Linguistic Hypothesis Research Articles

Pirate English of the Caribbean and Atlantic trade routes in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: Linguistic hypotheses based on socio-historical data

Pirate English has been academically overlooked and historically marginalized since its inception in the seventeenth century. Yet it was a formative variety in port settlements of the Caribbean, Europe, West Africa and the Americas and likely to have influenced creoles and dialects of littoral regions. However, there is little reliable data on which to base a diachronic analysis due to the nature of the outlaw speech community that was mostly illiterate. Given the difficulty of compiling empirical data for analysis, this paper applies a model that uses sociolinguistic and socio-historical data in order to determine hypothetical linguistic features in contact-induced dialect formation. Resulting hypotheses about the nature of Pirate English include maximal variability in the early stages a high-representation of male forms significant borrowing from non-prestigious English varieties and input from multiple adstrates of equal prestige. Findings also indicate the apparent emergence of Pirate English in the early eighteenth century through contact between young, male maritime workers and settlers in port societies that was seemingly followed by a period of intense leveling and unnatural transmission in extended communication networks.

Genetic insights into the functional elements of language

Language disorders cover a wide range of conditions with heterologous and overlapping phenotypes and complex etiologies harboring both genetic and environmental influences. Genetic approaches including the identification of genes linked to speech and language phenotypes and the characterization of normal and aberrant functions of these genes have, in recent years, unraveled complex details of molecular and cognitive mechanisms and provided valuable insight into the biological foundations of language. Consistent with this approach, we have reviewed the functional aspects of allelic variants of genes which are currently known to be either causally associated with disorders of speech and language or impact upon the spectrum of normal language ability. We have also reviewed candidate genes associated with heritable speech and language disorders. In addition, we have evaluated language phenotypes and associated genetic components in developmental syndromes that, together with a spectrum of altered language abilities, manifest various phenotypes and offer details of multifactorial determinants of language function. Data from this review have revealed a predominance of regulatory networks involved in the control of differentiation and functioning of neurons, neuronal tracks and connections among brain structures associated with both cognitive and language faculties. Our findings, furthermore, have highlighted several multifactorial determinants in overlapping speech and language phenotypes. Collectively this analysis has revealed an interconnected developmental network and a close association of the language faculty with cognitive functions, a finding that has the potential to provide insight into linguistic hypotheses defining in particular, the contribution of genetic elements to and the modular nature of the language faculty.

Quantitative methods in syntax/semantics research: A response to Sprouse and Almeida (2013)

Sprouse and Almeida (S&A) present quantitative results that suggest that intuitive judgments utilised in syntax research are generally correct in two-condition comparisons: the sentence type that is presented as “good/grammatical” is usually rated better than the sentence type that is presented as “bad/ungrammatical” in controlled experiments. Although these evaluations of intuitive relative judgments are valuable, they do not justify the use of nonquantitative linguistic methods. We argue that objectivity is a universal value in science that should be adopted by linguistics. In addition, the reliability measures that S&A report are not sufficient for developing sophisticated linguistic theories. Furthermore, quantitative methods yield two additional benefits: consistency of judgments across many pairs of judgments; and an understanding of the relative effect sizes across sets of judgments. We illustrate these points with an experiment that demonstrates five clear levels of acceptability. Finally, we observe that S&A's experiments—where only two authors evaluated 10 years' worth of journal articles and one standard textbook within a few months—further emphasise one of our critical original points: conducting behavioural experiments is in many respects easy and fast with the advent of online research tools like Amazon's Mechanical Turk. Given the current ease of performing quantitative experiments (using a platform like Mechanical Turk) and the clear limitations of not doing so, linguistic hypotheses should be evaluated quantitatively whenever it is feasible.

Using metaphorical items for describing personality constructs

Our research perspective can be seen as an extension of standard linguistic hypothesis, focusing on the metaphorical expressions used in spoken language and their potential to describe personality. The aim of the study was to demonstrate that metaphorical expressions can be used as descriptors of personality. The subsequent objective was to develop personality measures using metaphorical items. In the first phase we focused on developing a metaphorical anxiety scale and in the second one on assembling a large list of metaphors used to describe personality traits. The studies demonstrated reasonable psychometric properties of the metaphorical anxiety scale and also a number of significant correlations between metaphors and personality constructs, so, as collected data suggest, metaphorical expressions can be used to describe personality traits and to formulate items for personality assessment instruments.

A quantitative investigation of the imperative-and-declarative construction in English

The imperative-and-declarative (IaD) construction in English (e.g. Study hard and you will pass the class ) has two distinct readings: one that has the semantics of a conditional and additionally the meaning of an imperative, and one that has only the semantics of a conditional, with no imperative meaning. There are two general kinds of syntactic approaches in the literature for analyzing this construction: one that treats the two interpretations as underlyingly syntactically the same, and one that treats them as two distinct syntactic constructions. This short report presents the results of an acceptability-judgment experiment that was designed to inform the debate between the two kinds of approaches. The two types of IaDs were observed to behave differently with respect to two phenomena we evaluated, suggesting either that they should be treated as grammatically distinct, or that a theory that treats them as grammatically the same must give a pragmatic account of the differences. Furthermore, because the pattern of data that we observed was a statistical interaction between two factors—a pattern of data that is not detectable without quantitative measurements—the results provide compelling evidence for the need for quantitative evaluations of linguistic hypotheses.

Independence claims in linguistics

AbstractEmpirical work in linguistics often puts forward claims about the independence of two phenomena as substantive hypotheses. But, independence is always an assumption in the framework of empirical hypothesis testing, meaning independence claims are not empirically verifiable. Hence, they need to be regarded differently from truly empirical hypotheses within the substantive theories of which they are part. In this paper, a number of independence claims are illustrated, alongside their problematic consequences for empirically guided theorizing. Recommendations are made regarding the use of independence that should facilitate the empirical testing of substantive linguistic hypotheses.

Multiple Time Scales Recurrent Neural Network for Complex Action Acquisition

This paper presents novel results of complex action learning experiments based on the use of extended multiple timescales recurrent neural networks (MTRNN). The experiments were carried out with the iCub humanoid robot, as a model of the developmental learning of motor primitives as the basis of sensorimotor and linguistic compositionality. The model was implemented through the Aquila cognitive robotics toolkit, which supports the CUDA architecture and makes use of massively parallel GPUs (graphics processing units). The results presented herein show that the model was able to learn and successfully reproduce multiple behavioural sequences of actions in an object manipulation task scenario using large-scale MTRNNs. This forms the basis on ongoing experiments on action and language compositionality

Dialectverlies en dialectnivellering in Nederlands-Duitse grensdialecten

Sociodialectological research on border dialects, viz. vernaculars spoken in localities near a political or national boundary, has some advantages over traditional dialect studies – especially when of a more rarely found cross-border design. Depending on the language situation on each side of the border, i.e. in two separate diasystems (cf. Goossens 2000a: 335), one observes constellations with different, similar or identical standard languages roofing equally different, similar or identical dialects, and this in a small-scale setting, i.e. in often comparable extralinguistic conditions. The reported study investigates functional and structural dialect change at the Dutch-German border (Low Saxon dialect area), using proficient but all the same “natural” dialect speakers (N= 40) aged under 45 or over 55. In this article the outcome of the main linguistic hypotheses is discussed, presenting comparatively less structural levelling (Røyneland 2010: 261) in the German dialect. Functional loss, however, is proven to be smaller in the Dutch dialect. These findings are assumed to be connected with the varying standard-substandard constellations in the Dutch and German diasystems and their differing interference potentials. It is shown that dialect loss and regiolectization, even when attested in nearly identical dialects, evolve dissimilarly on both sides of the border. Next to this the article also provides an overview of the amount and quality of levelling products found in the informants’ speech.

Reweaving a Grammar for Wambaya

This paper presents a case study in grammar engineering for linguistic hypothesis testing, focusing on the treatment of second position auxiliaries in an HPSG grammar for Wambaya. A detailed comparison of two versions of this grammar highlights the interconnectedness of linguistic phenomena, the model-dependence of linguistic analyses, and the value of computational support in calculating the consequences of differing analytical choices.

What lies beneath?: Verbal report in interlanguage requests in English

The present study investigates the role of concurrent and retrospective verbal report in exploring the cognitive processes of six pairs of advanced ESL learners engaged on a written discourse completion task eliciting status-unequal requests in English. Qualitative analysis of the concurrent data indicate that (i) social contextual aspects of the discourse situation influenced pragmalinguistic and sociolinguistic choices in the planning phase and (ii) language-related episodes (Swain & Lapkin 1995, 2001, Storch 2008) evidenced participants' negotiation of lexical and grammatical choices in planning the requests. Metalinguistic data from the retrospective interviews indicate that (i) participants thought in both L1 & L2: there was evidence that L1 was employed in planning the organisation of dis- course and in lexical search strategies, and (ii) participants experienced difficulty with the methodological requirement of a one-turn response in the written task and in recalling their linguistic hypotheses in the concurrent phase. The paper suggests that combining a form of paired verbal report with a written elicitation instrument in interlanguage pragmatics research may provide insights into the cognitive processes underlying the sociocultural and sociolinguistic choices in advanced L2 learners' written speech act production and could be used more extensively in such research.

Interjections in the Performance of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice

Three data sets of primary and secondary interjections were compared: (1) the original interjections written into the text of Jane Austen's (1813/1994) novel Pride and prejudice; (2) the interjections read aloud in commercial recordings by six professional readers of the entire text of the novel; (3) the interjections spoken by actresses and actors in the film production (Birtwistle and Langton in Pride and prejudice [TV Mini-series]. London: BBC TV, 1995) whose script, despite modest selectiveness, adheres most closely of all film versions to Austen's original text. Overall, the respective frequencies of occurrence of interjections were 136 < 141 < 398. Of the 136 interjections in Austen's printed text, 96% were attributable to women's roles, particularly Elizabeth Bennet and her mother. The second of these figures (141) is an average across all six readers. Hence, readers added a very modest number of interjections. But the actresses and actors added a large number of interjections. The dramatic oral expressiveness of the film performance is largely carried by and reflected in the actresses' and to a lesser extent in the actors' use of these primary interjections. These findings can well be related to Nübling's (Zeitschrift für Semiotik 26:11-45, 2004, Duden: Die Grammatik (pp 573-640). Mannheim: Dudenverlag, 2005) hypothesis of a spectrum of interjectional expressivity. But Ameka's (J Pragmat 18:101-118, 1992) linguistic hypothesis that pauses will both precede and follow interjections was once again found to be empirically groundless. A large percentage (96%) of the interjections in the film performance served the function of initializing various units of discourse, either after a pause before articulatory phrases, or before a sentence and/or turn. Both the emotional and initiating functions of interjections are characteristic of conceptual and medial orality rather than of conceptual and medial literacy. Accordingly, their usage throws further light on a theory of spontaneous spoken discourse.

Language Acquisition in Creolization and, Thus, Language Change: Some Cartesian‐ Uniformitarian Boundary Conditions

This essay prescribes some broad ‘Cartesian-Uniformitarian’ boundary conditions for linguistic hypotheses about Creole formation. These conditions make constructive connections between Creole studies, historical linguistics and language-acquisition research. Here ‘Cartesian’ has a mentalist sense, as in Chomsky (1966): I consider the formation of so-called ‘Creole’ languages to be ultimately reducible to the creation, in certain sociohistorical contexts, of certain idiolects (i.e., individual internal, or ‘I-’, languages) in the minds of the ‘first “Creole” speakers’. To avoid circularity, my use of the term ‘Creole’ in the phrase ‘first “Creole” speakers’ combines some of its original ethno-historical senses: I use the word ‘Creole’, in this particular context, to refer to the non-indigenous people of African or European descent that were born and raised in the colonial New World, in opposition to those that were born and raised in the Old Worlds of Africa and Europe. The term ‘Uniformitarian’ evokes Neogrammarian approaches to language change, as advocated, for example, by Osthoff and Brugmann (1878) and Paul (1890). It summarizes my fundamental working assumption that no sui generis or exceptional linguistic processes need to be postulated in order to explain the creation of these languages that have come to be labeled ‘Creole’: these languages were created by the same psycholinguistic mechanisms that are responsible for the creation of (I-)languages, and for linguistic diachronic patterns, everywhere else. Therefore, ‘Creole’ languages cannot be distinguished a priori from non-‘Creole’ languages on any linguistic-theoretical criteria – and ‘Creole’ languages can be genetically classified by the Comparative Method, on a par with non-‘Creole’ languages. Such assumptions go against popular claims about Creole genesis such as those in, for example, Thomason and Kaufman (1988), Lefebvre (1998) and Bickerton (1999). In establishing these Cartesian-Uniformitarian guidelines, I correct category mistakes that fail to distinguish explanations that apply to I-languages from explanations that apply to E(xternal)-languages and other social-group phenomena that I-languages are implicated in. One such category mistake concerns the ontology and time course of innovations in specific I-languages vs. their spread across populations of I-languages and into E-language communal norms. Then I investigate the possible – and impossible – contributions of first-language acquisition and second-language acquisition to ‘creolization’. In particular, I take my cues from: (i) studies of language- and dialect-contact situations where children and adults seem to play observably distinct roles; and (ii) recent discoveries about instances of Sign Language acquisition and creation where the Primary Linguistic Data seem remarkably restricted. As for elucidating the limits on the restructuring capacities of children and adults, and their respective contributions to language creation and change, it is epistemologically safer to investigate instances of diachronic development that are more recent than the now unobservable early stages of ‘creolization’. Throughout this essay, I use the term ‘creolization’ strictly as an a-theoretical abbreviation for the longer phrase ‘development of these languages that, for sociohistorical reasons, have been labeled “Creole” ’. In the perspective sketched here, creolization is just another instance of language change – or ‘language evolution’, in Mufwene's (2001, 2008) sense – the investigation of which is to shed light on Universal Grammar.

Querying Linguistic Trees

Large databases of linguistic annotations are used for testing linguistic hypotheses and for training language processing models. These linguistic annotations are often syntactic or prosodic in nature, and have a hierarchical structure. Query languages are used to select particular structures of interest, or to project out large slices of a corpus for external analysis. Existing languages suffer from a variety of problems in the areas of expressiveness, efficiency, and naturalness for linguistic query. We describe the domain of linguistic trees and discuss the expressive requirements for a query language. Then we present a language that can express a wide range of queries over these trees, and show that the language is first-order complete over trees.

Language as a means of objective world reflection

One of the most attractive, yet contradictory, concepts of modern linguistics is discussed. Linguistic selectiveness is defined as a concept that corrects the linguistic relativity hypothesis.

Choice of Words in Doctor–Patient Communication: An Analysis of Health-Related Internet Sites

As more and more doctor–patient communication is happening online, it is important to know how doctors adapt to their patients' knowledge level and ensure that they make themselves understood in this medium. This article examined question–answer sets from health archives to see whether medical experts adapted their answers to the way laypersons verbalized their concerns. The authors analyzed word use and further stylistic variables in question–answer pairs to test 2 hypotheses: (a) the lexical entrainment hypothesis predicting that experts would entrain to patients' word use; and (b) the linguistic copresence hypothesis predicting that the more medical terminology used by the patient, the more demanding experts' answers would be. Results provided evidence that the patients' choice of words impacts the experts' answers. Practical implications are discussed for improving mutual understanding in online health advice.

June Luchjenbroers (ed.): Cognitive Linguistics Investigations: Across Languages, Fields and Philosophical Boundaries.

This edited book presents fourteen studies in cognitive linguistics, with an introduction by the editor. The origin of the book is a workshop in 1998 ‘on a range of research topics of specific interest to the cognitive linguistics paradigm’ (p. ix). Similar editorial comments suggest that the book is best approached as a series of case studies in, or about, cognitive linguistics. In this review I will focus on the claim that each of these studies can be said to make about cognitive linguistics. The first section of the volume (entitled ‘Cultural models and conceptual mappings’) opens with a chapter by Gary Palmer, who asks when cognitive linguistics becomes cultural. He presents two case studies, one on Tagalog voice and another on Shona noun classifiers, to argue that grammar is driven by cultural schemata, including scenarios and categories. However, scenarios and categories being cognitive entities, too, this raises the issue of how cultural schemata relate to, or are demarcated from, conceptual schemata. To me, it is therefore not entirely clear yet when, or how, cognitive linguistics becomes cultural. Seana Coulson and Todd Oakley then present two case studies in conceptual blending. They analyse two pieces of persuasive discourse to demonstrate how blending theory can help to describe the intended meanings of these texts. This is interpreted as also revealing the mental operations required to turn readers into a persuaded and compliant audience. The implicit claim about (this particular brand of) cognitive linguistics is therefore that it is a useful analytical tool for the analysis of persuasive discourse. Fictive motion is the topic of the next chapter, by Teenie Matlock. She presents an experimental study to test the basic prediction about the mental processing of fictive motion sentences, that they involve mental simulation of motion. The findings are supportive of the prediction, suggesting that this particular cognitive linguistic hypothesis may be upheld and used in further research on the relation between language and cognition. Gesture is the topic of the next chapter, by editor June Luchjenbroers. She examines the nature and function of gesture in the physical space in front of the speaker for the creation of mental spaces in on-going discourse. The claim for cognitive linguistics that may be derived from this study, I think, is that it should not ignore gesture and needs to pay more attention to it if cognitive linguistics wishes to engage with ‘live’ language use. Luchjenbroers’ chapter is the last chapter of the first part of the book. I am not sure whether the cultural theme is sufficiently prominent in the topics of these chapters to warrant it as highlighting a specific perspective.

Differential diagnosis of seizure disorders: A conversation analytic approach

“Taking the history” remains the most important diagnostic tool in the assessment of people who have lost consciousness. The distinction of epileptic and non-epileptic seizures (NES) is particularly difficult and relevant. Whereas epileptic seizures can usually be controlled with antiepileptic drugs, NES are considered an expression of psychosocial distress and may improve with psychotherapy. The recording of typical seizures with simultaneous video and electroencephalography (EEG) can produce almost complete certainty about the diagnosis but access to video-EEG is limited, the test is very expensive and often video-EEG fails to capture typical seizures. A German research group used conversation analysis (CA) to examine patients’ descriptions of seizures to their doctors. They found that certain linguistic and interactional features clustered together and that these clusters were usually concordant with particular medical diagnoses. This study was undertaken to establish whether the observations made in German-speaking patients could be replicated in English speakers presenting to a less specialised epilepsy service. The findings presented here are based on transcripts of interviews with 11 patients admitted to a neurology ward in England because their consultant felt unable to make a clear diagnosis clinically. Transcripts were only analysed if the diagnosis of epilepsy or NES had been proven with video-EEG. The medical diagnosis was only disclosed to the linguist once a linguistic hypothesis of the diagnosis had been formulated to ensure that the linguist's decision would not be influenced by factors not contained in the 30-min-interview between doctor and patient. The linguist predicted the correct diagnosis in all cases.

So, What's Behind Adult English Second Language Reading?

This study investigated the relationship of first language (L1) grammatical knowledge to English second language reading (ESLR), with the objective of understanding this relationship in the context of the transfer of L1 skills to second language (L2) academic processes. Fifty-five adult, native Spanish-speaking Englishlanguage learners were given 4 assessments. Spanish reading accounted for 10% of the variance of ESLR, supporting the Linguistic Interdependence Hypothesis, and English grammar accounted for 8% of the variance, supporting the Linguistic Threshold Hypothesis. The results imply that transfer from the L1 might operate differently in adult ESLR than it does with children. An ESLR adult model is proposed, which predicts that some ESLR students will require a curriculum that provides a highly intensive focus on L2 language, grammar, and reading skills.

Differences In Native Language Skills Between Moreand Less-Proficient Foreign Language Learners

This paper describes a study of native language (Dutch) word identification skills conducted in two groups of high school foreign language learners. The study focused on the differences between the groups with two main aims. The first was to examine the Linguistic Coding Difficulties Hypothesis (LCDH), a prevailing theory of individual learner differences allocating weaker foreign language achievement to weaker native language skills. The second aim was to determine the nature of these differences and inspect the claims that native language word identification skills differentiate weak and normal foreign language learners. This was done by investigating the effect of context on weak FL learners, who over-rely on context in compensation for weaker phonological and orthographical skills, according to the LCDH. In pursuing its aims, the study became involved in an ongoing debate surrounding the issue of native language reading.

Processing controlled PROs in Spanish

Two experiments were carried out to investigate the processing of the empty category PRO and the time-course of this in Spanish. Eye movements were recorded while participants read sentences in which a matrix clause was followed by a subordinate infinitival clause, so that the subject or the object of the main clause could act as controller of PRO, and therefore as implicit grammatical subject of the infinitive. In Experiment 1, verb control information was manipulated: The matrix clause contained either subject-control verbs like prometer (‘promise’) or object-control verbs like forzar (‘force’). In Experiment 2, the preposition that headed adverbial subordinate clauses was manipulated: Two different kinds of infinitival adverbial clauses were used, expressing purpose (preposition para) and reason (preposition por) and in which control information is primarily induced by the prepositions (para tends to trigger subject-control; por object-control). Experiment 1 showed that readers make immediate use of verb control information to recover the antecedent of the empty category PRO in Spanish obligatory control constructions. The data obtained in Experiment 2 suggest that during the processing of the empty category PRO in purpose vs. reason adverbial subordinate infinitival clauses the control information induced by the prepositions por vs. para is not initially used as a constraint to guide the selection of the nominal antecedent of PRO. In addition, both experiments showed that PRO antecedent selection is a very fast process and that, together with verb control information, recency played an important role. The results are discussed in terms of current psycholinguistic hypotheses about empty categories and in relation to formal linguistic hypotheses about PRO control. We argue that obligatory control ties (which are co-referential ties) are processed fast because they are launched from the same lexical platform that launches all fast syntactic connections (complements, as opposed to modifiers). In short, that such lexically-specified co-referential ties are regulated by linguistic form.