Lexical Strategies Research Articles

Word reuse and combination support efficient communication of emerging concepts

A key function of the lexicon is to express novel concepts as they emerge over time through a process known as lexicalization. The most common lexicalization strategies are the reuse and combination of existing words, but they have typically been studied separately in the areas of word meaning extension and word formation. Here, we offer an information-theoretic account of how both strategies are constrained by a fundamental tradeoff between competing communicative pressures: Word reuse tends to preserve the average length of word forms at the cost of less precision, while word combination tends to produce more informative words at the expense of greater word length. We test our proposal against a large dataset of reuse items and compounds that appeared in English, French, and Finnish over the past century. We find that these historically emerging items achieve higher levels of communicative efficiency than hypothetical ways of constructing the lexicon, and both literal reuse items and compounds tend to be more efficient than their nonliteral counterparts. These results suggest that reuse and combination are both consistent with a unified account of lexicalization grounded in the theory of efficient communication.

Expressing cause and effect in hard and soft scientific discourse

This study is a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the use of cause and effect expressions in two corpora that comprise research articles in four hard and four soft disciplines, selected to represent a broad cross-section of academic discourse. Linguistic expressions of cause/effect are hypothesised to deviate in hard and soft sciences, and the differences pertain not only to key lexical categories but also to syntactic patterns. With the ultimate goal of facilitating practitioners of ESP (English for Specific Purposes) and EAP (English for Academic Purposes) to produce discipline-specific materials, which can effectively address the needs of learners of different sciences, this study investigates the productivity of lexical units, representative of cause/effect expressions in hard and soft scientific disciplines, as identified in the Louvain EAP Dictionary, as well as the main grammatical patterns where the former are attested. This paper shows that cause expressions are more common in soft sciences, while the expressions of effect are used in similar proportion in the two categories. As for lexical strategies, soft sciences tend to use more nouns to express cause/effect, while hard sciences rely on prepositions and conjunctions to a larger extent.

Culturalism and Religious fundamentalism: Lexicalisation of counter-ideologies on same-sex sexualities in selected Nigerian newspapers

Against the backdrop of cultural conservatism and legal restrictions on same-sex relationships, this study examines how language use foregrounds cultural and religious ideologies surrounding same-sex sexualities as depicted in selected Nigerian newspapers. Drawing on Fairclough’s approach to critical discourse analysis (CDA), the study explores how language is used to construct, represent, and perpetuate specific ideologies regarding same-sex sexualities within the Nigerian context. A total of 50 opinion articles on same-sex sexualities were randomly sampled from five purposively selected Nigerian newspapers (Vanguard, The Punch, The Guardian, Nigerian Tribune and The Sun). The newspapers were selected based on their preponderant coverage of the discourses on same-sex sexualities between 2013 and 2015. Data were subjected to critical discourse analysis. Findings reveal that different lexical strategies, such as lexical relations, repetition, negative evaluative adjectives foreground pro- and anti-culturalist ideologies as well as religious fundamentalism and secularism. The study reveals the conflicting ideologies surrounding same-sex sexualities in the Nigerian context.

Realization of semantic and lexical instances in online hard news representation: a study through attitude and graduation analysis

The study explores media discourse through the lexical and semantic realization of text. For that, online hard news on the disruption of tension due to targeting Iranian Major General Qassem Soleimani as the Commander of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) on 3rd January 2020 in Iraq was selected from “Tehran Times” and “USA Today.” The “Appraisal Analysis” of Martin and White under “Attitude” and “Graduation” resources were employed to analyze the lexical strategies. The dataset comprises 322 words from the “Tehran Times” and 1727 words from “USA Today.” The study reveals that both newspapers have presented their views via social actors (Irani President Rouhani & U.S. President Donald Trump) as an external voice. President Rouhani presented in negative invoked instances with determination to respond in “Tehran Times.” At the same time, “USA Today” portrayed Donald Trump on a positive with correct measures as the need of an hour. The findings suggest “USA Today” only had inscribed judgment and invoked stances. Both newspapers had represented “subjectivity” along with “objectivity” by presenting social actors’ positive image in their local newspapers through direct speech that showed the ideological orientation of newspapers.

Describing smell: A comparative analysis of active smell lexicon in Estonian and German

Abstract This article reports on smell lexicon in two genetically unrelated languages, Estonian and German with the primary aim to compare cognitively salient and actively used smell terms and preferred lexical strategies. Two consecutive field experiments were carried out by interviewing 43 native speakers of both languages. The results are discussed against the background of anthropologically and cognitively oriented linguistics, where both languages can be told to share the typical features of WEIRD languages. The results of comparisons demonstrate that despite the genetic unrelatedness of Estonian and German, the active and cognitively salient smell vocabulary of the speakers of the two languages occurred as structured by the same principles of evaluative connotations and multisensoriality of odour lexicon.

Kadın Dergilerinde Toplumsal Cinsiyet İdeolojilerine Yönelik Bir Söylem Çözümlemesi

Women’s magazines are a means to create and reproduce women identity through emphasizing particular topics like fashion, beauty, love and horoscopes. In this sense, they convey some ideological messages – mostly cultural and gender-biased. Using critical discourse analysis method of Van Dijk (2001), this study intends to compare the social and linguistic patterns of love and sexual themes in horoscopes in women’s magazines in three cultures – English, German and Turkish. The data were collected from 2023 yearly horoscopes published in online women's magazines in three languages. The macro level analysis showed that in all three languages, horoscopes highlighted the place of love in women's self-improvement. German and English horoscopes reflected women as equal, independent, self-confident, and strong individuals, while Turkish horoscopes conveyed a more conservative perspective on love, partnership, and sexuality, emphasizing traditional gender roles and perpetuating stereotypes. Regarding the micro level of the analysis, left and right dislocation were frequently found in the German horoscopes, compared to Turkish and English ones. Questions and imperatives were mostly applied pattern in the three language. The employment of plural and singular forms of you pronoun and the lexical strategies used to address readers showed variations in Turkish, German, and English horoscopes.

Lexical density, lexical diversity, and lexical sophistication in simultaneously interpreted texts: a cognitive perspective.

Simultaneous interpreting (SI) is a cognitively demanding task that imposes a heavy cognitive load on interpreters. Interpreting into one's native (A language) or non-native language (B language), known as interpreting directionality, involves different cognitive demands. The cognitive requirements of simultaneous interpreting as well as interpreting directionality affect the interpreting process and product. This current study focused on the lexical features of a specially designed corpus of United Nations Security Council speeches. The corpus included non-interpreted speeches in US English (SubCorpusE), and texts interpreted from Chinese into English (A-into-B interpreted texts, SubCorpusC-E) and from Russian into English (B-into-A interpreted texts, SubCorpusR-E). Ten measures were used to analyze the lexical features of each subcorpus in terms of lexical density, lexical diversity, and lexical sophistication. The three subcorpora were regrouped into two pairs for the two research questions: SubCorpusR-E versus SubCorpusE and SubCorpusR-E versus SubCorpusC-E. The results showed that the interpreted texts in SubCorpusR-E exhibited simpler vocabulary features than the non-interpreted texts in SubCorpusE. In addition, compared with the A-into-B interpreted texts, the B-into-A interpreted texts demonstrated simplified lexical characteristics. The lexical features of the interpreted texts reflect that experienced simultaneous interpreters consciously adopt a simplified vocabulary approach to manage the cognitive load during simultaneous interpreting. This study provides new insights into the cognitive aspects of simultaneous interpreting, the impact of directionality, and the role of lexical strategies. These findings have practical implications for interpreter training, professional growth, and maintaining interpreting quality in diverse settings.

Cartographic architecture of DP

Abstract This article argues that DP in Hail Arabic is dominated by a C-domain, with C-layers, adducing empirical evidence from C-particles that interact with DP-internal material, ʔektɪn marking Topic and zad marking Contrastive Focus. Analyzing Construct State phenomenon, it is shown that ʔektɪn exclusively marks the possessum N. The possessor DP is marked without a C-particle. The mechanism of topicalizing the possessor DP is via co-indexation with a clitic φ-agreeing with the possessor DP, spelled out on the possessum N, where the possessum N functions as Lexical Strategy. Lexical Strategy though is not an option to topicalize the possessum N; the possessor DP cannot host a clitic that φ-agrees with the possessum N. Merger of ʔektɪn is thus motivated on morphological grounds. HA syntax instantiates a C-layer above DP, materialized by ʔektɪn which φ-agrees with the possessum N, what I term Functional Strategy. Further, a C-layer encoding Contrastive Focus headed by C-particle zad and a C-layer headed by the Shifting Topic C-particle ʕad, both of which mark by movement of the CS-internal constituent, merge above DP and co-occur with ʔektɪn. Within the backbones of the Cartographic approach, this phenomenon provides evidence that the DP architecture in HA is ripe for Split-DP analysis.

Transfer effects from language processing to visual attention dynamics: The impact of orthographic transparency.

The consistency between letters and sounds varies across languages. These differences have been proposed to be associated with different reading mechanisms (lexical vs. phonological), processing grain sizes (coarse vs. fine) and attentional windows (whole words vs. individual letters). This study aimed to extend this idea to writing to dictation. For that purpose, we evaluated whether the use of different types of processing has a differential impact on local windowing attention: phonological (local) processing in a transparent language (Spanish) and lexical (global) processing of an opaque language (English). Spanish and English monolinguals (Experiment 1) and Spanish-English bilinguals (Experiment 2) performed a writing to dictation task followed by a global-local task. The first key performance showed a critical dissociation between languages: the response times (RTs) from the Spanish writing to dictation task was modulated by word length, whereas the RTs from the English writing to dictation task was modulated by word frequency and age of acquisition, as evidence that language transparency biases processing towards phonological or lexical strategies. In addition, after a Spanish task, participants more efficiently processed local information, which resulted in both the benefit of global congruent information and the reduced cost of incongruent global information. Additionally, the results showed that bilinguals adapt their attentional processing depending on the orthographic transparency.

“Other” Strategies in the Eastern Caucasus (Part II): Typology

The paper describes expressions with the meaning ‘other’ in East Caucasian (Nakh-Daghestanian) languages. It is shown that four main strategies can be distinguished: i) the ‘one’-based strategy: ‘other’ includes the numeral ‘one’; ii) the demonstrative-based strategy: ‘other’ includes a demonstrative pronoun; iii) the mixed demonstrative-based + ‘one’- based strategy: ‘other’ includes both a demonstrative and the numeral ‘one’; and iv) the lexical strategy: ‘other’ is a dedicated adjective (pronoun), not necessarily derived from any other clearly discernable source.

Exploring the discourse of National Islam and Foreign Islam in the Australian press: A critical discourse analysis

Research conducted in some European countries and in the US has evidenced that there is a considerable difference in the media coverage of the National/Internal and Foreign/External Islam. Wherein, the latter is viewed and portrayed as a ‘greater threat’ to the mainstream society. This research endeavour is an effort to explore the predominant themes associated with the Foreign/External Islam in the editorials of the two selected Australian newspapers during January 1, 2016 to March 31, 2017. The researcher has employed Tuen A. van Dijk’s (1998) ideological square and lexicalization strategies from the Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) paradigm to examine the editorials of The Age and The Australian. The research findings are evident that in the coverage of the Foreign Islam both the selected newspapers have associated ‘conflict’, ‘violence’ and ‘collectivism’ with Islam and Muslims, however The Australian highlighted ‘women underrepresentation’ also. While covering the National Islam, The Age highlighted the ‘victimization’ and ‘prejudice’ to Muslims in Australia and stressed on the need of ‘understanding’, ‘harmony’ and ‘cohesion’. However, in The Australian the National Islam also received the same treatment as did the Foreign Islam in terms of themes.

Der Ausdruck von Aktionen im Deutschen und Italienischen

The article considers contrastive linguistics as a discipline that interacts closely with its intralinguistic and applied neighbouring disciplines. Within this framework, the online ontology IMAGACT presents an instrument that allows to contrast how languages lexicalize concrete actions (movements, modification of objects, setting relations among objects, etc.) in their verbs.
 German and Italian, the language pair considered here, differ typologically in their lexicalization strategies, which leads to difficulties in L2 acquisition, translation and lexicography. The article shows how the corpus-based IMAGACT database, which presents a set of 1010 actions in short films and links them to the appropriate verbs in 15 languages, provides help in these fields, and how it can at the same time empirically support contrastive-typological findings

Indigenizing say in Australian Aboriginal English

ABSTRACT The quotative system – lexical and morphosyntactic strategies for the direct reporting of speech and thought – has undergone a major transformation in mainstream World Englishes. Diachronic studies of quotation in Australian, British, Canadian and New Zealand English have all documented the same trends: a relatively stable system, using a small number of quotative variants, becomes more varied and complex, with a decline in the frequency of canonical say correlating with an increasing tendency to quote thought. This study, modelled on two foregoing sociolinguistic analyses of mainstream West Australian and New Zealand Englishes, examines quotation in recordings of 26 speakers of Australian Aboriginal English born between 1907 and 1961, including 16 oral histories. The results indicate that, unlike their settler English-speaking counterparts, these speakers have not only preserved the dominance of say: they have come to use it in distinctive ways, with semantic and grammatical innovations not observed in other varieties, in a system which serves to enrich narrative in a speaker population unique for its millennia of oral tradition. The findings suggest processes of grammaticalization and, observed alongside similar expanding frequency and versatility of be like in mainstream Englishes, may signal a parallel evolutive effect in a different language ecology.

Predictors of reading comprehension in deaf and hearing bilinguals

AbstractThis study investigates reading comprehension in adult deaf and hearing readers. Using correlational analysis and stepwise regression, we assess the contribution of English language variables (e.g., vocabulary comprehension, reading volume, and phonological awareness), cognitive variables (e.g., working memory (WM), nonverbal intelligence, and executive function), and language experience (e.g., language acquisition and orthographic experience) in predicting reading comprehension in deaf and hearing adult bilinguals (native American Sign Language (ASL) signers, non-native ASL signers, and Chinese–English bilinguals (CEB)), and monolingual (ML) controls. For all four groups, vocabulary knowledge was a strong contributor to reading comprehension. Monolingual English speakers and non-native deaf signers also showed contributions from WM and spoken language phonological awareness. In contrast, CEB showed contributions of lexical strategies in English reading comprehension. These cross-group comparisons demonstrate how the inclusion of multiple participant groups helps us to further refine our understanding of how language and sensory experiences influence reading comprehension.

Reflexões sobre a Gramática Discursivo-Funcional desde o autoisolamento

These reflections, composed during a period of self-isolation in Lisbon, begin by sketching how Functional Discourse Grammar (FDG) finds its origins in Simon Dik’s Functional Grammar and then briefly set out some of the major principles of FDG. The article focuses on an interpretation of FDG that, like Dik's model of verbal interaction, gives a prominent place to dialogue. The article deals with speakers’ discursive and lexical strategies, and ends with analysis of the relatively new phenomenon of self-prefixed verbs in English, culminating in a discussion of the new verb self-isolate (and also self-quarantine), created in the early days of the coronavirus crisis.

The attitude of Japanese newspapers in narrating disaster events: Appraisal in critical discourse study

During the event of disasters, news media are considered as the most visible of all parties involved in the response and rehabilitation. News media frame disaster events in certain attitudes, which then significantly resonates with the magnitude of the disaster. This research aims at investigating the attitude of the Japanese newspaper in narrating disaster events. Using the descriptive qualitative method, this study adopts the appraisal theory (Martin White, 2005) to embed and reveal appraisal in attitude features. The data were taken from three Japanese online newspapers reporting disaster events from 2019 to early 2020 with a total number of 100 articles. The findings show that of all attitudinal features, judgement is found as the most frequent source, followed by appreciation, and affect. It reveals newspapers’ tendency to emphasize the attitude and to construe the evaluation toward the events or phenomena rather than revealing the feelings or emotions experienced by the emoter(s). Interestingly, the distribution of the attitudinal implies the attitude of Japanese newspapers on reporting disaster which is highly emphasized on admiring, criticizing, praise, and condemning disaster events. It is also found that the negative features are slightly higher than the positive ones, but to refer to the phenomena rather than the victims. This lexical strategy proves that Japanese newspapers play the role in mainstreaming disaster management policy which focuses on the reconstruction and rehabilitation after disaster events.

Fan activism as discursive action: Poaching foreign television series for political satire in China

Critical discourse analysis (CDA) has proved insightful theoretically to analysing discourses and discursive practices of digital activism, especially political activism online. However, few studies have developed CDA analytical framework to unpack fan activism. The unique feature of fan activism lies in the discursive dynamics of transferring discursive resources from entertainment products to construct political discourse. Drawing on CDA, this research explicates the question of how global political TV fictions such as the Netflix TV series House of Cards (HoC) are appropriated as discursive resources for emergent online fan activism in local political contexts. Constrained by the authoritarian context, China’s fan activism usually showcases as discursive action. Using the TV series HoC as a lens, Chinese HoC fans engage in online fan activism through the discursive practice of political satire, playfully criticising contemporary China’s authoritarian politics. Conceptualised within CDA, this research attempts to make explicit a three-pronged analytical framework to unpack such discursive action. To use Western TV series to satirise Chinese contemporary politics, firstly, these fans map the fictional world of HoC onto China’s real-life politics by adopting the lexical strategy of mixing specific Chinese political terms and those taken from televisual and real American politics. Secondly, analogies between the content-world of HoC and contemporary Chinese politics are used to criticise contemporary Chinese political figures and scandals. Thirdly, to avoid Internet censorship, various discursive strategies are used by HoC fans to express their criticism subtly. By focusing on fan activism’s discursive dynamics, this study also forms a dialogue with the scholarship on China’s online activism.

The Effect of Lexical Inference Strategy Instruction on Saudi EFL learners’ Reading Comprehension

Lexical inference strategy plays an important role in increasing the level of reading comprehension of second or foreign language learners. Lexical inferencing as an efficient strategy to deal with unfamiliar words has attracted much attention in the comprehension literature. However, few studies on lexical inferencing have been conducted in an English as a foreign language (EFL) setting. To fill in the existing gap, the current study aimed at investigating the effect of lexical inferencing strategy instruction on Saudi EFL students’ reading comprehension. Additionally, it sought to identify the lexical inferencing strategies used by Saudi EFL learners while they were inferring unknown words in a text. Last, the current study attempted to find the relationship between lexical inference strategies and reading comprehension among Saudi EFL learners. Sixty students from the English department were selected based on their scores on the Oxford Placement Test, indicating that they were at intermediate levels of English proficiency. The participants were randomly divided into two groups: control and experimental (each consisting of 30 students). The participants in the control group received regular instruction, while the participants in the experimental group were treated using lexical inference strategies. The instruments used for collecting data were Oxford Placement Test, reading comprehension test, and think-aloud protocol. A pre-test and post-test were administered for control and experimental groups. The results of the independent samples t-test revealed that teaching inference skills had a significant effect on reading comprehension performance among EFL learners. The results of the paired t-tests showed that lexical inferencing instruction had a statistically significant effect on EFL learners’ reading comprehension development. The results of the Spearman correlation coefficient indicated that there was a significant relationship between lexical inferencing strategies and reading comprehension. The findings revealed the profound impact of lexical inferencing strategy instruction on the experimental group's performance in understanding reading text. Hence, it was concluded that lexical inferencing strategies were recommended to teach to improve the students’ reading comprehension performance.

Evidentiality and Mirativity in Traditional Negev Arabic: Morphological, Lexical and Discourse-Syntactic Strategies

Abstract Evidentiality as a typological category pertains to the source of information from the speaker's point of view without specifying it. This information may be conveyed as non-witnessed, inferred or surprising (mirative), among other possibilities. Evidentiality strategies and mirativity strategies are usually secondary extensions of other primary functions, such as resultativity. These strategies may be grammatical, syntactic or discursive, and I also include here lexical items with no other function. In Traditional Negev Arabic, as spoken by elderly Bedouin in Southern Israel, grammatical evidentiality was noted in 1992. Since then, however, evidentiality in Arabic has only been recognized in some peripheral dialects in contact with evidential languages. This study analyses the interaction and pragmatic-rhetorical effects of three strategies for evidentiality and mirativity in oral narrative texts in Traditional Negev Arabic: a grammatical strategy via the evidential participle; a lexical strategy via evidential particles; and a discourse-syntactic strategy via presentatives, combining visual evidence with mirativity and often inference. These strategies tend to cluster together in narrative peaks, creating saturated environments of high dramatic tension. Their complex interaction is highly effective in focalizing and achieving pragmatic and rhetorical ends in this under-studied and rapidly disappearing oral narrative tradition.

Exploring the Othering Discourse in the Australian Press

Recent research has revealed that the ‘othering’ discourse regarding Islam and Muslims has been increased significantly in the international media. Findings of the latest research provide considerable evidence that Islam and Muslims have been constructed and portrayed in a predominantly stereotypical and problematic way wherein they have been Othered by the Western media. This research paper is set to explore the existence of ‘othering’ discourse in the editorial coverage of Islam and Muslims-them by the two nominated Australian newspapers during January 1, 2016 to December 31, 2016. This study has incorporated lexicalization and ideological square strategies within the CDA paradigm proposed by Van Dijk to analyze the editorials published on Islam and Muslims in The Age and The Australian. The results have confirmed that both the newspapers have Othered Islam and Muslims in their editorial contents quite explicitly thus produced the ‘Othering’ discourse during the period under study.