sciences.

Teaching Communicative Grammar to Technical University EFL Learners

The paper considers communicative approach to grammar as a means to develop the Technical University EFL learners’ ability to communicate with each other focusing on the language meaning rather than on the form. Although the communicative approach is not ideal, it makes the communication in the classroom natural, thus creating conditions for self-realization, motivation and meaningful language acquisition. The paper establishes principles to be applied when teaching grammar communicatively. They concern two aspects: the grammar material itself and the ways it is taught. Grammar material chosen ought to be relevant to communication in real life situations. Greater attention is to be paid to more frequent and important grammar structures. Teaching methods within the framework of communicative approach to grammar should motivate authentic interpersonal interaction with the priority to fluency over accuracy. To illustrate the principles some communicative grammar activities are presented.

Exploring the Teaching of Communicative Grammar in EFL Classes in Benin to Promote Language Use in CBA Context

This paper sets out to investigate how communicative grammar can effectively be used in EFL classes in Benin topromote real language practice. To collect data, instruments such as questionnaires, interview and class observationwere used. The sample of the study consists of twenty purposively chosen secondary EFL teachers (ten of them teachtraditional grammar and ten, communicative grammar) and twenty six students ranging from beginners to advancedlevel. The data were analyzed using the SPSS tools, the goal of which is to verify the effectiveness of this approachover the traditional one.The findings of the investigation have revealed the following: (i) not many teachers teach communicative grammarin Benin and those who claim they teach it still have a hazy idea of what it is supposed to be; (ii) communicativegrammar teaching is what is needed to make EFL learning a rewarding experience for students’ effective use of thelanguage; (iii) both approaches are not mutually exclusive for they can become perfect complements.The study concluded with some strategies for implementation illustrated by some suggested activities that candevelop students’ communicative strategies and interactional skills.

ENCHANTED OBJECT: INDIAN SARI, NEGOTIATING THE ONLINE AND THE OFFLINE SPACE

This paper is an attempt to understand the intersections between the internet, global cultures and technology, and the material object, the Indian sari. The Indian Sari, like other ethnic clothing, has always acted as a means of affirming position and agency for Indian women. Even today it is a significant part of the communicative grammar for its offline avatar. But its online presence makes this garment even more discursive. Typically online communities, in linguistic terms, are ‘cultural communities’ (paradigmatic) where knowledge is shared to deepen expertise, and offline communities are ‘communities of practice’ (s yntagmatic) where people share concerns, passions, and problems to deepen interaction. But as Umberto Eco says, more and more paradigmatic communities are becoming syntagmatic, and the Indian Sari is in an interesting intersection of offline and online contexts as the wearer, the garment, and the transactions all create discursive spaces that implicate the global and local in identity formations. It also forces us to relocate the Sari as a signifier and reexamine its materiality in relation to its floating presence.

Voice, gesture and working memory in the emergence of speech

Abstract Language and speech depend on a relatively well defined neural circuitry, located predominantly in the left hemisphere. In this article, I discuss the origin of the speech circuit in early humans, as an expansion of an auditory-vocal articulatory network that took place after the last common ancestor with the chimpanzee. I will attempt to converge this perspective with aspects of the Mirror System Hypothesis, particularly those related to the emergence of a meaningful grammar in human communication. Basically, the strengthening of auditory-vocal connectivity via the arcuate fasciculus and related tracts generated an expansion of working memory capacity for vocalizations, that was key for learning complex utterances. This process was concomitant with the development of a robust interface with visual working memory, both in the dorsal and ventral streams of auditory and visual processing. This enabled the bidirectional translation of sequential codes into hierarchical visual representations, through the development of a multimodal interface between both systems.

Η διδασκαλία της συντακτικής δομής της ελληνικής γλώσσας: στρεβλώσεις και προτάσεις βελτίωσης

The main issue of the present of the present text is the Greek language syntactic structures teaching in the Greek secondary education. Specifically, through studying, critical analysis and evaluation of the syntactic section of the grammar course - book taught in the Greek high schools, the problematic points and the disadvantages of the syntactic structures description and analysis are shown and commented. The problematic issues of the content of the course – books syntactical unit concern the structural description of the phrases, clauses and sentences of the Greek language, and of the syntactic, semantic / communicative and textual functions these structures are realizing. In other words, in the present paper, the teaching methodology of the structural pattern and the composition of the phrasal and clausal categories of the standard Greek language through the reference course – book is examined and suggestions for syntax teaching improvement and effective language teaching are given. These suggestions are resting on the constituent structure model of grammar and the theory of communicative grammar.