English Nouns Research Articles

The linguistic dimensions of concrete and abstract concepts: lexical category, morphological structure, countability, and etymology

AbstractThe distinction between abstract and concrete concepts is fundamental to cognitive linguistics and cognitive science. This distinction is commonly operationalized through concreteness ratings based on the aggregated judgments of many people. What is often overlooked in experimental studies using this operationalization is that ratings are attributed towords, not to concepts directly. In this paper we explore the relationship between the linguistic properties of English words and conceptual abstractness/concreteness. Based on hypotheses stated in the existing linguistic literature we select a set of variables (part of speech, morphological structure, countability, etymology) and verify whether they are statistically associated with concreteness ratings. We show that English nouns are rated as more concrete compared to other parts of speech, but mass nouns are rated as less concrete than count nouns. Furthermore, a more complex morphological structure is associated with abstractness, and as for etymology, French- and Latin-derived words are more abstract than words of other origin. This shows that linguistic properties of words are indeed associated with the degree of concreteness that we attribute to the underlying concepts, and we discuss the implications that these findings have for linguistic theory and for empirical investigations in the cognitive sciences.

Gender Assignment Strategies Among Simultaneous Spanish/English Bilingual Children from Miami, Florida

AbstractWe examined gender assignment patterns in the speech of Spanish/English bilingual children, paying particular attention to the influence of three gender assignment strategies (i.e., analogical gender, masculine default gender, phonological gender) that have been proposed to constrain the gender assignment process in Spanish/English bilingual speech. Our analysis was based on monolingual Spanish nominals (n = 1774), which served as a comparative baseline, and Spanish/English mixed nominal constructions (n = 220) extracted from oral narratives produced by 40 child bilinguals of different grade levels (second graders vs. fifth graders) and instructional programs (English immersion vs. two-way bilingual) from Miami Dade, Florida. The narratives, available in the CHILDES database (MacWhinney, Brian. 2000.The CHILDES project: Tools for analyzing talk, 3rd edn. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates), were collected by Pearson, Barbara Z. 2002. Narrative competence among monolingual and bilingual school children in Miami. In D. Kimbrough Oller & Rebecca E. Eilers (eds.),Language and literacy in bilingual children, 135–174. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters. Results revealed that in Spanish nominal constructions, children across both instructional programs and grade levels evinced native-like acquisition of grammatical gender. In mixed nominals, children overwhelmingly assigned the masculine gender to English nouns. Notably, irrespective of schooling background, simultaneous Spanish/English bilingual children used the masculine default gender strategy when assigning gender to English nouns with feminine translation equivalents. This suggests that from age seven, simultaneous Spanish/English child bilingual acquisition of grammatical gender is characterized by a predisposition towards the employment of the masculine default gender strategy in bilingual speech.

Lexicogrammar through colligation: Noun + Preposition in English and Norwegian

This study compares sequences of noun and preposition in English and Norwegian using data from the English-Norwegian Parallel Corpus. One purpose is to test the use of sequences of part-of-speech tags as a search method for contrastive studies. The other is to investigate the functions and meanings of prepositional phrases in the position after a noun across the two languages. The comparison of original texts shows that the function of postmodifier is most frequent in both languages, with adverbial in second place. Other functions are rare. English has more postmodifiers and fewer adverbials than Norwegian. Furthermore, the prepositional phrases express locative meaning, in both functions, more frequently in Norwegian than in English. The study of translations reveals that the adverbials have congruent correspondences more often than postmodifiers, particularly in translations from English into Norwegian.

ИНОВАЦИОННИ ПРОЦЕСИ В СЪВРЕМЕННАТА ГРАМАТИКА НА АНГЛИЙСКИЯ ЕЗИК (С ОГЛЕД НА ТЕХНИТЕ ВЪЗМОЖНИ ПАРАЛЕЛИ В БЪЛГАРСКИЯ ЕЗИК) / PROCESSES OF INNOVATION IN PRESENT-DAY ENGLISH GRAMMAR (IN VIEW OF THEIR POSSIBLE PARALLELS IN BULGARIAN)

The paper explores some processes of innovation in present-day English grammar in view of the typological features, the historical development and the present status of English as the language of global communication. Some innovations can be observed within the noun phrase and the verb phrase that have to do mostly with changes in the properties of nouns and verbs in relation to particular grammatical categories. The ana-lysis also focuses on a particular structural pattern of the English noun phrase consisting of a sequence of nouns joined without the use of prepositions. Within a longer time span, a number of innovations can be noticed that are related to the process of grammaticalization. Special emphasis is placed on the tendency towards implicitness and compression of the linguistic expression, which is typical of present-day English. The study also discusses innovations associated with the current status of English as a global language that have to do mostly with the expanded application of grammatical rules and the minimization of exceptions. The most general conclusion of the study highlights the continuous tendency towards the simplification of English grammar in the context of the historical development of the language as well as its present state. Keywords: language typology, innovations in language, present-day English gram-mar, noun phrase, verb phrase, grammaticalization, Global English, English-Bulgarian parallels

A syntactic approach to gender assignment in Spanish–English bilingual speech

In this paper I argue for a syntactic analysis to gender assignment in codeswitched speech. To sustain this claim, I examine gender assignment in Spanish Det(erminer)–English noun switches (i.e., el bishop ‘the.m’) in 76 sociolinguistic interviews of approximately one hour each from a bilingual community in Southern Arizona, U.S. (The CESA Corpus, Carvalho 2012). Based on the findings from this dataset, I demonstrate that the distribution of gender assignment in codeswitched speech poses a serious challenge to current models of the bilingual architecture rooted in the distinct-lexicons perspective (MacSwan 2000 et seq.). Rather, I show that biological gender (interpretable gender) plays a crucial role in the assignment mechanism and the representation of gender features in the bilingual architecture. Taking gender assignment as a case study, I outline a single-lexicon approach to the bilingual grammar compatible with a Late Insertion view of the morphosyntactic model (Halle & Marantz 1993). In particular, I highlight the crucial relevance of a theme position at the morphological module to guide the bilingual speaker to the insertion of phonological matrices (language exponents) when codeswitching.

On the Translation Strategies of Chinese Verbs in Aerial China: Jiangxi from the Perspective of Chinese-English Comparison

Chinese is a verb-dominated language, while English is a noun-dominated language. In Chinese-English translation, Translators must deal with Chinese verbs based on the characteristics of English. Through analyzing the subtitle of Aerial China: Jiangxi, it found that translators have used different translation strategies to translate Chinese verbs into English. When dealing with Chinese verbs, translators mainly adopt the following strategies: translating Chinese verbs into English nouns, Translating Chinese verbs into English prepositions, and translating part of verbs of serial verb construction into English non-predicate forms. It is hoped that this article can provide reference for the translation of Chinese verbs in Chinese-English translation.

English deadjectival nouns as models of knowledge representation about the world

From the position of a cognitive approach the authors consider English deadjectival nouns, what involves identifying and describing knowledge domains represented by these language units in English language culture. The study is carried out on the material of deadjectival nouns, which are fixed in English dictionaries and selected by a continuous sampling method. A set of methods is used, the main of which are methods of conceptual-definitional and cognitive-matrix analysis. As a result of the study, it is revealed that English deadjectival nouns represent the structure of knowledge of an integrative nature, including the concepts of HUMAN BEING, ARTEFACT, NATURAL OBJECT, SUBSTANCE, and STATE. This knowledge structure is presented as a general cognitive matrix, the components of which are the above concepts. In turn, the matrix components can also be complex and include a variety of knowledge. It is determined that deadjectival nouns presenting the HUMAN BEING concept convey ideas about human physical parameters, psychological features and social status, as well as about human diseases. Deadjectival nouns representing the concept of ARTEFACT name human signs and sign systems, products of human speech, household and personal items, objects of labor activity, vehicles and buildings. Deadjectival nouns representing the NATURAL OBJECT concept convey ideas about natural landscape objects, about the plant and animal world. Deadjectival nouns representing the SUBSTANCE concept reflect ideas about drugs/substances, cleaning products, cosmetics, and technical substances, organic or natural substances. The STATE concept is represented by deadjectival nouns that convey knowledge about the state of a person, object, and phenomenon, about their being in a certain state.

The noun phrase and its translation in the novel “Budha, a story of enlightenment”

The paper analyzes the form of the noun phrase and its translation shift found in the novel “Budha, A Story of Enlightenment”. The shift in translation is stated as a major concept in a sentence analysis found in translation. The concept of shifting can be used in order to learn how a unit on a different level used to make interesting structures. This study has used the theory that is proposed by Catford (1978) and Quirk et all(1985). The qualitative method is applied to the research method by the researcher. In the data of noun phrases, it consists of the derived noun as head in the source language. In the translation process in this study, a shift occurred in the translation process from the source language into the target language. It can be seen that this study focuses on the translation strategies of the noun phrase. Those can be dictated by the structural discrepancies that occurred between the two language systems involved in this process. The optional ones (those that are dictated by the personal and stylistic preferences) and communicative rendition in source language text into another language. There are some shifts in translation occurred in the English noun phrases that are also translated into noun phrases in Indonesian as the target language. This study intends to: (i) identify the types of the noun phrase and its constituent structure found in the data source, (ii) analyze the types of translation shifts of the noun phrase in the translation process from the source language into the target language.

Translation of the Proper Nouns in Legal English

Proper nouns have posed a challenge to translators of legal English for a long time. Legal English has the characteristics of formality, accuracy, ambiguity, professional, etc. These characteristics have made it more difficult for translation of the proper nouns in legal English. However, due to not paying enough attention to translation of the proper nouns in legal English, translators engaged in legal translation often make a lot of mistakes during the process of translation. Generally speaking, names of people or places are transliterated, while names of institutions or books are semantic translated. Transliteration should follow the principle of conformity to the original and the principle of convention, the former is mainly applied to proper nouns of non-English origin, while the latter concerning established wording or phrasing. In order to translate the proper nouns in legal English better, firstly, we should be aware of the difficulties of translation of the proper nouns in legal English; secondly, we should try our best to accumulate extensive legal knowledge and improve our translation skills; thirdly, we should make full use of reference books and master the skills of Internet application; last but not the least, we should ask for advice from others.

Predicate-Argument Structure in a Valence Dictionary (on the Example of the Verb Reward)

Valence dictionaries are very often specialized works for advanced readers which present how particular linguistic units combine with its subordinates. The article is a critical analysis of a dictionary entry for the lexical unit of reward contained in A Valency Dictionary of English, a Corpus-Based Analysis of the Complementation Patterns of English Verbs, Nouns and Adjectives [2004]. A complementary proposal regarding the predicate-argument structure and its annotation system will be provided based on the theoretical model proposed by S. Karolak [1984; 2002] called Semantic Syntax (SS) and more specifically its extended model called explicative syntax [Kiklewicz et al. 2010; 2019]. The research findings demonstrate the need for coordinated international projects that should integrate both the syntactic as well as the semantic levels in order to gradually meet the objective of an integrated language description encompassing both the grammar and the lexicon.

ENGLISH PROPER NOUNS AND THEIR LINGUACULTURAL ASPECTS

This article is devoted to investigate English proper nouns which contain culture-related information. They were divided into main groups: idiomatic expressions with the structure of knowledge related to religion, myths and legends, literature, geography, history and culture. They convey significant information about people’s way of life, religious principles, historical events, geographical places, etc. Theoretical part of the article is proved by numerous examples of English proper nouns which were chosen for linguo-cultural approach of investigation. The objectives of the research: English proper nouns with linguo-cultural content. The following methods of the research were used: descriptive method, comparative and cross-cultural analysis. Results obtained: linguocultural information in the semantics of English proper nouns with idiomatic expressions has been revealed and approved by numerous examples. Conclusion: the structures of religious, mythological, historical, literature-related, geographical and national-specific knowledge have been defined in the meaningful content of idioms.

Diachronic Analysis of the Concepts CRIME and PUNISHMENT

The paper addresses the issues of reconstruction of Proto-Indo-European roots and original meanings of the words denominating the concepts CRIME and PUNISHMENT in English and Ukrainian as well as their semantic development over several historical periods . The methodology employed includes the comparative-historical method incorporating etymological analysis, the techniques of external and internal reconstruction, componential and contrastive analyses. The major findings refer to the identification of the primordial senses of the verbalised concepts CRIME and PUNISHMENT that constitute the structure of the collective unconscious of the early Germans and the early Slavs. The reconstructed linguistic data make it possible to conclude that the archetypal meanings ''cry of distress'', ''to sift, to separate'' encoded in the inner form of the English noun crime gave rise to the legal meanings ''deceit, fraud, treachery'', ''offence punishable by law''. The etymological analysis of the Ukrainian word злочин makes it clear that the specialized legal meaning 'a socially dangerous act' evolved from the original meaning ' 'crooked, bent, curved''. The etymological connection of the English word punishment with the Proto-Indo-European root *khoe/oi-'punish, compensate, pay price, avenge' points to the earliest Germanic conceptions of punishment as blood feud, vengeance, compensation for damages or payment for a bride, whereas in Old Slavic tradition, punishment is viewed as a punitive measure intended to cause physical pain or inflict intense humiliation, denigration, or extreme fear to a person.

Sound symbolism shapes the English language: The maluma/takete effect in English nouns.

Sound symbolism refers to associations between language sounds (i.e., phonemes) and perceptual and/or semantic features. One example is the maluma/takete effect: an association between certain phonemes (e.g., /m/, /u/) and roundness, and others (e.g., /k/, /ɪ/) and spikiness. While this association has been demonstrated in laboratory tasks with nonword stimuli, its presence in existing spoken language is unknown. Here we examined whether the maluma/takete effect is attested in English, across a broad sample of words. Best-worst judgments from 171 university students were used to quantify the shape of 1,757 objects, from spiky to round. We then examined whether the presence of certain phonemes in words predicted the shape of the objects to which they refer. We found evidence that phonemes associated with roundness are more common in words referring to round objects, and phonemes associated with spikiness are more common in words referring to spiky objects. This represents an instance of iconicity, and thus nonarbitrariness, in human language.

Cross-linguistic influence on the use of L2 collocations: the case of Vietnamese learners

AbstractUsing collocation is a key part of second language ability (Granger, Sylviane. 2018. Formulaic sequences in learner corpora: Collocations and lexical bundles. In Anna Siyanova-Chanturia & Ana Pellicer-Sanchez (eds.),Understanding formulaic language: A second language acquisition perspective, 228–247. New York: Routledge; Nattinger, James R. & Jeamette S. DeCarrico. 1992.Lexical phrases and language teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press; Nesselhauf, Nadja. 2004.Collocations in a learner corpus. Amsterdam; Philadelphia: J. Benjamins Pub. Co.; Pawley, Andrew & Frances H. Syder. 1983. Two puzzles for linguistics: Nativelike selection and nativelike fluency. In Jack Richards & Richard W. Schmidt (eds.),Language and communication, 191–228. London: Longman). Researchers often hypothesize that the influence of the first language is an important factor in the production and understanding of unconventional collocations (Huang, Li-Shi. 2001. Knowledge of English collocations: An analysis of Taiwanese EFL learners.Paper presented at the Texas Foreign Languguage Education Conference, Texas; Laufer, Bhatia & Tina Waldman. 2011. Verb-noun collocations in second language writing: A corpus analysis of learners’ English.Language Learning61(2). 647–672.https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9922.2010.00621.x; Phoocharoensil, Supakorn. 2013. Cross-linguistic influence: Its impact on L2 English collocation production.English Language Teaching6(1). 1–10) but we are only now starting to understand this. The present study provides a robust investigation of cross-linguistic influences by exploring how Vietnamese influenced Vietnamese learners’ use of English language verb-noun and adjective noun collocations in 104 350-word argumentative essays, using a framework derived from Jarvis, Scott. 2012. The detection-based approach: An overview. In S. Jarvis & S. A. Crossley (eds.),Approaching language transfer through text classification: Explorations in the detection-based approach, 1st ed., Vol. 64, 1–33. Bristol: Multilingual Matters, drawing on homogeneity among speakers of Vietnamese; heterogeneity between users of Vietnamese and other language; and formal and conceptual congruity between collocations learners produce in English and equivalent terms in Vietnamese. The study found that less than 10% of the collocations learners produced were unconventional and of these, 40% of collocations were influenced by the first language (L1); errors associated with incorrect use of prepositions in verb-noun collocations (e.g. the addition, omission or misuse of prepositions) are strongly L1-motivated. Learners make errors with not only incongruent collocations (collocations with no direct L1 equivalents) but also with congruent collocations (collocations with direct L1 translation).

Intensificatory Tautology in the History of English: A Corpus-based Study

This paper explores the development and establishment of intensificatory tautology (specifically, size-adjective clusters, e.g., “ great big plans,” “ little tiny room”) in the history of English. The analysis suggests that size-adjective clusters appear in the Late Middle English period as a result of the functional-structural reorganization of the English noun phrase. It is only towards the end of the Early Modern English period that they start to become (relatively) productive in the language, and in Present-Day English that they acquire a wide(r) intensifying functional range (i.e., adjective modifier, emphasizer, degree intensifier) and become associated with informal, spoken-based registers. More broadly, the paper suggests that more research is needed as regards the role of collocation in processes of intensifier creation in the noun phrase and, more generally, as regards how collocation interacts with word-formation processes in this context.

Conceptualising olfaction: A study of the scent nouns and adjectives in Old English

ABSTRACT This article investigates the noun and adjective scent lexicon in Old English and provides a Cognitive Linguistic analysis of the conceptualisation of scent. The closely related modality of taste is also taken into consideration, and it is claimed that while both modalities are associated with emotive evaluation, olfaction is distinct from taste in that it lacks any degree of detailed lexical coding. Though the nature of olfactory and gustatory conceptualisation may result from universal properties of sense perception, cultural factors, including the role of medical and religious cultural world views are also taken into consideration. This article puts forward an account of scent in terms of conceptual metaphor, image schemas, and prototype categories.

THE PARAMETRIC VARIATIONS OF ENGLISH AND KANURI NOUN PHRASES: A MINIMALIST APPROACH

This paper examines the parametric variations of English and Kanuri noun phrases (NPs) within the theoretical framework of Principles and Parameters (P&P), and the study adopts Chomsky’s (1995) Minimalist Approach (MA). In conducting the research, the researcher uses his native intuition to collect the data for this study. The secondary sources of data involve the use of three competent native speakers to validate the data. The outcome of the study reveals that there are differences and similarities between the two languages which are genetically different –Kanuri Nilo is a Saharan language while English is an Endo European language. The differences are: Kanuri is a head final language while English is head initial language. On the complement phrases, the two languages share dissimilarities –quantifiers and adjectives occur post head in Kanuri while the quantifiers and adjectives occur pre-head in English. Finally, the two languages share similarities in terms of noun plural formation morphologically suffixed to post head nouns and definiteness and agreement features [-Def] [+PL Num].

Modification versus Complementation in the Structure of English Noun Phrases

"Modification versus Complementation in the Structure of English Noun Phrases. Apart from its head, the core element around which all the other phrasal constituents cluster, the noun phrase may contain dependent elements effecting determination (which poses few taxonomical issues), modification or complementation (two functions notoriously difficult to demarcate). This article outlines the inconsistent ways in which reference grammars make the distinction between modification and complementation in the structure of English noun phrases, and offers a more unified approach aimed to solve the terminological quandary. Keywords: complementation, modification, premodifier, postmodifier, complement, the noun phrase "

Analysis of Translation Mistakes of Compound Nouns from English into Arabic among Yemeni University EFL Students

The present study is devoted to the discussion on errors of English translation into Arabic with special reference to English compound nouns. The study is confined to the students of the Department of English, Faculty of education, Hodeidah University, Yemen as they face various difficulties and commit errors while translating English compound nouns into Arabic and vice versa. The researcher aims at examining multiple factors responsible for this state of affairs and make pedagogical suggestions to improve teaching and learning and thereby helping in the process of translation. For this study, the researcher has collected the data by conducting the test of 40 students of I to IV level, Department of English, Hodeidah University, Yemen. The test consists of one question having three items and each item has five words. In findings, the researcher concludes that the students face various difficulties and obstacles in the process of translating English compounds into Arabic. Moreover, they commit a number of mistakes while translating English compounds.

Common names and proper nouns: Morphosyntactic evidence of a complete nominal paradigm

The terms "common noun" and "proper name" encode two dichotomies that are often conflated. This paper explores the possibility of the other combinations—"common name" and "proper noun"—and concludes that both exist on the basis of their morphosyntactic behavior. In support of common names, inflectional regularization is determined to result from a "name" layer in the structure, meaning that common nouns that regularize are, in fact, common names (computer mouses, tailor’s gooses). In support of proper nouns, there are bare singular count nouns in English that receive definite interpretations and seem to be licensed as arguments by the same null determiner as proper names (I left town, she works at home). Not only does a four-way distinction between nouns, names, proper nouns, and proper names achieve greater empirical coverage, but it also captures the independent morphosyntactic effects of [PROPER] and [NAME] as features on D and N, respectively.