Fundamental Property Of Language Research Articles

О МЕСТЕ И РОЛИ ЛОКАЛИЗМОВ В СИСТЕМЕ НАЦИОНАЛЬНОГО ЯЗЫКА

The study of linguistic units operating as part of the national language within the framework of the regional usage is determined by the need to identify the features of heterogeneous variants and their place in the system of the national language, their relationship and interaction with the literary norm. The purpose of this article is to investigate the content of the linguistic term “localism” and distinguish it from other concepts used to denote territorially marked vocabulary. The article attempts to clarify the content of the linguistic term “localism” using examples from the Russian and Spanish languages, which occupies a central place in foreign linguistic regionalism. The theoretical basis of the study relies on the ideas of linguistic relativism and sociolinguistic determinism, according to which linguistic phenomena are studied taking into account variability as a fundamental property of language and in close relationship between language and social context. The methodological base is formed by general scientific methods, includingThe study of linguistic units operating as part of the national language within the framework of the regional usage is determined by the need to identify the features of heterogeneous variants and their place in the system of the national language, their relationship and interaction with the literary norm. The purpose of this article is to investigate the content of the linguistic term “localism” and distinguish it from other concepts used to denote territorially marked vocabulary. The article attempts to clarify the content of the linguistic term “localism” using examples from the Russian and Spanish languages, which occupies a central place in foreign linguistic regionalism. The theoretical basis of the study relies on the ideas of linguistic relativism and sociolinguistic determinism, according to which linguistic phenomena are studied taking into account variability as a fundamental property of language and in close relationship between language and social context. The methodological base is formed by general scientific methods, includingtheoretical analysis and synthesis of linguistic literature on the problem of regional vocabulary, as well as comparative analysis of terms denoting territorially marked language units. In the practical part of the study, the sociolinguistic interview method was used. General characteristics of localisms in Russian and Spanish are revealed. The conclusion about a stricter regulation of the use of localisms in the Spanish language is substantiated.

Language in the Americas: Out of Beringia

Linguistically, the Western Hemisphere harbors a great typologicaldiversity, by some estimates, the greatest in the world. Controversyregarding classification aside, much work lies ahead to identify themovements up through to include the final leg of the journey ofmodern humans, in terms of distance travelled from our continent oforigin, to Tierra del Fuego. This article will briefly summarize theadvances that the language sciences have made in describing thesemigrations and the languages that accompanied them, to then discussviable proposals for collaboration with other fields. Such an interdisciplinaryprogram of study is necessary because the tools of linguisticsdo not suffice. Continuing work on the processes of origin, dispersionand convergence will help us better understand fundamentalproperties of language. Research on the description of individuallanguages and how they can be classified will contribute to thisunderstanding. For speakers and students of the American languages,these advances will also contribute to the recovery of the culturalheritage that is associated with historical language change.

“METAFUNCTIONS OF LANGUAGE” IN SYSTEMIC FUNCTIONAL LINGUISTICS: A FRAMEWORK FOR THE INTERPRETATION OF MEANING OF TEXT IN SOCIAL CONTEXT

This article is concerned with how “metafunctions of language” is theorized by M.A.K. Halliday in his Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) theory, and how the metafunctional framework can be used to analyse and interpret the meaning of text in social context. The paper consists of five sections. Section one introduces the topic of the article. Section two briefly examines the notion of “functions of language” in formal and non-systemic functional (non-SF) models of language. Section three explores in some detail the notion of “metafunctions of language” in the SFL model. The study shows that unlike formal and non-SF models of language, SFL conceptualizes metafunctions of language not just as “uses of language” but as a fundamental property of language itself. To illustrate the applicability of the metafunctional framework to the interpretation of meaning of text in social context, Section four conducts an analysis of two stanzas in the famous Vietnamese poem “Hai sắc hoa ti-gôn” (Two Colours of Antigone) in terms of experiential, interpersonal, textual, and logical meanings. Section five provides a résumé of the issues studied in the article, pointing out the advantages of Halliday’s metafunctional framework. The study aims to contribute to our understanding of language as a system of metafunctions, opening up vast potential for the application of the SFL model to language teaching, learning, and research.

Становление культуры языковой личности нового типа в условиях глобализации

In the era of globalization, the issue of effective communication between the representatives of different cultures in order to achieve harmonious cooperation is acute. This paper discusses and analyzes the problem of forming a culture of a new type of linguistic personality in the constantly changing conditions of modern society, shows the qualities that are necessary for the interaction. The importance of education and upbringing of an individual in such a way that the interests of the state and the world community are taken into account is emphasized. The importance of language in the implementation of the communicative interaction is undeniable; the communicative nature is a fundamental property of language, which is not a special closed system, but an important component of communication, an instrument of an active social interaction. The necessity of interaction between the linguistic personality and cultures and communities around the world in order to match the model demanded by modern society is identified and justified.

Electrophysiological evidence for the role of shared space in online comprehension of spatial demonstratives

A fundamental property of language is that it can be used to refer to entities in the extra-linguistic physical context of a conversation in order to establish a joint focus of attention on a referent. Typological and psycholinguistic work across a wide range of languages has put forward at least two different theoretical views on demonstrative reference. Here we contrasted and tested these two accounts by investigating the electrophysiological brain activity underlying the construction of indexical meaning in comprehension. In two EEG experiments, participants watched pictures of a speaker who referred to one of two objects using speech and an index-finger pointing gesture. In contrast with separately collected native speakers’ linguistic intuitions, N400 effects showed a preference for a proximal demonstrative when speaker and addressee were in a face-to-face orientation and all possible referents were located in the shared space between them, irrespective of the physical proximity of the referent to the speaker. These findings reject egocentric proximity-based accounts of demonstrative reference, support a sociocentric approach to deixis, suggest that interlocutors construe a shared space during conversation, and imply that the psychological proximity of a referent may be more important than its physical proximity.

In search of resilient and fragile properties of language.

Young children are skilled language learners. They apply their skills to the language input they receive from their parents and, in this way, derive patterns that are statistically related to their input. But being an excellent statistical learner does not explain why children who are not exposed to usable linguistic input nevertheless communicate using systems containing the fundamental properties of language. Nor does it explain why learners sometimes alter the linguistic input to which they are exposed (input from either a natural or an artificial language). These observations suggest that children are prepared to learn language. Our task now, as it was in 1974, is to figure out what they are prepared with - to identify properties of language that are relatively easy to learn, the resilient properties, as well as properties of language that are more difficult to learn, the fragile properties. The new tools and paradigms for describing and explaining language learning that have been introduced into the field since 1974 offer great promise for accomplishing this task.

Elmo's Sister's Ball: The Problem of Acquiring Nominal Recursion

Recursion is the ability to iterate syntactic constituents inside constituents. Experimental and corpus literature indicates that comprehending recursive structures is difficult for children. Since recursion is a fundamental property of language, the result of the application of core minimal tools (merge, label, and select), why does it present an acquisition challenge? We propose that while Merge itself is universal, its application is determined by selection, which is extensively parameterized. We investigate whether children's difficulties can be defined in terms of the complexity of the selectional demands involved. This investigation leads to three empirical questions: i. How does NP recursion compare to NP coordination in acquisition? ii. Do children acquire each level of recursion independently or is recursion triggered automatically once the initial selectional requirements are acquired? iii. Are there differences in the acquisition of different types of nominal recursion? We compare the selectional requirements of English genitives, PPs, and NP coordination. Our syntactic analysis suggests that genitive recursion has more complex selectional demands than PP recursion. We designed a study eliciting production of two level embedded prepositional and genitive NPs. Preschool-aged English-speaking children (n = 46) and adults (n = 11) participated in an elicitation study. Children were comparable to adults in their ability to produce three coordinated NPs, but had substantial difficulty linking three NPs using recursion. First- and second-level embedding were clearly distinct steps in development. These findings have implications for the independence of phrasal and selectional development in children and for our understanding of structural complexity in child language and in theory.

The Neural Substrate of Naming Events: Effects of Processing Demands but not of Grammatical Class

Grammatical class is a fundamental property of language, and all natural languages distinguish between nouns and verbs. Brain activation studies have provided conflicting evidence concerning the neural substrates of noun and verb processing. A major limitation of many previous imaging studies is that they did not disentangle the impact of grammatical class from the differences in semantic correlates. In order to tease apart the role of semantic and grammatical factors, we performed a functional magnetic resonance imaging study presenting Italian speakers with pictures of events and asked them to name them as 1) Infinitive Verb (e.g., mangiare [to eat]); 2) Inflected Verb (e.g., mangia [she/he eats]); and 3) Action Noun (e.g., mangiata [the eating]). We did not find any verb-specific activation. However, reliable left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) activations were found when contrasting the Action Noun with the Infinitive Verb condition. A second-level analysis indicated then that activation in left IFG was greatest for Action Nouns, intermediate for Inflected Verbs, and least for Infinitive Verbs. We conclude that, when all other factors are controlled, nouns and verbs are processed by a common neural system. In the present case, differences in left IFG activation emerge as a consequence of increasing linguistic and/or general processing demands.

A case study of multi-stratal analysis

The domains of application in applied linguistics have changed considerably since the early 1960s. In most of these domains, the fundamental property of language as a resource for making meaning has increasingly been foregrounded. This approach recognises, amongst other dimensions of language, its multi-stratal character, i.e. that a given instance of language consists of patterns of meaning (semantics), realized by patterns of wording (grammar), realized by patterns of sounding (phonology) or writing (graphology). The co-selection of these patterns both construes and expresses the kind of social context in which the language operates. There has not yet been a register of English described from the point of view of all four strata. In this paper, we report on a research project which is developing a multi-stratal description of a service encounter, namely the ordering of fast food by telephone. We present some of the findings here regarding the likely cross-stratal patterns for this kind of service encounter, and suggest areas of future research.

A minimalist program for linguistics

Summary Zellig S. Harris (1909–1992) is a familiar icon of American structuralism. According to received views of the history of linguistics in the 20th century, he is an exemplar of ‘taxonomic linguistics’ seeking practical discovery procedures whereby one could mechanically derive a grammar from distributional analysis of a corpus of utterances without reference to meaning, and a proponent of empiricist and behaviorist views that have been overthrown by the revolution of Generative linguistics. An examination of what he actually wrote, however, shows a lifelong concern with the analysis and representation of meaning. Harris’ approach to the evaluation of alternative tools of analysis, alternative grammars, and alternative theories of language arises from a crucial but little acknowledged dilemma of linguistics grounded in a fundamental property of language, namely, that it contains within itself virtually unrestricted metalinguistic capacities, upon which any description of language whatever either directly or indirectly depends.

Epidemic psychology: a model

AbstractWhen the conditions are right, epidemics can potentially create a medical version of the Hobbesian nightmare ‐ the war of all against all. A major outbreak of novel, fatal epidemic disease can quickly be followed both by plagues of fear, panic, suspicion and stigma; and by mass outbreaks of moral controversy, of potential solutions and of personal conversion to the many different causes which spring up. This distinctive collective social psychology has its own epidemic form, can be activated by other crises besides those of disease and is rooted in the fundamental properties of language and human interaction. It is thus a permanent part of the human condition ‐ and widely known to be such.