Formal Properties Of Language Research Articles

The big ear: what Svetlana Alexievich’s documentary novels have to teach us about writing

ABSTRACT This essay considers what Svetlana Alexievich's documentary novels, which are collages of witness testimony might have to teach us about writing. It argues that the documentary novels of Svetlana Alexievich demonstrate some of the aesthetic similarities between the language of literature and the language of testimony. It argues that certain rhetorical and formal devices that otherwise belong to the realm of literature, such as metaphor, repetition, parataxis and parallelisms, can be seen in Alexievich's testimonies. It considers the nature of Alexievich's role as a writer in curating the testimonies, and the performative nature of testimony as influencing the language used by her witnesses. The traumatic nature of the events being recounted and the fact that the text reflects her witnesses' speech acts contribute to the linguistic peculiarities of Alexievich's work. The essay concludes that Alexievich's work can offer the writer insights into how language marshals emotion and creates a sense of urgency by paying attention to the formal properties of language; as writers we might listen to our own words in much the same way as Alexievich receives the testimony of her witnesses.

Chaucer’s Prayers: Writing Christian and Pagan Devotion by Megan E. Murton

Reviewed by: Chaucer’s Prayers: Writing Christian and Pagan Devotion by Megan E. Murton Jamie Fumo Megan E. Murton. Chaucer’s Prayers: Writing Christian and Pagan Devotion. Chaucer Studies. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2020. Pp. viii, 180. $99.00 cloth; $24.99 e-book. Megan E. Murton’s Chaucer’s Prayers presents an exacting critique of one of the last vestiges of that exceptionalism that, until recently, detached Chaucer from his historical context and contemporary English writing: the view of him as a fundamentally secular poet. In redressing the presentist bias behind a secular Chaucer, Murton makes a salient, and in some respects unconventional, case for Chaucer as a religious—specifically devotional—poet. She powerfully demonstrates how pivotal acts of prayer are to Chaucer’s literary corpus, from the early dream visions and the freestanding Marian An ABC to the Virgin, through the mid-career Troilus and Criseyde (which incorporates prayer perhaps most profoundly and problematically), to the Canterbury Tales, considering the tales of the Prioress, Second Nun, Man of Law, Knight, and Franklin, and especially Chaucer’s Retraction, in relation to the discourse of prayer. Drawing on studies of narrative voice and performance theory as applied to Chaucer studies by scholars such as David Lawton, A. C. Spearing, and William Quinn, and also incorporating work on affective devotion by historians of religion, Murton conceptualizes prayer as an intrinsically participatory and communal “script” that invites the reader to step into the subject position articulated by the prayer, thereby transforming (or, as she suggests, “re-writing”) the self in relation to the divine order. This is a salient, insightful argument, one that positions Chaucer’s creative interests at the juncture of subjectivity and ritual convention. Prior scholarship that has viewed Chaucer as seriously engaging religious themes has generally emphasized either the poet’s relation to Lollardy or his supposed doctrinal agenda as a poet in the Augustinian mode. This latter (exegetical) view often encouraged, in its extremity, an overcorrection that tended to sever Chaucer entirely from a pious aesthetic by emphasizing a skeptical, relativistic worldview. In contrast to both of these scholarly perspectives, Murton’s Chaucer is decidedly a Christian humanist, orthodox yet subtly nonconformist in his literary expressions of piety. By drawing readers into acts of prayer in ways that are exploratory rather than prescriptive, Murton contends, Chaucer invites a collaboration with readers in a creative domain of sacred experience—an experimental space, as it were, in which ultimate answers are not stipulated or foreclosed. In this against-the-grain reading, the exceptional rhetorical mode of prayer sidesteps the conventional [End Page 335] medieval subordination of poetic expression to religious dogma, empowering devotional means to serve literary ends. Murton’s study begins, in Chapter 1, with the most culturally legible instances of devotion in Chaucer’s corpus: the Marian prayers that feature in the prologues of the Second Nun and Prioress and constitute the oftenmarginalized An ABC to the Virgin. This chapter’s sparkling close readings discover, in the formal properties of language, meter, and diction as well as intertextual comparison with French and Italian precedents, the designs that these Marian prayers have on readers as they execute “the universal work of forming a self who is able to receive grace” (41). The abecedarian lyric, Murton illustrates, constructs a devotional subjectivity in which readers may participate by means of a “circular dynamics” (37) of supplication and reception. The transformative and participatory nature of this Marian prayer is echoed in those of Chaucer’s two female religious pilgrims, whose prologues Murton reads in relation to their tales but in detachment from the Canterbury framework (as do those manuscripts that anthologized these tales separately from the larger story collection). From this angle, much-debated critical issues, such as anti-Semitism and narrative irony in the case of The Prioress’s Tale, are neutralized: the prayerful prologues, rather than being projections of dramatic personae, become scripts for readers to perform as devotional subjects. Both engage in the “project of forming a reader” for their respective tales (48), which cohere around themes of physical embodiment (The Second Nun’s Tale) and linguistic inexpressibility (The Prioress’s Tale). Nestled between analyses of Chaucer...

Early Shakespeare, 1588–1594. Edited by Rory Loughnane and Andrew J. Power. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. Pp. v+324.

<i>Early Shakespeare, 1588–1594</i>. Edited by Rory Loughnane and Andrew J. Power. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. Pp. v+324.

Second Language Learners' Phonological Awareness and Perception of Foreign Accentedness and Comprehensibility by Native and Non-native English Speaking EFL Teachers

Phonological awareness has been defined as the speaker’s sensitivity to the phonological characteristics of a language. The present study is aimed at exploring the relationship between Iranian EFL learners’ explicit phonological awareness, their foreign accentedness and speech comprehensibility as perceived by native and non-native English-speaking EFL teachers. To determine the relationships, the researchers used a set of tasks that measured 34 EFL learners’ phonological awareness in five domains of rhyming, alliteration or onset, segmenting, blending, and manipulation. They also asked the participants to read a short text which was recorded and later rated for accentedness and comprehensibility on a 9-point scale. Results indicated that there was a significant correlation between the learners’ phonological awareness and perception of foreign accentedness. The same was true about the correlation between phonological awareness and speech comprehensibility. Furthermore, a strong positive correlation was found between foreign accentedness and comprehensibility, suggesting that foreign accentedness could affect comprehensibility of L2 speech. The findings suggest that pedagogical strategies that highlight formal properties of language be employed in second language classrooms to reduce learners’ foreign accent and increase their speech comprehensibility.

On L2 Learners’ Metalinguistic Ability and Related Issues: A Synthesis of Theory and Practice

The purpose of this study is twofold. First, it presents an overview of pertinent research dealing with aspects of metalinguistic awareness (MLA) and to posit a link between (MLA) and students’ performance in multi-dimensional linguistic problems. Second, it reports on the outcomes of an experiment on some foreign language learners. The subjects of the present study (N=80) were in their fourth year of academic study in the Department of English and Literature, Faculty of Arts, Menufia University, Egypt. Forty subjects were males and the other forty were females. Two tasks were used: (1) “Sentence Completion” task, and (2) “Error Recognition and Correction” task. In the first task, a list of 15 incomplete sentences was given to the subjects who were asked to choose the word or phrase that best complete the sentence. The focus, in this task, was on the meaning of the sentence rather than the form, although accurate understanding of the formal properties of language is a must. In the second task, students were asked to detect the word or phrase that must be changed in order for the sentence to be correct. A list of 25 sentences with four words underlined, and marked (A), (B), (C), and (D) was given to the subjects. Finally, students were individually interviewed to explain and comment on their performance in the previous tasks. The data were analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively. Results were obtained and conclusions were made.

TRANSLATION BETWEEN LINGUISTIC WORLDS

This paper considers the role of poetic parallelism in the translation of various types of meaning between the linguistic worlds of gurbani, or Sikh scriptural language, and ordinary colloquial language. The first major section of the paper considers verbal art as an intensive form of language characterized by special attention to linguistic elements such as repetition and parallelism, and constituted in relation to a particular linguistic audience. The next section considers the relationship between ‘religious' language (as a form of verbal art) and ‘ordinary' language. Finally, the relationship between the formal properties of language and creativity is considered. The second major section begins with an overview of some major theories of parallelism and is then followed by a close analysis of some of the pervasive forms of parallelism present in gurbani. The paper then moves into an analysis of similar forms of parallelism in an excerpt of kathaa, or oral exegesis of Sikh scripture. Finally, the paper considers some of the correspondences in parallelism between these instances of gurbani and kathaa, bringing out the relations between scriptural language and ordinary language (in this case Panjabi, the language of exegesis). Finally, some new possibilities for understanding the relationship of translation between sacred and ordinary language are considered.

DOUBLE COSETS IN FREE GROUPS

In this paper, we study double cosets of finite rank free groups. We focus our attention on cancellation types in double cosets and their formal language properties.

The Role of Creativity in the Cognitive Turn in Linguistics

The recent cognitive turn in linguistics is closely related to research into the creative nature of language. Formal creativity, or in other words, the recursive nature of language (with respect to both words, i.e., the basic units, and sentences, i.e., the end products) is what determines further domains of creativity, viz., at the level of meanings and in the theory of mind, providing for their unlimited and variable nature. Principles of the formal properties of language are presented at the levels of words and sentences, showing that recursion occurs both in words and sentences, indicating the local nature of syntactic relations, and demonstrating their neural correlates. Reference to neurolinguistic experiments is used to argue that metaphorical extensions of meanings are a natural phenomenon placing no burden on mental processing, even though literal meanings are not handled the same way as metaphors. It is claimed that sentential meanings have a primacy over word meanings, while words, and not sentences, are the basic units of the mental lexicon, i.e., long-term memory. In order to understand metaphors it is essential to have theory of mind (ToM), which develops in children parallel with the acquisition of complex syntactic structures involving mental verbs, as is shown by false-belief tasks. The nature and limits of the complexity of ToM is related to the limits of syntactic complexity in natural language.

THE IDEMPOTENT PROBLEM FOR AN INVERSE MONOID

We generalize the word problem for groups, the formal language of all words in the generators that represent the identity, to inverse monoids. In particular, we introduce the idempotent problem, the formal language of all words representing idempotents, and investigate how the properties of an inverse monoid are related to the formal language properties of its idempotent problem. We show that if an inverse monoid is either E-unitary or has a finite set of idempotents, then its idempotent problem is regular if and only if the inverse monoid is finite. We also give examples of inverse monoids with context-free idempotent problems, including all Bruck–Reilly extensions of finite groups.

DOES FORM-FOCUSED INSTRUCTION AFFECT L2 LEARNERS PERFORMANCE? FOCUS ON GRAMMATICALLY JUDGMENTS

It is one of the goals of research in applied linguistics to gain insight into the process and mechanisms of second language acquisition. The cornerstone and the single most fundamental change in perspective on the nature of language and language learning is, perhaps, the focus on learners as active creators in their learning process, not as passive recipients. The present study has two goals. First, it aims at investigating advanced students’ metalinguistic ability in solving multidimensional grammatical problems. Second, it is, also, an attempt to highlight the role of focus on form instructions in shaping L2 learners’ performance. The subjects of the present study were forty Egyptian students who were in their fourth year of academic study in the Department of English and Literature, Faculty of Arts, Menufia University, Egypt. The instrument of this study consisted of (1) pre-test; (2) post-test; and (3) individual interviews. Two tasks were used: (1) “Sentence Completion” task, and (2) “Error Recognition and Correction” task. In the first task, a list of 15 incomplete sentences was given to the subjects who were asked to choose the word or phrase to complete the sentence. The focus, in this task, was on the meaning of the sentence rather than the form, although accurate understanding of the formal properties of language is a must. In the second task, students were asked to detect the word or phrase that must be changed in order for the sentence to be correct. A list of 25 sentences was given to the subjects who worked on this task twice. In the pre-test, no word or phrase was underlined; it is an example of the unfocused correction type. In the post-test, the same sentences were given to the subjects, with four words underlined, and marked (A), (B), (C) and (D). It is an example of the focused correction type. Finally, students were interviewed to explain and comment on their performance in the previous tasks. The data were analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively. Results were obtained and conclusions were made.It is one of the goals of research in applied linguistics to gain insight into the process and mechanisms of second language acquisition. A correct understanding of these processes and mechanisms is a prerequisite for an adequate didactic approach. Relatedly, Morley (1987) points out that during the last twenty years ideas about language learning and language teaching have been changing in some very fundamental ways. Significant developments in perspectives on the nature of second language learning processes have had a marked effect on language pedagogyThe cornerstone and the single most fundamental change in perspectives on the nature of language and language learning in recent years is, perhaps, the focus on learners as active creators in their learning process, not as passive recipients. Accordingly, the focus of second language study has shifted from a prominence of contrastive analysis in the 1940s and 1950s and error analysis in the 60s and 70s to interlanguage analysis in the 70s and 80s. Interlanguage analysis is marked today by “a variety of investigations looking at diverse aspects of learner language” (Morley, 1987: 16). In this connection, Gass (1983: 273) points out that “it is widely accepted that the language of second language learners, what Selinker (1972 has called ‘interlanguage’ or what (Gass, 1983) has called ‘Learner-language’ is a system in its own right.” To understand such a system, we should focus on discovering how second language (L2) learners evaluate and correct their own or other people’s utterances, an issue that will be explored in the present study. In other words, the major point of interest here is L2 learners’ linguistic intuitions and the role of focus on form instruction in making grammaticality judgments.

Formal language properties of hybrid systems with strong resets

We study hybrid systems with strong resets from the perspective of formal language theory. We define a notion of hybrid regular expression and prove a Kleene-like theorem for hybrid systems. We also prove the closure of these systems under determinisation and complementation. Finally, we prove that the reachability problem is undecidable for synchronized products of hybrid systems.

Rule and Meaning in the Teaching of Grammar

AbstractWhile the construct of rule as a manipulation of purely formal properties of language has been widely abandoned in both formal and functional linguistics, it persists, though with diminished importance, in the field of second language acquisition. This is true even in form‐focused instruction, including focus‐on‐form, which emphasizes meaning as both classroom focus and element of language structure. This paper illustrates the meaningfulness of grammar, even where treatment has often appealed to such rules; identifies areas of overlap between what is identified by the term rule and what is identified by the terms meaning (semantics) and form (morphology); and points out the lack of descriptive adequacy of some familiar rules. The author offers research‐ and practice‐based recommendations for pursuing a fully meaning‐based communicative approach to teaching grammar even while suitable and comprehensive resource materials for such methods in language education are lacking.

Metasemiotic Regimentation in the Standardization of Nepali Sign Language

Both the linguistic forms attended to and the ways in which they are linked to the social vary within and across language standardization projects. In addition, it cannot be assumed that people will notice the same indexical connections between linguistic forms and social structures or rationalize them in the same ways. An analysis of the project to standardize Nepali Sign Language highlights the fact that it is therefore necessary to account for the processes by which standardization projects attempt to reduce variation not only in the formal properties of language but also in the wider semiotic interpretations of those forms.[Nepal, d/Deaf, standardization, language ideologies, semiotic indeterminacy]

Creativity and accessibility in written professional discourse1

ABSTRACT: Recent work on genre analysis suggests that professional genres and professional practices complement each other, in that they are co‐constructed in specific contexts. However, in most language‐based investigations of intelligibility, accessibility, and creativity in the use and interpretation of professional genres, the emphasis has always been on the use of linguistic resources, in particular the use of formal properties of language, with very little emphasis on text‐external considerations, i.e. interdiscursivity and other socio‐pragmatic factors. This paper seeks to widen the scope of such concerns with intelligibility, accessibility, interpretability, and creativity to the socio‐pragmatic space within which professional genres invariably operate, and to consider critically how expert professionals exploit socio‐pragmatic space to create new and hybrid forms across disciplinary, institutional, and cultural boundaries.

Even linear simple matrix languages: formal language properties and grammatical inference

We show that so-called deterministic even linear simple matrix grammars can be inferred in polynomial time using the query-based learner–teacher model (minimally adequate teacher-learning model) proposed by Angluin (Inform. and Comput. 75 (1987) 87) for learning deterministic regular languages. In this way, we extend the class of efficiently learnable languages beyond both the even linear languages and the even equal matrix languages (Pattern Recognition 21 (1988) 55; Proc. 2nd Internat. Colloq. on Grammatical Inference (ICGI-94): Grammatical Inference and Applications, Lecture Notes in Computer Science/Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence, vol. 862, Springer, Berlin, 1994, p. 38; Inform. Process. Lett. 28 (1988) 193; Technical Report IIAS-RR-93-6E, Fujitsu Laboratories, 1992; Parallel Image Analysis, ICPIA’92, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 652, Springer, Berlin, 1992, p. 274; Inform. and Comput. 123 (1995) 138; Algorithmic Learning for Knowledge-Based Systems, Lecture Notes in Computer Science/Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence, Springer, Berlin, 1995, p. 317). Moreover, we investigate formal language properties of even linear simple matrix languages and related language classes. More precisely, we discuss characterizations, (proper) inclusion relations, closure properties and decidability questions. This way, we also show that, in a certain sense, the idea of iterating the control language approach for learning purposes, as undertook by Takada (1995), could be seen as a special case of using deterministic even linear simple matrix grammars as basic and uniform learning target.

That’s No Literature, That’s My Bible: On James Kugel’s Objections to the Idea of Biblical Poetry

In The Idea of Biblical Poetry, James Kugel dismantles attempts to find a meter in biblical parallelism. In the process, he implicitly locates the distinction between sacred and secular texts in the formal aspects of the language. This paper challenges Kugel’s main assumptions. First, the premise that poetry must be metrical is controversial, not given, in the history of literary criticism. Second, the formal properties of language do not prove anything about the significance attributed to the forms. I argue that the categories of ‘literature’ and ‘scripture’ cannot be reduced to the presence or absence of formal qualities. The distinction between sacred and secular texts requires consideration of the relation a community of readers takes toward a text. Future discussions of biblical poetry should incorporate relational issues, not just formal ones.

Complex systems, complexity measures, grammars and model-inferring

Quantifying complex behavior has been the subject of intense research during the last few years. In spite of these efforts there neither exists a universal measure characterizing the complexity of a given system, nor is it even clear whether such a measure can be constructed at all. We discuss some of the attempts that have been made to quantify the complexity of nonlinear chaotic systems. We show why these measures do not meet the needs for a general procedure applicable to arbitrary (stochastic) processes, and we discuss another measure of complexity which is well suited for the study of non-stationary systems. Guided by the properties of formal languages and grammars, we argue that it will be necessary first to distinguish different classes of complex behavior. Chomsky's classification of formal languages may serve as an example how such classes can be identified. The look at formal language theory additionally shows that one of the main features of complex systems is their ability of information processing, from simple storage to universal computing.

Target-language culture in EFL materials

Expressing and interpreting meanings in a given language involves two types of knowledge. Systemic knowledge refers to the formal properties of language, comprising its syntactic and semantic aspects. Schematic knowledge, on the other hand, is socially acquired. It is an important part of the ‘fit’ which exists between people's culture-specific cognition and their native language. In native language learning, the child's schematic knowledge and systemic knowledge develop concurrently. Given what is known about the facilitating effects of familiar schemas (or schemata) on foreign language acquisition, it is most natural for learners to rely on their already established schematic knowledge when developing new systemic knowledge. For this reason, foreign language teaching materials which make use of target-language culture elements to present the systemic data are likely to interfere with this natural tendency. It is argued here that such teaching materials are actually detrimental to foreign language learning for a variety of reasons. The article discusses the problem in question in the context of EFL materials, yet with English as a lingua franca in mind. Pedagogic suggestions are then offered to make smooth transitions from familiar to unfamiliar schemas.

A metatheorem for undecidable properties of formal languages and its application to LRR and LLR grammars and languages

A metatheorem will be proved for decision problems which can be represented by pairs of simple grammars. Examples are given in support of the claim that the metatheorem has a wide range of applications. In particular, some relative decision problems concerning LR(k), LL-regular, and LR-regular grammars and languages are shown to be undecidable. In addition, iteration theorems are derived which allow the proof that certain languages are no: LL-regular of LR-regular.

On the intersection of the class of linear context-free languages and the class of single-reset languages

We show that so-called deterministic even linear simple matrix grammars can be inferred in polynomial time using the query-based learner–teacher model (minimally adequate teacher-learning model) proposed by Angluin (Inform. and Comput. 75 (1987) 87) for learning deterministic regular languages. In this way, we extend the class of efficiently learnable languages beyond both the even linear languages and the even equal matrix languages (Pattern Recognition 21 (1988) 55; Proc. 2nd Internat. Colloq. on Grammatical Inference (ICGI-94): Grammatical Inference and Applications, Lecture Notes in Computer Science/Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence, vol. 862, Springer, Berlin, 1994, p. 38; Inform. Process. Lett. 28 (1988) 193; Technical Report IIAS-RR-93-6E, Fujitsu Laboratories, 1992; Parallel Image Analysis, ICPIA’92, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 652, Springer, Berlin, 1992, p. 274; Inform. and Comput. 123 (1995) 138; Algorithmic Learning for Knowledge-Based Systems, Lecture Notes in Computer Science/Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence, Springer, Berlin, 1995, p. 317). Moreover, we investigate formal language properties of even linear simple matrix languages and related language classes. More precisely, we discuss characterizations, (proper) inclusion relations, closure properties and decidability questions. This way, we also show that, in a certain sense, the idea of iterating the control language approach for learning purposes, as undertook by Takada (1995), could be seen as a special case of using deterministic even linear simple matrix grammars as basic and uniform learning target.