Contemporary Linguistic Theory Research Articles

Productivity of Words with Negative Affixes in English- Albanian and Albanian-English Dictionaries

Lexicography has attracted the attention of scholars interested in analyzing the formation of words and their semantics, for centuries. The role of all negative affixes in bilingual dictionaries is not widely discussed. In various articles statistical information with regard to all the words with negative affixes existing in the source and target languages is scarce. Bilingual dictionaries reflect the richness of language lexicon, based on national rates and contemporary linguistic theory. In this paper we do not only aim to provide a simple statistic comparison, but to highlight the productivity of words with negative affixes in English and Albanian, as well the richness of lexicon in both languages. As linguistic corpus we have reviewed, analyzed and compared English-Albanian and Albanian-English dictionaries of different types. The compilation and editing of bilingual dictionaries today is an organized and systematic activity based on the experience of practical lexicography, and current theoretical principles around the world. By a detailed analysis we have concluded that the productivity of these words in Albanian-English and English-Albanian dictionaries is almost equal. These words are also stylistically esteemed. They provide more force, and persuasion to discourse. DOI: 10.5901/jesr.2016.v6n1p78

Gêneros orais e ensino: entre o dito e o prescrito

Considerando as discussões entre especialistas e outros profissionais preocupados em (re) significar as práticas peda-gógicas nas aulas de língua materna, o presente trabalho enfatiza a necessidade de uma revisão e um melhor encaminhamento do fazer docente. Nesse sentido, propõe analisar os pressupostos dos Parâmetros Curriculares Nacionais de Língua Portuguesa (BRASIL, 1998), quanto ao tratamento da oralidade nas práticas de sala de aula, e observar o que, de fato, se efetiva no livro didático de por-tuguês. Fundamenta-se em teorias linguísticas contemporâneas que alertam para a importância do trabalho com gêneros textuais na sala de aula de língua materna (MARCUSCHI, 2003; MATÊNCIO, 2001; SCHNEUWLY & DOLZ, 2004), ressaltando as ações docentes frente aos gêneros orais em prol da aprendizagem e do aperfeiçoamento da língua na escola. O trabalho evidencia a necessidade de conhecer os pressupostos dos documentos oficiais que regulamentam o ensino de língua portuguesa para que se promova uma avaliação cuidadosa na escolha do livro didático de português, visando à promoção de situações linguísticas em sala de aula que contemplem o trabalho com gêneros orais. Diante disso, busca participar ativamente do debate sobre a modalidade oral da língua que se constitui objeto de ensino de língua materna na educação básica.

Aesthetic Adjectives: Experimental Semantics and Context‐Sensitivity

One aim of this essay is to contribute to understanding aesthetic communication—the process by which agents aim to convey thoughts and transmit knowledge about aesthetic matters to others. Our focus will be on the use of aesthetic adjectives in aesthetic communication. Although theorists working on the semantics of adjectives have developed sophisticated theories about gradable adjectives, they have tended to avoid studying aesthetic adjectives—the class of adjectives that play a central role in expressing aesthetic evaluations (e.g., ‘beautiful’, ‘ugly’, ‘elegant’). And despite the wealth of attention paid to aesthetic adjectives by philosophical aestheticians, they have paid little attention to contemporary linguistic theories of adjectives. We take our work to be a first step in remedying these lacunae. In this paper, we present four experiments that examine one aspect of how aesthetic adjectives ordinarily function: the context‐sensitivity of their application standards. Our results present a prima facie empirical challenge to a common distinction between relative and absolute gradable adjectives because aesthetic adjectives are found to behave differently from both. Our results thus also constitute a prima facie vindication of some philosophical aestheticians’ contention that aesthetic adjectives constitute a particularly interesting segment of natural language, even if the boundaries of this segment might turn out to be different from what they had in mind.

Farabi's Logico-Linguistic Ideas in Comparison with Theories and Principles in Contemporary Linguistics

Abstract. This research is an attempt to make a comparison and contrast between Farabi's logico-linguistic ideas, as an Iranian scientist, philosopher, and logician, with the contemporary linguistic theories and principles. To make this comparison and contrast possible, we would review the most relevant and outstanding contemporary linguistic theories and then compare them with those of Farabi. To our astonishment, we made it clear that Farabi introduced the science of language to the learned people of his time around ten centuries ago long before the introduction of linguistics as a separate branch of human sciences. He enumerated the sciences of his time as (1) the science of language, (2), the science of logic, (3) educational sciences, (4) natural sciences, (5) theology, (6) civil sciences, (7) the science of jurisprudence, and (8) theosophy. The science of language includes further sciences of (1) the science of singular terms, (2) the science of compound terms, (3) the science of the rules of singular terms, (4) the science of the rules of the compound terms, (5) the science of the rules of correct writing, (6) the science of the rules of correct reading, and (7) the science of poetry. It is noteworthy that Farabi's ideas regarding the phenomenon of language bear overwhelming similarities with those of contemporary linguistics. For example, according to Farabi, the science of the rules of singular words, as the third of his seven-category science of language, studies the letters, sounds, and words of a specific language. In the science of the rules of compound terms, as the fourth category, sentences and their components are studied. The ideas and theories he developed in this regard have many things in common with Chomsky's Constituent Grammar. Furthermore, Farabi makes a distinction between the science of syntax and the science of logic and creates a relation between them which reminds us of Chomsky's Universal Grammar including principles and parameters, the Language Acquisition Device, and surface and deep structures. In Farabi's opinion, the science of logic makes three different interpretations of the term logic. According to the first interpretation, logic refers to the external speech which is represented in the form of sounds of a language. That is, the external speech receives phonetic representation. This interpretation is similar to Chomsky's surface structure. In the second interpretation, logic means the soul-centered inner speech, which resembles the deep structure of Chomsky. In the third interpretation, logic is equal to the thinking faculty of the soul which is unique to human beings like Universal Grammar, the Innateness Hypothesis, and the Language Acquisition Device. This paper is thus a description of the above-mentioned ideas, theories, and principles and the elucidation of their similarities and differences with those developed by Farabi.

No escape from morphemes in morphological processing

Any approach to understanding morphological processing must begin with assumptions about the role of morphemes in linguistic representations. Contemporary linguistic theory proposes that such representations are centred on a syntactic organisation of morphemes, where a morpheme is an abstract syntactic unit that finds an interpretation in form and in meaning. From the linguist's perspective, then, morphological processing falls together with syntactic processing, and both involve the central exploitation of a grammar of morphemes. Recent computational work has challenged this perspective, proposing instead that morphological structure emerges from the acquisition of form/meaning connections. Here we show that these challenges to the role of morphemes in word and sentence processing rest on a misunderstanding of the morpheme within linguistic theory. Once we understand the notion of a morpheme and its explanatory role within linguistic theory, we can see that apparent challenges to the morpheme, rather than dispensing with the morpheme in the architecture of linguistic representations, always in fact presuppose a syntactic structure of morphemes as the unlearned input to language learning models. Since computational modelling is indispensable for work connecting theories of linguistic representation to theories of (morphological) processing, it is crucial that those constructing computational models appreciate why there is no escape from morphemes in morphological processing.

Polynomially parsable unification grammars

Unification grammars (UG) are a grammatical formalism that underlies several contemporary linguistic theories, including Lexical-functional Grammar and Head-driven Phrase-structure Grammar. UG is an especially attractive formalism because of its expressivity, which facilitates the expression of complex linguistic structures and relations. Formally, UG is Turing-complete, generating the entire class of recursively enumerable languages. This expressivity, however, comes at a price: the universal recognition problem is undecidable for arbitrary unification grammars. We define a constrained version of UG that guarantees efficient processing, while allowing the expression of complex linguistic structures. We do so by proving that the constrained formalism is equivalent to Range Concatenation Grammar, a formalism that generates exactly the class of languages recognizable in deterministic polynomial time. We thus obtain a grammatical formalism that is on one hand highly expressive, and on the other efficient to compute with.

L'argumentation en mathématiques et sa relation avec la démonstration

In mathematics education there is no shared definition for argumentation, even if this is one of the most recurrent activities in the class. But, what can be considered as argumentation? What is argumentation in mathematics? And what is its relation with mathematical proof? The aim of this paper is to provide an answer to these questions. Because current research in mathematics education does not offer much insight on these matters, historical and contemporary linguistic and philosophical theories have been considered to suggest a possible characterisation of argumentation in mathematics. More specifically, functional and structural characteristics of argumentation in mathematics are provided. Functional characteristics establish the finality of argumentation, its utility, its role within a discourse. Structural characteristics provide a structural model, the Toulmin’s model, for argumentation. This characterisation shows that proof can be considered as a special case of argumentation in mathematics.

Conceptual Structure and the Emergence of the Language Faculty: Much Ado about Knotting

One perspective in contemporary linguistic theory defends the idea that the language faculty may result from the combinations of diverse systems and principles. As a case study, I critique a recent proposal by Juan Uriagereka and colleagues according to which the evolutionary emergence of the language faculty can be identified through studying the computational structure of knots as present within the fossil record. I here argue that the ability to conceptualize and, thereby, create knots is not parasitic on the ability to conceptualize and create language. On the contrary, these two domains are entirely distinct, unrelatable in terms of their computational complexity, expressive power or, most importantly, in terms of their requisite mental operations and principles. The overall approach defended here can profitably be employed in the study of the relationship between language and thought, as I briefly discuss in the case of the role of language in spatial reorientation.

Current Trends in Targum Research

This article proposes that targum studies is in the midst of a significant transition away from the traditional philological disciplines and toward methodologies more informed by contemporary literary and linguistic theory. This article traces the broad contours of this transition, surveying philological scholarship on the targums and outlining some of the ongoing issues with this scholarship. The article then moves to examine some of the emerging modes of study, ending with a brief discussion of some of the finished projects in the field.

Knowledge-how, true indexical belief, and action

Intellectualism is the doctrine that knowing how to do something consists in knowing that something is the case. Drawing on contemporary linguistic theories of indirect interrogatives, Jason Stanley and Timothy Williamson have recently revived intellectualism, proposing to interpret a sentence of the form ‘DP know how to VP’ as ascribing to DP knowledge of a certain way w of VPing that they could VP in w. In order to preserve knowledge-how’s connection to action and thus avoid an overgeneration problem, they add that this knowledge must be had under a “practical” mode of presentation of w. I argue that there can be non-knowledgeable true beliefs under a practical mode of presentation and that some such beliefs would nevertheless be sufficient to establish knowledge-how’s characteristic connection to action, and thus count as knowledge-how. If so, Stanley and Williamson’s account is faced with a serious undergeneration problem. Moreover, the structural features on which the argument relies make it likely to present a quite general challenge for intellectualist strategies.

Syntactic Structures and Recursive Devices: A Legacy of Imprecision

Taking Chomsky's Syntactic Structures as a starting point, this paper explores the use of recursive techniques in contemporary linguistic theory. Specifically, it is shown that there were profound ambiguities surrounding the notion of recursion in the 1950s, and that this was partly due to the fact that influential texts such as Syntactic Structures neglected to define what exactly constituted a recursive device. As a result, uncertainties concerning the role of recursion in linguistic theory have prevailed until the present day, and some of the most common misunderstandings that have appeared in recent discussions are examined at some length. This article shows that debates about such topics are frequently undermined by fundamental misunderstandings concerning core terminology, and the full extent of the prevailing haziness is revealed. An attempt is made, for instance, to distinguish between such things as iterative constructional devices and self-similar syntactic embedding, despite the fact that these are usually both unhelpfully classified as examples of recursion. Consequently, this article effectively constitutes a plea for much greater accuracy and clarity when such important issues are addressed from a linguistic perspective.

Изучение отвлеченной лексики: история и традиции

The article deals with the history of the abstract vocabulary study. It observes the general theoretical ideas, which reveal the essence of this vocabulary layer taking into account the traditional views established during the XIXth – XXth centuries as well as the achievements of contemporary linguistic theory.

Relevance-theoretical versus pragmatic and cognitive approaches to coherence

Discourse coherence can be approached as one of the variables that allow both the writer and the reader to cope with the meaning of texts. It will be hypothesised that this is possible because coherence integrates both cognitive and textual aspects. In fact, most of contemporary linguistic and pragmatic theories have laid emphasis on the need to go beyond the sentence and enter into the realms of text and discourse so as to grasp meaning. Hence, meaning results from an ongoing process of negotiation among language users. An important consequence of this is the need to approach discourse formation and comprehension as a cognitive process, which in turn entails that the notion of coherence, as the key defining trait of discourse and of texture, must also be cognitively grounded. It is for this reason that a cognitive approach to interpersonal communication, like the one supplied by relevance theory, appears to be in a position to provide suitable proposals for the explanation of the production, processing and interpretation of discourse. This paper will therefore aim to examine critically the proposals on coherence contributed in the framework of relevance theory and assess them in relation with other discourse and cognitive approaches. Its main underlying contention is that these proposals are best understood as complementary rather than mutually excluding.

Abhinavagupta's Philosophical Hermeneutics of Grammatical Persons

In Kashmiri, monistic and tantric Śaiva traditions, the adept pursues the realisation of perfect I-hood (pūrṇāhaṃtā), consisting of identity with the God Śiva, who possesses the Goddess Śakti as his consort and world-constituting power. In earlier publications, the author examined how Abhinavagupta (c. 950–1020), in his philosophical hermeneutics of these traditions, interpreted the Self's/Śiva's universal agency with a theory (developing earlier Sanskrit grammar) of verb–noun syntax. This paper examines how Abhinavagupta reinforces and complements that theory with an interpretation of the semantic and dialogical aspects of the grammatical persons. In Abhinavagupta's scheme, the divinised and empowered tantric Self as the enunciator of discourse (English, ‘first person’) contemplatively absorbs within itself the discursive audience (‘second person’) and objects (‘third person’). The paper also compares features of Abhinavagupta's hermeneutics of the grammatical persons with contemporary linguistic and semiotic theories.

How can the relationship between argumentation and proof be analysed?

The paper presents a characterisation about argumentation and proof in mathematics. On the basis of contemporary linguistic theories, the hypothesis that proof is a special case of argumentation is put forward and Toulmin’s model is proposed as a methodological tool to compare them. This model can be used to detect and analyse the structure of an argumentation supporting a conjecture (abduction, induction, etc.) and the structure of its proof. The aim of the paper is to highlight the importance of structural analysis between argumentation and proof. This analysis shows that although there are clear cases of continuity between argumentation supporting a conjecture and its proof, there is often a structural distance between the two (from an abductive argumentation to a deductive proof, from an inductive argumentation to a mathematical inductive proof).

James Joyce and the Difference of Language by Laurent Milesi

MLR, 102.1, 2007 217 on to suggest that inhis literary maturity Dreiser was both aRomantic and aRealist, having had his beginnings in the age of Emerson and itsnineteenth-century essen tialist claims for an ordered universe, instead of the accidental, relativistic universe ofmany twentieth-century intellectuals. Dreiser spent only a year at what is now Indiana University before he moved toChicago in I887 to begin a series ofmanual jobs, including labourer, factoryworker, and driver. Loving argues here thatDreiser was the firstgreat American novelist to come from thewrong part of town. Itwas his first-hand familiaritywith the aspirations and the restraintsplaced upon ordinary Americans thatsuggested tohim the implacable determinism thatunderlay all human effort,and gave hiswriting itsunsophisticated yet extraordinary power. Loving uses his detailed account ofDreiser's writing fornewspapers to show his burgeoning social consciousness as his work took him across America, probing into the seedier side of American life in cities such as St Louis, New York City, and Pittsburgh. When Dreiser moved from newspapers tomagazine writing and edit ing,Loving trackshis restlessmove from one journal to another to demonstrate his subject's determination to chronicle American life inmore 'realistic' detail than had previously been done. Sister Carrie was the result, and Loving's account of thewrit ing, editing, and reception of the novel offers a fascinating subtext on the conflict between venality and morality within theAmerican publishing industry of the time. Loving is never less than interesting on all aspects ofDreiser's lifeand work: his 'conversion' toCommunism, his interest in the embryonic Civil Rights movement, his protracted disputes with academia, and, particularly, his vexatious relationships with publishers. Loving notes thatwhile the initial reception of Sister Carrie left Dreiser penniless and suicidal, itwas the enthusiastic support of such important contemporaries as Frank Norris, W. D. Howells, and, above all,H. L. Mencken that eventually made Sister Carrie and its author famous. Loving argues thatDreiser's first wife, 'Jug',played a crucial role in editing themanuscript of Sister Carrie, and thatDreiser repaid her by being an inveteratewomanizer throughout his life.Over all, while Loving isnever censorious, he has notwritten a hagiography; he portrays Dreiser as not without faults, but nevertheless as a man who against all the odds produced an extraordinary body ofwork. ROEHAMPTONUNIVERSITY KEVIN MCCARRON 7ames Joyce and theDifference ofLanguage. Ed. by LAURENTMILESI. Cambridge, New York, and Melbourne: Cambridge University Press. 2003. Xiii+232 pp. ?40; $6o. ISBN 978-o-52i-62337-7. This collection of twelve essays centres on the idea that language isof paramount sig nificance in Joyce'swork-of greater importance than, say, character, social context, political direction, or sexual morality-and that Joyce's location and expression in language is thekey tohiswriting practice. All theconventional weights ofnineteenth century realist fiction (such as those just listed) become focused and transmogrified by Joyce'smeticulous attention to the language of his work. The essays themselves take differentpoints of departure to explore various aspects of this premiss, first in theEnglish ofDubliners, A Portrait, and Ulysses, then in the polyglot idiom ofmultiple languages and slippery puns of Finnegans Wake. Joyce 'poeticizes' and 'foreignizes' English, according toLaurent Milesi. Fritz Senn's essay 'SyntacticGlides' focuses on theanti-naturalist artificeof Joyce'swriting in refresh ingly close detail. Quoting fromUlysses, 'the sailor [. . .] the noise of his bilgewater [. . .] splashing on the ground', Senn points out that 'noises don't splash' (p. 33) and thereby opens up thewhole area of uncertainty between language and actuality 2I8 Reviews with which Joyce's writing engages. Benoit Tadie discusses Joyce's work in rela tion to contemporary linguistic theories, such as those of Saussure, Pound/Fenellosa, Malinowski, and Sapir, nicely concluding that Molly's night-time unravelling of the 'rational representations conceived in the daylight' (p. 56) link her toPenelope and 'the truth' is on her side. Beryl Schlossman discusses the role of the 'Madonnas of Modernism', connecting Joycewith Flaubert, Baudelaire, and Yeats while suggesting the essential connectedness ofmagic and desire, love,writing, and art. Marie-Dominique Garnier offers 'Joycewith Deleuze' in a pun-loaded essay on 'The Lapse and the Lap', where licking, lapping, milk, cats, and Lacan are recur ring tropes in amazy journey concluding with 'theOther' that 'duplicates the self' (p. I09). Thomas Docherty talks about...

Contemporary Linguistic Theories of Humour

The paper will discuss the following subtopics: Arthur Koestler's bisociation theory of humour and its reception; Victor Raskin's script-based theory of jokes (SSTH) in his Se- mantic Mechanisms of Humor; the General Theory of Verbal Humor (GTVH) by Victor Raskin and Salvatore Attardo and the attempt of testing GTVH by Willibald Ruch; Salvatore Attardo's Linear Theory of Humor (IDM); The analysis of puns by Attardo; Humour and pragmatic maxims (Raskin, Attardo, etc.); Attardo's Setup-Incongruity-Resolution -model (SIR); The further taxonomy of logical mechanisms (LM) of jokes by Attardo, Hempelmann, and Di Maio; the Anti-Festschrift for Victor Raskin.

Contact, typology and the speaker: the essentials of language

This paper focuses on some of the theoretical assumptions presented in Enfield, 2003 (Review of `Enfield, N.J., 2003. Linguistic Epidemiology: Semantics and grammar of language contact in mainland Southeast Asia. Routledge Curzon, London and New York, pp. xv + 397') and their consequences for contemporary linguistic theory. In particular, I revisit three fundamental dimensions underlying language contact: multilingual practices of speech communities, modes of transmission and typological diversity. These three dimensions, I argue, are not only the reasons for contact to occur but the fundamental driving forces behind language change (and variation) at large. In this view, the dichotomy typically presented as `contact-induced' or `external' vs. `normal' or `internal' change needs to be significantly revised, if not dissolved, since a non-idealized view of language change as the one advocated by Enfield presents us with a reality in which the role of contact can hardly ever be overlooked.

Como professores em formação continuada mobilizam saberes sobre escrita e avaliação de texto

Este artigo tem por objetivo refletir sobre a relação teoria-prática na formação continuada do professor de língua materna. Enfoca-se a mobilização de saberes sobre escrita e avaliação de texto por três sujeitos, em uma atividade de prática de avaliação de texto, aplicada após a apresentação e discussão das teorias lingüísticas contemporâneas sobre o tema. Os resultados da análise mostram duas posições dos sujeitos, em termos de efeito do saber teórico recém-adquirido sobre a prática de avaliação de texto: um deles preferiu a situação de estabilidade, com uma avaliação centrada nos aspectos normativos da escrita; e dois apresentaram uma situação de transição, com inserção de critérios de avaliação de base textual.

Second Language Acquisition and Linguistic Theory (review)

Reviewed by: Second language acquisition and linguistic theory ed. by John Archibald John M. Lipski Second language acquisition and linguistic theory. Ed. by John Archibald. Malden, MA &Oxford: Blackwell, 2000. Pp. 256. The seven essays in this volume represent the application of contemporary linguistic theories to second language acquisition. Cynthia Brown’s ‘The interrelation between speech perception and phonological acquisition from infant to adult’ describes child (L1) and adult (L2) phonological development in an effort to understand the difficulty in acquiring a fully native L2 phonology. Using a model of feature geometry, and incorporating experimental data from Chinese, Korean, and Japanese speakers’ acquisition of English, Brown demonstrates that children rapidly acquire phonological structures that resist subsequent incorporation of nonnative contrasts. These early-acquired L1 restrictions persist and affect phonological perception during adult L2 acquisition, thereby limiting full acquisition of certain new phonological contrasts. Martha Young-Scholten and John Archibald study ‘Second language syllable structure’ using a hierarchical model of syllable organization, sonority scales, and feature geometry. Early child phonological acquisition routinely produces CV syllables through truncation while adult L2 phonology may employ epenthesis and substitutions to achieve patterns compatible with the L1. At times the acquisition of certain segments and contrasts (e.g. /1/ vs /r/) must occur before new phonological patterns (e.g. onset clusters) can emerge. ‘Mapping features to forms in second language acquisition’ by Donna Lardiere takes a minimalist approach to the development of L2 syntax. Assuming the minimalist view that syntactic patterns derive from morpholexical feature specifications, L queries whether L2 learners must acquire enough of the target language’s morphology in order to project the relevant functional categories or whether they approach the task with a preexisting set of possibilities. Unlike L1 and early L2 acquisition, in which morphological endings may be omitted but are rarely used incorrectly when present, adult L2 language shows a much higher frequency of morphological mismatches. Lardiere argues that—at least in the L2 case—there is no direct correlation between the acquisition [End Page 183] of specific morphological paradigms and the development of relevant syntactic patterns. ‘Second language acquisition: From initial to final state’ by Lydia White examines various notions about the roles of UG vs. the L1 in the acquisition of a second language. After reviewing several possible configurations, White questions the need to dwell on dichotomies, seeking instead to establish common ground among competing theories when dealing with data which are subject to multiple interpretations. Another survey of formal models applied to L2 acquisition is ‘When syntactic theories evolve: Consequences for L2 acquisition research’ by Bonnie Schwartz and Rex Sprouse. The authors review several proposals regarding the role of UG in constraining possible interlanguage grammars and the issue of poverty of the stimulus and end with a call to temper an ever-changing formal syntax with closer attention to actual interlanguage data. Alan Juffs examines the semantic-syntactic interface in adult L2 acquisition in ‘An overview of the second language acquisition of links between verb semantics and morphosyntax’. Juffs reviews theories that map semantic patterns onto particular classes of verbs and the relationships that might exist between L2 acquisition and theories of universal grammar. There is a growing body of evidence that universal semantic notions shape the morphosyntax of verb classes during L2 acquisition. Juffs concludes that both L1 transfer and universal syntactic/semantic configurations come into play in forming emergent L2 grammars. The final essay is Gary Libben’s ‘Representation and processing in the second language lexicon: The homogeneity hypothesis’. Libben offers evidence that there is a single lexicon for all monolingual and bilingual speakers, including adult L2 learners. When the bilingual lexicon is activated, all items linked by meaning or form are simultaneously available. The choice of languages is not a function of the lexicon (although lexical items are tagged for language) but rather lies outside of the lexical processing domain. Bilingual interactions, including code-switching, arise when the use of lexical items tagged for both languages lowers activation thresholds. In adult L2 speakers, cross-language equivalences are stronger than same-language synonyms since in the...