Linguistic Arguments Research Articles

Private discrimination, public service and the constitution

ABSTRACT This paper enquires into the scope of protection against private discrimination under the Indian Constitution. I study three arguments on how to interpret Article 15(2). I consider the plain linguistic argument and reject it, since it has been abandoned by the Supreme Court to interpret provisions on discrimination. I then apply the “public actor” principle to Article 15(2) and argue that it is vulnerable to objections. Thirdly, I consider the “economic goods” principle by Gautam Bhatia and argue that it too is unsuitable. I then develop my positive proposal of “public service” introduced by the Supreme Court in the IMA case and discuss its components. For a service to qualify as public service, it must both be vital to social life and capable of securing dignity to the individual. I argue that this is the best interpretation of Article 15(2) and deserves to be treated as such.

Chromatic Metabasis through Poems by Wislawa Szymborska

Transition of the linguistic argument from a Wislawa Szymborska poem to one of graphic and chromatic expression.

“Come join us, and lose your accent!”

In this article, we examine the hierarchization of international students by bringing together perspectives of linguistic legitimacy and language ideologies. Our data stems from 26 accent reduction (AR) or accent modification (AM) course descriptions and websites from US universities. Based on their analysis, we discuss the socio-political implications of the phenomenon of these courses for international students and the ways in which language-based, particularly accent-based, arguments are used to create or reinforce different categories of students. We argue that while international students are presented as having different kinds of “comprehensibility problems” that AM/AR courses are claimed to remedy, the seemingly linguistic arguments that are used for marketing do not hold. Rather, what is presented as an accent issue actually seems to be an ideological one, drawing on the students’ ethnic or geographical origins, and thereby racializing the question of language proficiency.

СЪДЪРЖАНИЕТО НА КН. 1 ЗА 2021 Г. НА СПИСАНИЕ „БЪЛГАРСКИ ЕЗИК“ / ISSUE 1/2021 OF BALGARSKI EZIK

Issue 1/2021 of Balgarski ezik features three papers dealing with research presented at the Scientific Forum on Research Approaches in Bulgarian Lan¬guage Teaching (2019) organised by the Institute for Bulgarian Language at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences in the last five years. Katya Charalozova’s paper titled The Category of Verb Aspect. Metho-do¬logical Perspectives in Teaching Aspect in Bulgarian Schools Abroad discusses methodological aspects of teaching the category of aspect to students in Bul¬ga¬rian schools abroad from the standpoint of interpreting verb aspect as a semantic category. The author addresses the consistent representation of knowledge and the ways of introducing perfective and imperfective verbs and their forms in the different tenses. Luchia Antonova-Vasileva discusses The Need for Selection and Adaptation of Texts for People Studying Bulgarian Literature Abroad and presents success¬sful examples of adapted editions of works of literature for the purposes of lan¬guage teaching. The author proposes a model for text adaptation for the purpo¬ses of teaching Bulgarian language and literature to Bulgarians living abroad and illustrates it with an excerpt from Ivan Vazov’s novel Under the Yoke. The paper by Reni Manova and Elena Hadzhieva is dedicated to Intercul¬tural Communication and Equality between the Participants in the Dialogue in Bulgarian. On the basis of analysis of the peculiarities of intercultural commu¬nication as an exchange of culturally conditioned information between people from different cultures, the authors conclude that the significant stock of know¬ledge about the foreign culture and the skills to apply specific communicative behaviours adapted to the host culture are of crucial importance. Mariyana Tsibranska’s paper The World of Nuns according to Lexical Data compares data on female monasticism in two types of sources – hagiographic works and canon law – in order to bring monastic everyday life in the focus of cultural conceptology and the study of the diachronic linguistic picture of the world. Everyday life at the monastery is presented by means of specific ranges of concepts (mental constructs) and the respective linguistic nominations. The paper Is there a Pomak Dialect in Bulgaria? by Georgi Mitrinov pre¬sents a critical look at a study by Emel Balakchi titled The Rhodope Dialects. Their Richness and Magic. By adducing compelling linguistic arguments, the author disproves Balakchi’s attempt at representing the Rhodope dialects as Po¬mak dialects. Using numerous examples, Georgi Mitrinov demonstrates the lack of scientific competence and objectivity of the study under consideration in presenting the characteristic features of the Bulgarian Rhodope dialects. In her article The General Designations for a Female Relative in the Bulga¬rian Language Presented as Heteronymic Rows Tsvetelina Georgieva presents in a structured way the designations for female relatives excerpted from the Encyclopaedic Dictionary of Bulgarian Family and Kinship Lexis. Using an onomasiological approach, the author argues convincingly that the names for female relatives in Bulgarian are heteronyms and not synonyms.

Against epistemic absolutism

Epistemic absolutism is an orthodox view that propositional knowledge is an ungradable concept. Absolutism is primarily grounded in our ungradable uses of “knows” in ordinary language. This paper advances a thorough objection to the linguistic argument for absolutism. My objection consists of two parts. Firstly, arguments for absolutism provided by Jason Stanley and Julien Dutant will be refuted respectively. After that, two more general refutation-strategies will be proposed: (1) counterevidence against absolutism can be found in both English and non-English languages; (2) the linguistic argument for absolutism is subject to a methodological mistake as the linguistic usages of “knows” cannot accurately reflect its conceptual nature. Therefore, we should give epistemic gradualism, as opposed to absolutism, a more serious consideration.

“Taalverloedering” opnieuw bezien

This contribution focuses on the question of whether languages can become corrupted. In general, linguists take the view that there is no such thing as “language corruption”; in their opinion, languages only change. Laymen, on the other hand, are not convinced by the linguistic arguments. In this paper, the stand is taken that it is not surprising at all that laymen are not willing to accept the view taken by linguists, since linguists and laymen focus on two different issues. Linguists are primarily concerned with the linguistic development as such (and the rise of the new form), whereas laymen focus on the actual acceptability of the new form. In addition, of further importance to the resistance that many changes meet with is the fact that present-day Dutch is heavily influenced by its substandard varieties, i.e. those varieties which, in the eyes of many speakers, have little or no prestige.

El concepto de cambio en el discurso político en Twitter: el caso de Ciudadanos durante las Elecciones generales de 2016

Spanish political discourse has already been studied in numerous investigations from different linguistic perspectives, but it continues to be an area that arouses interest among linguists. Therefore, the objective of this work is to analyze the political discourse carried out by the Spanish party Ciudadanos on Twitter. In particular, we aim to find out how some of the linguistic argumentation mechanisms were used before the 2016 General Elections in Spain. Specifically, we will focus on analyzing evaluative language, operators, and argumentative connectors, considering the concepts of argumentation theory in language (Anscombre and Ducrot, 1994; Portolés 1998, 2001, 2004; Fuentes Rodríguez and Alcaide Lara, 2007) and the typology of axiological language (Puzynina 1992).

Jeszcze w kwestii genezy białoruskiego Tristana

The article is an attempt to refer to an ongoing discussion on the genesis of Old-Belarusian Tristan that has been preserved in the 16th-century Raczynski Codex in Poznan. The author shares an opinion that there was a South Slavic tie between Belarusian and Italian texts and gives linguistic arguments supporting this view. Lexical analysis of the text reveals words of South Slavic provenance that have been found in various Balcan languages. The group of so-called serbisms (Serbian vocabulary) known in other publications has been completed with new Balkan lexical elements certified in the vocabulary of Belarusian translation.

Welsh Chwant ‘Desire’ and Trisantona ‘River Trent’ in Tacitus

The article deals with the ancient name of the longest river solely in England, the Trent, flowing past Stoke-on-Trent and Nottingham to the North Sea. In a passage that has raised debate and led to a number of misinterpretations in literature, Tacitus recorded it as (emended) Trisantona, which has been explained from Old Irish sét ‘course’ and Welsh hynt ‘path’ as ‘trespasser, one that overflows’ (of a stream liable to flood). Trisantona or the like would be the name of other rivers, including the Tarrant in Dorset and Tarannon or Trannon in mid-Wales. Yet the interpretation ‘trespasser’ has grave phonetic and semantic defects. They are removed by a new etymology on the basis of Old Irish sét ‘treasure’ (Modern Irish seoid) and Welsh chwant ‘desire’ from hypothetical Common Celtic *suanto-. The paper provides textual, historical and linguistic arguments supporting this etymological interpretation. Trisantona or (preferably) reconstructed *Trisuantona (from *Tresuantona) would thus (instead of ‘trespasser, flooder’) mean ‘she of great desire, she who is much loved.’ The implication is that the Trent (like the English rivers Dee ‘goddess’ or Brent ‘she who is exalted’) was regarded as a Celtic female deity, a passionate and perhaps dangerous entity.

Irish Speakers and their Experience of Emigration to North America

In historical work on emigration from Ireland to the New World, it has become widely accepted that Irish speakers were more passive and fatalistic than English speakers, and that they felt that emigration was a form of exile. This article challenges this assumption. In the first part, it is shown that the linguistic argument for this claim lacks both theoretical and empirical foundations. The evidence for Irish, it is shown, does not indicate any passivity on the part of its speakers. In the second part of the article, accounts of life in America by Irish speakers are drawn upon. On the whole, these suggest that Irish speakers, like English speakers, had a wide range of experiences in their new environment. However, they fail to show that language played a significant role in any feelings of alienation among emigrants.

Caucasian Albania and the “Gates” in the Caucasus: Caspian, Albanian and Alanian

The article dedicated to the Caspian, Albanian and Alanian "gates" in the Caucasus continues the series of publications by the authors on the topic of the historical onomastics of Caucasian Albania. The focus is on the problem of mixing the names of the Caucasian "gates" - the most important mountain passes on the main routes of movement in antiquity, due to the common origin of the names Aluan and Alan from the old root *’äle- meaning“king, prince, lord”. This problem, typical for sources of various origins - Greco-Roman, Armenian, Arab-Persian and others - is solved on the basis of these sources themselves, including using data from the Albanian palimpsest, in which the word alye is directly recorded in the meaning of ‘senior; ruler'. An equally important task is the closely related interpretation of the contexts of reference and the possible localization of the "gates" in the Caucasus. The analysis of the sources made it possible to clarify some of the prevailing views on the locations of mountain passes, to provide additional source study and linguistic arguments to confirm the change in specific localizations during the time of fixing the names of the "gates" in historical writings. Caucasian etymologies have been developed for the words "Chor" and "Caspian". The use of the entire set of data, including the names of the dominant mountains with the etymologically the same word in phrases, shows the productivity of this model for constructing geographical names and determines the historical boundaries of the distribution of the languages of the North Caucasian language family.

Szempontok Anonymus gesztájának helyesírás-történeti feldolgozásához

Considerations for the Study of Anonymous’ Gesta From the Perspective of Historical Orthography Anonymous’ Gesta Hungarorum has been studied by both historians and linguists for a long time. Both disciplines have produced an extensive set of scholarly publications relying on a great variety of approaches that study the gesta and its mysterious author. I examine the Hungarian remnants (and Latin language elements of Hungarian relevance) of the gesta from the perspective of historical linguistics. In this paper I focus on the aspect of historical orthography more specifically. In my study I start out from the dating of the linguistic record at the turn of the 12th and 13th centuries which is claimed to be most probable by linguists and it facilitates my work that there are several important linguistic records available from this age that are contemporaries of the gesta and which are clearly authentic and include abundant Hungarian language data. The certificate of confirmation of crusaders of Székesfehérvár from 1193 and the Tihany Survey of 1211 are the primary sources in this respect but the historical-orthographic features of the Funeral Sermon and Prayer may also be used in the comparison. Although the genre differences between charters and the narrative historical work obviously result in a different source value in terms of legal authenticity and thus also “onomastic authenticity”, research in historical linguistics in the broader sense of the term is only slightly influenced by this circumstance (or not at all). Meanwhile, I also compare the orthography in Anonymous’ gesta with the general orthographic attributes of the era(s) that are seen as possible dates for the creation of the gesta (around 1217 and in the 1160s-70s) so as to provide additional linguistic arguments for one or the other possible date. After the articulation of the findings of my research, I finally formulate general lessons learned that are related to the source value of different genres of linguistic records (including gestas) from the Árpád Era in terms of historical orthography, while also shedding light on certain details of contemporary written culture.

ПИТАННЯ СЛОВ’ЯНО-CХІДНОРОМАНСЬКОЇ МОВНОЇ ВЗАЄМОДІЇ В ІНТЕРПРЕТАЦІЇ ПРОФЕСОРА С. В. СЕМЧИНСЬКОГО

The article is devoted to the problems of the theory of language interaction and, in particular, to the ambiguous issue of Slavic-Eastern Romance language interaction in a way it had been interpretated by Doctor of Philology, Professor Stanislav Semchinsky. Due to the lack of significant linguistic difference between such interlinguistic terms as substratum and superstratum, as well as to the East Slavic character of autochthonous elements of the Romanian language, Stanislav Semchinsky practically recognizes the Dacian substratum as Proto-Slavic, though he was not able to declare this position openly because of lack of scientific data. Stanislav Volodymyrovych critically evaluates the efforts of some Romanian scholars of the 19th ̶ the first half of the 20th centuries in denying the “huge, total, general and comprehensive” Slavic influence on the Eastern Romance ethnic group, and puts forward a number of convincing linguistic arguments in support of the significant Slavic influence on the Romanian language, which might be observed at almost all levels of its language system: -o for the vocative forms of feminine nouns, the names of the numerals of the first and second tens, the numeral sutӑ ̶ “hundred”, borrowed from the Slavs during the existence of the reduced sound ъ). Not denying the Romance character of the Romanian language in a whole, Stanislav Semchynsky considers the “Latin character” of the Romanians somewhat exaggerated and calls for a careful study of the Slavic contribution to each of the Eastern Romance languages. The activity of Doctor of Philology, Professor Stanislav Semchynsky in the field of studying the nature of the Slavic-Eastern Romance languages interaction was not only of great academic significance: it had been building the bridges of friendship between the Ukrainian and Romanian peoples.

Urindogermanische Lehnwörter in den uralischen und finno-ugrischen Grundsprachen

Zusammenfassung This paper contains a critical evaluation of the alleged Proto- Indo-European loanwords in Proto-Uralic and Proto-Finno-Ugric and argues that most of them cannot be upheld. It is also argued that currently it is not possible to choose between different scenarios for the remaining cases, i.e. sheer coincidence, borrowing from Proto-Indo-European, borrowing from a precursor of Tocharian, and a combination of any of these. Incidentally, this result also means that these words cannot be used for the location of the Proto-Indo-European homeland in the steppe area, which thus loses its single trustworthy linguistic argument.

Language, Ideology and Identity in Post-Partition Pakistan in the Light of Bausani’s Notion of ‘Islamic Languages’

Abstract The present contribution approaches the linguistic ideas that permeated the post-Partition Pakistani language debate in the light of Bausani’s notion of ‘Islamic languages’. This will help us to try to make sense of the occasionally naive, at times apparently nonsensical, and often non-scientific linguistic arguments that characterized the political discourse of the time in an attempt to clarify the implicit assumptions and ideological charge behind those statements. Beyond the official discussions, we will seek to understand how Muslim communities in the area developed common cultural representations concerning their sociolinguistic identities and conceptualized affinity and diversity among their languages. Finally, we will look at the particular case of Bengali, a language that even in the post-Partition period was not partitioned into two distinct language varieties (one for the Muslims and one for the Hindus) and that thus constitutes, in the context of the Indian subcontinent, a sort of ‘exception that proves the rule’.

Dimensões argumentativas e interacionais da Linguística Textual em ambientes digitais

Esta resenha se propõe a apresentar os conceitos fundamentais discutidos na live intitulada Argumentação e interação em Linguística Textual. A partir de interfaces entre a Linguística Textual e outras abordagens científicas, aspectos como texto, gênero, interação e modalidades argumentativas foram discutidos, em convergência com os novos modos de argumentar em contextos digitais. Apoiadas em autores como Adam (2019), Amossy (2017), Paveau (2015) e Charaudeau (2015), as debatedoras da mesa redonda conseguiram associar os modos de argumentar e de interagir em contextos digitais a critérios como o plano de texto e o contrato de comunicação. Desse modo, a discussão empreendida pelas professoras durante a mesa redonda envolveu aspectos argumentativos, discursivos e interacionais, enfatizando a importância de se trabalhar com uma interdisciplinaridade focada nos atuais estudos em Linguística Textual.

Reconstructing Arguments from Noisy Text

Social media are of paramount importance to public discourse. RANT aims to contribute methods and formalisms for extracting, representing, and processing arguments from noisy text found in social media discussions, using a large corpus of pre-referendum Brexit tweets as a running case study. We identify recurring linguistic argumentation patterns in a corpus-linguistic analysis and formulate corresponding corpus queries to extract arguments automatically. Given the huge amount of social media data available, our approach aims at high precision at the possible price of low recall. Argumentation patterns are directly associated with logical patterns in a dedicated formalism and accordingly, individual arguments are directly parsed as logical formulae. The logical formalism for argument representation features a broad range of modalities capturing real-life modes of expression. We cast this formalism as a family of instance logics in the generic framework of coalgebraic logic and complement it by a flexible framework to represent relationships between arguments; including standard relations like attack and support but also relations extracted from metadata. Some relations are inferred from the logical content of individual arguments. We are in the process of developing suitable generalizations of various extension semantics for argumentation frameworks combined with corresponding algorithmic methods to allow for the automated retrieval of large-scale argumentative positions.

Formal dialogue models for argumentation in education and linguistics

This paper offers a very short introduction to formal dialogue systems of the kind currently used in artificial intelligence and argumentation theory and applies them to some types of dialogue that are especially important in education. Persuasion dialogue is contrasted with deliberation dialogue. The fundamental problem of how to define relevance in such systems is briefly explained and discussed.

Facts Matter


 
 
 Although D. Petrovich’s recent book The World’s Oldest Alphabet: Hebrew as the Language of the Proto-Consonantal Script advances several claims about the origin of the alphabet and biblical history, its main arguments are linguistic. In particular, Petrovich identifies the language of the early alphabetic inscriptions as Hebrew as part of a larger argument for the historicity of the biblical Exodus tradition. In this review essay, I will summarize and critique Petrovich’s linguistic arguments. Along the way, I will consider two important questions in the classification of the Canaanite languages
 
 

Millet vs rice: an evaluation of the farming/language dispersal hypothesis in the Korean context.

The 'farming/language dispersal hypothesis' was originally developed to explain the spread of the Neolithic economy and material culture into Europe. Recently, this hypothesis has been applied towards explaining the dispersal and divergence of East Asian languages. However, interpretations depend on what prehistoric cultivar is chosen by linguists as having been related with the spread of language. In understanding the appearance of the proto-Koreanic and proto-Japonic languages in Korea, millet and rice, which appeared in Korea around 3500 and 1300 BCE, respectively, have been emphasized by linguists. We assess these linguistic arguments. We first review how European archaeologists have understood the spread of farming into Europe, where the farming/language dispersal hypothesis was originally developed, and how archaeology has wrestled with the issues of diffusion and migration. Then we move on to evaluating linguistic hypotheses about the dispersal and split of proto-Koreanic and proto-Japonic. Our evaluation of the 'millet hypothesis' and the 'rice hypothesis' suggests that rice is a more plausible candidate for explaining the dispersal of proto-Koreanic to Korea. Meanwhile, viewing the introduction of slender daggers to Korea as another dispersal of language to Korea needs more scrutiny.