John Benjamins Research Articles

BOOK REVIEW: TEACHER DEVELOPMENT FOR IMMERSION AND CONTENT-BASED INSTRUCTION

This review provides a concise overview of the book "Teacher Development for Immersion and Content-Based Instruction” by Laurent Cammarata and T. J. Ó Ceallaigh, published in 2020 by John Benjamins Publishing Company. The review highlights its significant contributions to the understanding of global language immersion programs. The book, which features significant input from respected scholars, focuses on filling the knowledge gaps regarding teacher development in the context of language immersion and content-based training. The book consists of seven chapters that address various subjects, including teacher language awareness, the development of professional identity, and the difficulties encountered by immersion educators. The review acknowledges the book's thorough approach but points out a possible omission in distinguishing between Content-Based Instruction and Content and Language Integrated Learning The review suggests that the book is a great resource for educators, academics, and policymakers. The extensive examination of both theory and practice renders it an invaluable resource for individuals engaged in language instruction and research.

D-features or ellipsis in null subject licensing? Evidence from Brazilian and European Portuguese

Abstract Holmberg (Holmberg, Anders. 2005. Is there a little pro? Evidence from Finnish. Linguistic Inquiry 36(4). 533–564) and its revised version in Holmberg et al. (Holmberg, Anders, Aarti Nayudu & Michelle Sheehan. 2009. Three partial null-subject languages: A comparison of Brazilian Portuguese, Finnish, and Marathi. Studia Linguistica 63(1). 59–97) derive the availability of null subjects in a given language from the interaction between T with/without a D(efiniteness)-feature and the features of subject pronouns. Their theory predicts the existence of consistent null subject languages, whose T has the D-feature, and partial null subject languages, whose T lacks the D-feature. This paper examines this D-feature approach to null subjects against the empirical evidence provided by Brazilian Portuguese, a partial null subject language, and European Portuguese, a consistent null subject language, showing that it cannot account for the range of microvariation observed with respect to different null subject pronouns and the type of T (finite vs. participle vs. gerund). We argue that, in comparison, the ellipsis account of null subject licensing put forward in Martins and Nunes (Martins, Ana Maria & Jairo Nunes. 2021. Brazilian and European Portuguese and Holmberg’s 2005 typology of null subject languages. In Sergio Baauw, Frank Drijkoningen & Luisa Meroni (eds.), Romance languages and linguistic theory 2018. Selected papers from “Going Romance” 32, Utrecht, 171–190. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins) fares better. It retains from Holmberg (Holmberg, Anders. 2005. Is there a little pro? Evidence from Finnish. Linguistic Inquiry 36(4). 533–564 et seq.) the insight that the licensing of null subjects depends on the interaction between the features of T and the features of subject pronouns but resorts only to ϕ-features and Case. Crucially, it relies on the (theoretically and empirically) plausible assumption that the relation between abstract ϕ-features and verbal agreement morphology need not be transparent.

Review of:] E. Rakhilina, T. Reznikova, D. Ryzhova (eds.). The typology of physical qualities. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2022

Review of:] E. Rakhilina, T. Reznikova, D. Ryzhova (eds.). The typology of physical qualities. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2022

Images of Childhood and Children in Early Photobooks: Capturing Reality and Expectations

Photography in Children’s Literature, edited by Elina Druker and Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer (John Benjamins, 2023) offers a transnational investigation of children’s photography spanning from the early 1870s to the late 1980s. It sets itself apart from many counterparts because of its wide range of analyzed topics, genres, and artistic techniques. This edited volume is recommended for all researchers and scholars interested in the transnationality of childhood politics and how photographs and children’s picturebooks play a vital role in promoting powerful transnational children’s images.

Review of Eleonora Esposito. 2021. Politics, Ethnicity and the Postcolonial Nation: A Сritical Analysis of Political Discourse in the Caribbean. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins

Review of Eleonora Esposito. 2021. Politics, Ethnicity and the Postcolonial Nation: A Сritical Analysis of Political Discourse in the Caribbean. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins

That-complement clauses signalling stance in Nigerian Supreme Court lead judgements: a corpus-based study

Abstract The study investigates grammatical means of marking stance in Nigerian Supreme Court lead judgements. Specifically, it examines the frequency, form and stance functions of that-complement clauses in lead judgements using Du Bios’ stance triangle model (Du Bois, John. 2007. The stance triangle. In Englebretson Robert (ed.), Stancetaking in discourse: Subjectivity, evaluation, interaction, 139–177. Amsterdam: John Benjamins) and Biber’s (Biber, Douglas. 2006. University language: A corpus-based study of spoken and written registers. Amsterdam: John Benjamins) semantic domains of verbal and adjectival predicates controlling that-complement clauses. The study shows that that-complement clauses in the lead judgements are predominantly verb-based and they mainly signal epistemic and few alignment stances. Verb-based that-clauses are largely indexed by communication verbs which report prior stances, present the lead judges’ arguments and validate them. Adjective-based that-clauses signal evaluative and few affective stances. They are frequently signalled by certainty adjectives which express lead judges’ certitude on the issues argued. That-complement clauses signal few alignment stances and yet fewer affective ones, possibly due to judges’ need to assert their authoritative voice as experts in the discourse community. The frequency of certainty verbs and adjectives in the that-complement clauses underscores the centrality of certitude in judicial argumentation. I suggest that judgements are not only evaluative as has been noted in earlier studies but also epistemic based on the predominance of epistemic and certainty markers lexico-grammatically realised and indexed by verb and adjective based that-clauses.

The counting principle makes number words unique

Abstract Following Ariel (2021. Why it’s hard to construct ad hoc number concepts. In Caterina Mauri, Ilaria Fiorentini, & Eugenio Goria (eds.), Building categories in interaction: Linguistic resources at work, 439–462. Amsterdam: John Benjamins), we argue that number words manifest distinct distributional patterns from open-class lexical items. When modified, open-class words typically take selectors (as in kinda table), which select a subset of their potential denotations (e.g., “nonprototypical table”). They are typically not modified by loosening operators (e.g., approximately), since even if bare, typical lexemes can broaden their interpretation (e.g., table referring to a rock used as a table). Number words, on the other hand, have a single, precise meaning and denotation and cannot take a selector, which would need to select a subset of their (single) denotation (??kinda seven). However, they are often overtly broadened (approximately seven), creating a range of values around N. First, we extend Ariel’s empirical examination to the larger COCA and to Hebrew (HeTenTen). Second, we propose that open-class and number words belong to sparse versus dense lexical domains, respectively, because the former exhibit prototypicality effects, but the latter do not. Third, we further support the contrast between sparse and dense domains by reference to: synchronic word2vec models of sparse and dense lexemes, which testify to their differential distributions, numeral use in noncounting communities, and different renewal rates for the two lexical types.

The interpretation of animate nouns in child and adult Mandarin: from the Universal Grinder to syntactic structure

Abstract Using animate nouns to refer to entities in the world involves a complex interaction of ontology, cognition and language. The present study evaluates two accounts of the use of animate nouns, with Mandarin Chinese as the vehicle for testing between the competing accounts. One account was proposed by Cheng et al. (2008. How universal is the Universal Grinder? In Marjo van Koppen & Bert Botma (eds.), Linguistics in the Netherlands, 50–62. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins). These researchers contend that the count interpretation is basic for Mandarin animate nouns, due to a lexical blocking effect. To access the alternative, mass interpretation requires some kind of pragmatic coercion. A second account was proposed by Pelletier, based on English (1975. Non-Singular reference: Some preliminaries. Philosophia 5(4). 451–465; 2012. Lexical nouns are both +MASS and +COUNT, but they are neither +MASS nor + COUNT. In Diane Massam (ed.), Count and mass across languages, 9–26. Oxford: Oxford University Press). We extend this account to Mandarin animate nouns, proposing that they are encoded in the mental lexicon with both a count sense and a mass sense. To adjudicate between the accounts, we conducted four experiments that were designed to assess the interpretation assigned to animate nouns by Mandarin-speaking children and adults. The experimental conditions manipulated both the syntactic structures of the sentences and the non-linguistic contexts in which those sentences were presented. The experimental findings support our proposal that both mass and count interpretations of animate nouns are available to children and adults when sentences are presented in contexts that are congruent with these interpretations. The findings also suggest that syntactic structure is an even more critical factor in determining the interpretation that is assigned to animate nouns in Mandarin.

On the acquisition of tense and agreement in L2 English by adult speakers of L1 Chinese

Abstract This study investigates whether forms associated with verbal inflection can be acquired in relation to two UG-based L2 acquisition hypotheses: the Full Transfer Full Access (FTFA) Hypothesis (Schwartz, Bonnie & Rex Sprouse. 1994. Word order and nominative case in nonnative language acquisition: A longitudinal study of (L1 Turkish) German interlanguage. In Teun Hoekstra & Bonnie D. Schwartz (eds.), Language acquisition Studies in generative grammar, 317–368. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, Schwartz, Bonnie & Rex Sprouse. 1996. L2 cognitive states and the ‘full transfer/full access’ model. Second Language Research 12. 40–72) and the Interpretability Hypothesis (Tsimpli, Ianthi-maria & Maria Dimitrakopoulou. 2007. The Interpretability hypothesis: Evidence from wh-interrogatives in second language acquisition. Second Language Research 23. 215–242). The former captures the insight that convergence on grammars like those of native speakers is possible, whereas the latter argues that a native/non-native divergence results from the inaccessibility of some uninterpretable syntactic features. Ninety adult L1 speakers of Chinese of different English proficiency levels were asked to interpret and produce tense and agreement in various contexts in three tasks. Results suggest that the underlying grammatical representations in the end-state grammar may not be the same as native speakers’. We speculate that the inaccessibility of the uninterpretable [uInfl:] feature of v and the uninterpretable [uInfl:*] feature of be are the potential source of difficulty in acquiring verbal inflection in L2 English.

Large-scale pied-piping in the labeling theory and conditions on weak heads

Abstract This paper discusses the concept of weak head in Chomsky’s (2015. Problems of projection: Extensions. In Elisa Di Domenico, Cornelia Hamann & Simona Matteini (eds.), Structures, strategies and beyond: Studies in honour of Adriana Belletti, 3–16. Amsterdam: John Benjamins) sense from a typological perspective. This paper first establishes a novel generalization that large-scale pied-piping is available in a language only if the language has indeterminate pronouns in Kuroda’s (1965. Generative grammatical studies in the Japanese language. Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology dissertation) sense and the clause to be pied-piped is head-final. To deduce this generalization, this paper first offers a labeling theoretic account of large-scale pied-piping. It then proposes that weak heads are (i) heads that have unvalued features and (ii) morpho-phonologically weak. It is shown that the generalization is deduced from this conception of weak heads, given Inaba’s (2011. The morphosyntax of constituent ordering patterns. The Hiroshima University Studies, Graduate School of Letters 71. 43–72) generalization that head-final complementizers are generally affixal. This paper further argues that the proposed conception of weak heads also allows us to deduce Agree from Minimal Search, which is a third factor principle according to Chomsky (2013. Problems of projection. Lingua 130. 33–49), hence minimizes UG.

Performative updates and the modeling of speech acts

This paper develops a way to model performative speech acts within a framework of dynamic semantics. It introduces a distinction between performative and informative updates, where informative updates filter out indices of context sets (cf. Stalnaker, Cole (ed), Pragmatics, Academic Press, 1978), whereas performative updates change their indices (cf. Szabolcsi, Kiefer (ed), Hungarian linguistics, John Benjamins, 1982). The notion of index change is investigated in detail, identifying implementations by a function or by a relation. Declarations like the meeting is (hereby) adjourned are purely performative updates that just enforce an index change on a context set. Assertions like the meeting is (already) adjourned are analyzed as combinations of a performative update that introduces a guarantee of the speaker for the truth of the proposition, and an informative update that restricts the context set so that this proposition is true. The first update is the illocutionary act characteristic for assertions; the second is the primary perlocutionary act, and is up for negotiations with the addressee. Several other speech acts will be discussed, in particular commissives, directives, exclamatives, optatives, and definitions, which are all performative, and differ from related assertions. The paper concludes a discussion of locutionary acts, which are modelled as index changers as well, and proposes a novel analysis for the performative marker hereby.

Mock impoliteness in Spanish: evidence from the VALESCO.HUMOR corpus

Abstract Mock impoliteness is defined as a specific form of politeness, one in which participants in a conversation perceive acts such as jocular mockery, insults and banter as non-impolite (Haugh, Michael & Derek Bousfield. 2012. Mock impoliteness in interactions amongst Australian and British speakers of English. Journal of Pragmatics 44. 1099–1114). Following the model of the third wave of politeness and Sinkeviciute, Valeria (2019. Conversational humour and (im) politeness: A pragmatic analysis of social interaction. Amsterdam: John Benjamins), the aim of this paper is twofold. First, it seeks to contribute to a better understanding of the phenomenon in colloquial conversation. Second, it illustrates this in a language other than English, specifically Peninsular Spanish, using data on informal interactions. The database is composed of 148 humorous sequences from the VALESCO.HUMOR corpus (http://www.observahumor.com/corpus_valesco). 25.67 % of these were identified and analyzed as mock impoliteness, using a tentative procedure for exploring humor negotiation in mock impoliteness through the assessment of a number of elements. These included the issue of which linguistic and paralinguistic elements are used by participants, and the interpretation of the initial aggressive style focused on the target, be it the recipient in a conversation or an absent third party (Béal, Christine & Kerry Mullan. 2017. The pragmatics of conversational humour in social visits: French and Australian English. Language & Communication 55. 24–40). Finally, we considered the question of whether or not the humor introduced by mock impoliteness was sustained throughout a sequence. When a target is oriented to a recipient in the exchange, the data shows a trend towards strengthening social bonds with the group and sustaining humor across the sequence. In other cases, however, the recipient might feel offended or insulted and hence respond in a serious mode, the main effect of the humor then being to create social distance within the participant group. When the target is oriented to an absent third party, humor tends to serve to reinforce cohesiveness between the group at the expense of others.

“By the way I want to give you some masks”: exploring multimodal stance-taking in YouTube videos

Abstract While the effectiveness of facemasks against COVID-19 has now become largely uncontroversial, at the beginning of the global pandemic, wearers of facemasks were often the target of sometimes racially tinged attacks. Wearing facemasks (or not) became not just a question of science, but evolved into a more complex issue of social identity, morality and global citizenship embedded within the “tribal thinking” of mask-wearers and non-mask-wearers. This paper explores to what extent two bilingual YouTube influencers participated in either accentuating or softening of boundaries of the two “tribes” by embedding facemasks in their videos. Based on multimodal transcriptions of the two videos (Wang, Yilei, Dezheng Feng & Wing Y. J. Ho. 2021. Identity, lifestyle, and face-mask branding: A social semiotic multimodal discourse analysis. Multimodality & Society 1(2). 216–237), three moments were identified where facemasks were employed by the social actors to perform everyday activities, such as grocery shopping and family brunch. I then examine the interactional stances (Dubois, John W. 2007. The stance triangle. In Robert Englebretson (ed.), Stancetaking in discourse: Subjectivity, evaluation, interaction, 139–182. Amsterdam: John Benjamins) taken by the actors towards facemasks through language and other semiotic resources. By exploring their multimodal stance-taking, it is argued that the two YouTubers’ intercultural trajectories, their performances of authenticity, and their established influence on social media provided them unique means for participating in tribalizing discourses around facemasks by making perceived differences between different groups materials for cultural consumption. The paper concludes by discussing the opportunities and challenges of vernacular health communication through social media influencers.

Conceptualizing Corpus-Based Genre Pedagogy as Usage-Inspired Second Language Instruction

Abstract Corpus-based genre pedagogy (CBGP), the instructional integration of discourse-based rhetorical analysis and corpus-based linguistic analysis of diverse genres, has gained attention from English for Academic Purposes (EAP) researchers and practitioners aiming to cultivate the academic writing skills of second language (L2) learners. This has led to a need for the continuous conceptualization of CBGP (Lu, Xiaofei, J. Casal Elliott, and Yingying Liu. 2021. “Towards the Synergy of Genre- and Corpus-Based Approaches to Academic Writing Research and Pedagogy.” International Journal of Computer-Assisted Language Learning and Teaching 11 (1): 59–71). Additionally, usage-based approaches to L2 acquisition (U-SLA), a collection of cognitive and potentially sociocognitive theoretical approaches to language and language acquisition (Ellis, Nick C., Ute Römer, and Matthew Brook O’Donnell. 2016. Usage-Based Approaches to Language Acquisition and Processing: Cognitive and Corpus Investigations. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell; Wulff, Stepanie, and Nick C. Ellis. 2018. “Usage-Based Approaches to Second Language Acquisition.” In Bilingual Cognition and Language: The State of the Science across its Subfields, edited by D. Miller, F. Bayram, J. Rothman, and L. Serratrice, 37–56. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company), have called for more pedagogically oriented research informed by usage-based principles (e.g., Tyler, Andrea E., Hae In Park, Mariko Uno, and Lourdes Ortega, eds. 2018. Usage-inspired L2 Instruction: Researched Pedagogy. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company). Responding to such calls, we argue for conceptualizing CBGP as usage-inspired instruction given its intersections with key U-SLA instructional tenets. We first systematically review empirical studies on CBGP. Then, we introduce relevant U-SLA instructional tenets and interpret the CBGP studies to illuminate the extent to which CBGP resonates with different aspects of the U-SLA tenets. Eventually, we argue that CBGP can potentially unify the “social” and the “cognitive” in U-SLA’s accounts of L2 teaching and learning, making it a feasible way to materialize usage-inspired L2 instruction in actual classroom practice. Finally, we discuss future research and practical directions.

“Mapping and projecting otherness in media discourse of the Russia–Ukraine war”

Abstract This paper shows how otherness, having a negative representation potential, is covered in media discourse with a focus on the first day of the Russia–Ukraine war. In this article, I specifically investigate the representation of otherness that weaves the web of relations within the “us versus them” narrative espoused most strongly by Teun A. Van Dijk (1992. Discourse and the denial of racism. Discourse and Society 3. 87–118, 2002. Discourse and racism. In David Goldberg & John Solomos (eds.), The Blackwell companion to racial and ethnic studies, 145–159. Oxford: Blackwell) and further developed within the premises of a proximisation theory (e.g., Cap 2013. Proximization: The pragmatics of symbolic distance crossing. Amsterdam: John Benjamins; Chilton 2004. Analysing political discourse: Theory and practice. London: Routledge). This framework concerns the positive self-representation of Ukraine and its performance contrasted with Russia’s negative other-presentation. Following this account, otherness serves as means of legitimising media actions as preventive measures taken to inform society about the past, create the present state of the world through assertions (Dunmire 2011. Projecting the future through political discourse. Amsterdam: John Benjamins; Searle 2010. Making the social world: The structure of human civilization. Oxford: Oxford University Press) which endorse media credibility and predict future outcomes with respect to the horror of the unfolding war. This study argues that the representation of otherness takes place at the proximisation level of certain lexico-grammatical choices that are used strategically by media to cover the narrative of a “permanent military standby” and the “immediacy of otherness”.

Review of Mel’čuk, Igor. 2023. General Phraseology Theory and Practice. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins

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ESL classroom interactions in a translanguaging space

Abstract There has been a recent proliferation of studies pertaining to translanguaging. This impetus is largely driven by the increasing acknowledgement of daily communications as translingual practice. In fact, the closely related construct of plurilingualism has been incorporated into the development of the companion volume of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (Council of Europe. 2020. Common European framework of reference for languages: Learning, teaching, assessment – Companion volume. Strasbourg: Council of Europe Publishing. Available at: www.coe.int/lang-cefr). Despite the rising awareness towards translanguaging and plurilingualism in European and Northern American contexts (cf. Vallejo, Claudia & Melinda Dooly. 2020. Plurilingualism and translanguaging: Emergent approaches and shared concerns. Introduction to the special issue. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 23(1). 1–16), scepticism remains, especially in classroom settings. Through detailed analyses of extracts taken from 27 h of recordings of UK university ESL classroom interactions among Taiwanese L1 Mandarin students transcribed based on Jefferson (Jefferson, Gail. 2004. Glossary of transcript symbols with an introduction. In Gene Lerner (ed.), Conversation analysis: Studies from the first generation, 14–31. Philadelphia: John Benjamins) and supplemented by Matsumoto (Matsumoto, Yumi. 2019. Material moments: Teacher and student use of materials in multilingual writing classroom interactions. The Modern Language Journal 103(1). 179–204) and Zhu et al. (Zhu, Hua, Wei Li & Agnieszka Lyons. 2017b. Polish shop(ping) as translanguaging space. Social Semiotics 27(4). 411–433), we aim to demonstrate the complementarity effect of various multimodal resources in progressing classroom instructions. Our analyses reveal that the different linguistic and non-linguistic resources deployed contribute to scaffolding and the development of a layered understanding of the concept in discussion (e.g. phrasal verbs). We argue that the translanguaging space enables students to engage in deeper learning. Students are empowered to break down the rigid power structure and actively participate in knowledge co-construction. We end our paper by calling for research that bridges current understanding of translanguaging and policy and assessment strategies development.

An expressivist approach to folk psychological ascriptions

ABSTRACT In recent years, some authors have shown a renewed interest in interpretivist theories of folk psychological ascription [Hutto 2013. “Fictionalism About Folk Psychology.” The Monist 96 (4): 582–604.; Mölder 2010. Mind Ascribed: An Elaboration and Defence of Interpretivism. Amsterdam: John Benjamins; Sanchez-Curry 2020. “Interpretivism and Norms.” Philosophical Studies 177 (4): 905–930.; Mölder 2021. “Interpretivism Without Judgement-Dependence.” Philosophia 49 (2): 611–615.; Slors 2015. "Interpretivism and the Meaning of Mental State Ascriptions." Studia Philosophica Estonica, 10 (2): 18–27.]. Part of the virtue of interpretivism lies in its ability to provide an answer to elminativist arguments without falling into the assumptions and problems of intentional realism. However, some recent developments in semantic expressivism applied to normative expressions could help to build an alternative theory to interpretivism that would enjoy the same virtues. The aim of this paper is to present and defend an expressivist approach to the status of folk psychological ascriptions. According to this view, mental states ascriptions are evaluative and non-descriptive statement that express or reflect certain normative standards or values of the attributor. After presenting the view and contrasting it with interpretivist positions, with which expressivism shares important motivations and claims, I present two arguments to favor the expressivist analysis. In line with the first argument, expressivism can account for fundamental aspects of disagreements regarding mental attributions while the second highlights the capacity of the view to explain the widespread justificatory and exculpatory uses of mental states ascriptions.

Olga Timofeeva, Sociolinguistic variation in Old English: Records of communities and people. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2022. Pp. 204. Hb. €100.

Olga Timofeeva, Sociolinguistic variation in Old English: Records of communities and people. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2022. Pp. 204. Hb. €100.

'Professional development in Applied Linguistics: A guide to success for graduate students and early career faculty' Luke Plonsky (ed.) (2020)

Professional development in Applied Linguistics: A guide to success for graduate students and early career facultyLuke Plonsky (ed.) (2020)Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Pp. 204ISBN: 9789027207111 (hbk)ISBN: 9789027207128 (pbk)ISBN: 9789027260970 (eBook)