Linguistic Society Research Articles

Cultural Component in the Semantics of a pragmatically marked Word: Methods of Identification and Lexicography in an Active Type Dictionary

This article presents the electronic lexicographic project «Pragmatically marked vocabulary: lexicographic description of the national-cultural component in the semantics of a word» and covers a number of key issues related to the definition of the concept of «national-cultural / cultural-specific» in words semantic and searching for possible ways of lexicography. As part of the heterogeneous lexical meaning, denotative and pragmatic macrocomponents are distinguished, between which there are complex and not always obvious semantic connections. The pragmatic macrocomponent includes many microcomponents (evaluative, ideological, gender, social, national-cultural, etc.). The national-cultural component represents special information in the semantics, which indicates the perception of the world inherent in a particular linguistic society through the prism of the national language. We are talking about universal and unique features of the semantics of pragmatically marked vocabulary. This is what makes lexicography particularly difficult. The lexicographic description is preceded by a special comparative study, including a comparative analysis of correlated lexical meanings in different European languages. In addition, component and corpus methods are used. The electronic lexicographic resource consists of two parts: 1) materials from classical explanatory dictionaries, 2) lexicography of pragmatically marked meaning, taking into account its variable potential. Turning to explanatory dictionaries from different periods allows us 1) to identify dynamic processes in this fragment of the lexical system and 2) explore possible ways of describing pragmatic information in a word. We propose to represent the national-cultural component in a special area of the dictionary entry in the Database of pragmatically marked vocabulary of the Russian language, comparing it with the semantic specificity of equivalent units of other languages. The result of this study is a lexicographic description of words from different thematic groups that contain national-cultural (national-specific) information in their meanings.

ОСНОВНЫЕ ПРОБЛЕМЫ ЛИНГВОЭКОЛОГИИ: ТЕОРЕТИЧЕСКИЙ И ПРИКЛАДНОЙ АСПЕКТЫ

The author identifies the main problem field of linguoecology, gives a brief overview of linguoecological ideas and problems arising in linguistic society as a result of violation of the necessary relationship between native and acquired language resources, presents the results of a study of oral spontaneous discourse to identify existing problems of language ecology in the speech of native speakers of the Russian language.
 During the study, the author analyzed 36 recordings of oral spontaneous discourse with a total duration of 7,2 hours, representing dialogues and polylogues received from informal informants- native speakers of the Russian language – students, cafe visitors, public transport passengers, participants of TV discussions, represented in approximately equal percentages.
 The main methods of work are the method of auditory analysis, descriptive method (observation, analysis, generalization, classification), statistical method.

Integration of scientific cognition in Kazakh philology: the chronotopic approach

The article discusses the use of the chronotopic approach in Kazakh philology. This approach integrates scholarly knowledge and the works of researchers from the last century. The purpose of the publication is to show how linguistic judgments are cyclical and how they contribute to the multidimensional understanding of language. The article aims to transform the experiences of the humanities into linguistic synchronous-diachronic combinations. This involves predicting the mutual influence of individual scientific views and their categorical integrity. The works of Kazakh researchers from the first half of the twentieth century, who underwent general linguistic training, reveal judgments about the role of language in social, ethnic, and socio-cultural realities. These judgments define a progressive understanding of language as an element of literary-ethical, moral-axiological, and spiritual-cognitive interpretations. It is advisable to consider the formation of cognitive principles of linguistic analysis in the context of spatiotemporal categories. This emphasizes the importance of cyclicity as an element of ideological evolution and scientific attitudes. The connection between past and present, preserving the progression of origin and development, becomes a source of rethinking initial judgments. The cognitive paradigm in Kazakh linguistics is chronologically systematized and reasonably synchronized with modern trends in linguistics. The article characterizes chronotopic in Kazakh linguistics as a set of historical-philosophical, literarycultural, and psychological understandings of the nature of language. The starting point of this approach is the ontological, epistemological, and linguistic dichotomy of knowledge, which determines the mechanism for constructing periodicity and rhythm in the linguistic society. The article uses comparative and historical linguistics, narrative analysis, and chronotopic reading methods. It emphasizes the need to study the spiral characteristic of the linguistics categories by focusing on the dynamics of the development of anthropocentric language features.

Why a linguistic society?

Why a linguistic society?

The syntax of individuating and measuring pseudo-partitives in Alasha Mongolian

Pseudo-partitive constructions give rise to multiple interpretive ambiguities including a container interpretation (i.e. individuating) and a contents (i.e. measuring) one. There are two competing analyses: one based on structural ambiguities (Landman in Indefinites and the types of sets, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2004; Rothstein in Brill’s J Afroasiat Lang Ling 1:106–145, 2009. https://doi.org/10.1163/187666309X12491131130783, a.o.) and one based on a uniform syntax (Lehrer in Lingua 68:109–148, 1986; Matushansky and Zwarts in Lamont and Tetzloff (eds) North East Linguistic Society (NELS) 47, Volume 2, pp 261–274, GLSA, Amherst, 2016, a.o.). I contribute to this debate with data from Alasha Mongolian (Mongolic), which differentiates each interpretation via case marking on the quantizing noun: glass-comitative = individuating vs. glass-genitive/Ø = measuring. I argue that there is no large-scale structural ambiguity: the numeral and the quantizing noun always form a constituent introduced in the specifier position of a null functional head (Schwarzschild in Syntax 9(1):67–110, 2006. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9612.2006.00083.x; Svenonius in McNally and Kennedy (eds) Adjectives and adverbs: syntax, semantics and discourse, Oxford Studies in Theoretical Linguistics, pp 16–42, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2008; Ott in J Comp Ger Ling 4:1–46, 2011. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10828-010-9040-x). I propose that (i) case differences on the quantizing constituent boil down to the presence or absence of a case probe on a higher Agr head; (ii) and, the interpretive differences between the individuating and measuring pseudo-partitives are the result of a more subtle syntactic distinction in the feature content of the quantizing noun, i.e. an interpretable [±Container] feature.

Book Review: The Chinese Linguistic Society of Japan (ed.): Encyclopedic Dictionary of Chinese Linguistics (Phonetics and Phonology)

Book Review: The Chinese Linguistic Society of Japan (ed.): <i>Encyclopedic Dictionary of Chinese Linguistics</i> (Phonetics and Phonology)

On the question of the linguistic and cultural features of the Eastern Argumentative Model in Political Ecology

The article discusses the issues of argumentation of the environmental agenda, which occupies a significant place in the modern linguistic society and is implemented in various discursive practices. The authors proceed from the fact that the environmental problem is a universal topic that is approved by all people. Therefore, the discussion of environmental problems has a great unifying force. The reaction of the audience to the discussion of environmental plans is always predictable, this topic is approved by all segments of the population. It can be said that the media and politicians always make the most of environmental issues. The combination of political speech and ecology, covered in the media, is a synergistic effect when the sum of the components is greater than a simple addition: 1+1+1&amp;#8594;5. The synergy of politics and ecology is the object of this work, and the subject of the study are argumentative structures that provide this synergy. The article contains a review of works showing the specifics of logic and the philosophical tradition of China, which were the basis for specific models of reasoning that make up the Eastern model of argumentation. The purpose of the work is to analyze the argumentation in the speeches of Chinese politicians on the environmental topic and to monitor the implementation of the Eastern or Western model of argumentation. The main conclusions of the article are conclusions about the universality of the Western style of argumentation, which is implemented in arguments about environmental problems. The authors also point out the undesirability of leveling argumentation styles. The novelty of the work lies in the fact that these conclusions, being projected on the field of political ecology, allow us to conclude that the linguistic and cultural characteristics of each country affect the implementation of environmental policy. The authors' contribution to the research of the topic consists in a comparative analysis of the Eastern and Western styles of argumentation and in observing the implementation of one of them in ecological topos in Chinese.

Interview with APPLE Lecture Speaker Dr. Walt Wolfram

On March 3, 2023, the Studies in Applied Linguistics and TESOL (SALT) journal interviewed Dr. Walt Wolfram, an invited speaker for the 2023 APPLE Lecture Series hosted by the Applied Linguistics and TESOL Program at Teachers College, Columbia University.&#x0D; Walt Wolfram is William C. Friday Distinguished University Professor at North Carolina State University, where he also directs the Language and Life Project. He has pioneered research on social and ethnic dialects since the 1960s and published 23 books and more than 300 articles. Over the last two decades, he and his students have conducted more than 3,500 sociolinguistic interviews with residents of North Carolina and beyond. In addition to his research interests, Professor Wolfram is particularly interested in the application of sociolinguistic information to the public, including the production of television documentaries, the construction of museum exhibits, and the development of innovative formal and informal materials related to language diversity for different institutions. He has received numerous awards, including the North Carolina Award (the highest award given to a citizen of North Carolina), Caldwell Humanities Laureate from the NC Humanities Council, the Holladay Medal at NC State, the Board of Governor’s Holshouser Award for Excellence in Public Service, and the Linguistics, Language and the Public Award from the Linguistic Society of America. He has been inducted into the American Academy of Arts &amp; Sciences and served as President of the Linguistic Society of America, the American Dialect Society, and the Southeastern Conference on Linguistics. We thank Dr. Wolfram for his participation in this interview.

Influence of New Trends in Kyrgyz Language Studies

This article is devoted to the problem of expansionism, which, influencing the subject-content environment of the language, covers the extralinguistic side. This approach allows you to explore the field of linguistics as a multifaceted and heterogeneous industry. Modern linguistics allows you to explore the language, taking into account the influence of the human factor, since anthropocentrism contributes to the emergence of new directions in linguistics. We know that “new” views on the language are beginning to take root in modern Kyrgyz linguistics. Like general linguistics, Kyrgyz linguistics is freely integrated with other sciences, for example, cognitive linguistics already has a strong place in Kyrgyz linguistics. If cognitive linguistics, gender, political linguistics, pragmalinguistics, cultural linguistics, ethnolinguistics, legal linguistics and other similar areas are not new in Russian linguistics, then in Kyrgyz linguistics they have become the basis for the emergence of new theories and concepts. The variety of new directions in linguistics allows us to analyze the language in a new way, since new directions in linguistics appear on the basis of public interest. The change in attitude to language is due to its ontological properties in relation to the linguistic society and linguistic personality that take place in life. Thus, the article gives a brief description of the formation and development of new directions in general linguistics, as well as the influence in Kyrgyz linguistics.

THE DYNAMICS OF ANGLICISMS IN THE MODERN GERMAN LANGUAGE

Statement of the problem. Our research is aimed at considering the problem of borrowing English words (anglicisms) in German. On the basis of modern German texts of different genres (slogans of firms and enterprises, speeches of public figures in the media, etc.), an attempt is made to analyze some of the problems dealing with distortions of the standard German language. Results. Over the centuries, as a result of political and economic changes in the German-speaking countries, the German language has been significantly influenced by other languages, and a large number of foreign words have entered its vocabulary. Today, in the lexical system of the German language, there is an excessive amount of English borrowings. Some linguists and vocabulary researchers classify and treat German as a recipient language. At present, there are cases when English words are used as a standard, and even the term Denglisch has appeared, i.e. combination of two languages (Deutsch+Englisch = German + English). The article deals with the problems of the phenomena of linguistic purism, analyzes the research of the German Linguistic Society (VDS), which opposes the excessive dominance of foreign words. Every year, the Society awards prizes for the creation of new words by mixing German and foreign languages, in particular English, and the peculiarities of their translation. We have identified the “words of the year” that influenced the German language in one way or another, and we also consider problems that have a negative impact on the standard German language. Conclusion. Due to the rapid development of new technologies and industries, the role of English as the language of international communication in German society is growing. The influence of the English language on the language situation in Germany has been observed for several centuries. In the 21st century, this process is not weakening, but on the contrary, it is expanding. As a result of the study, it is concluded that the English language certainly has an impact on the development of the German language, but does not violate its uniqueness and naturalness of the lexical system.

ЛИНГВИСТИКАЛЫК ЭКСПЕРТИЗАНЫН КЫРГЫЗ ТИЛ ИЛИМИНДЕ ОРДУ

The article discusses the role of linguistic expertise in Kyrgyz linguistics. The fundamental directions of Kyrgyz linguistics play a key role in resolving conflict situations arising from unequal understanding or different perception of a text or its fragment, individual words and sentences. The change in attitude to language is due to its ontological properties in relation to the linguistic society and linguistic personality that take place in life. We know that “new” views on the language are beginning to take root in modern Kyrgyz linguistics. The problem of identifying signs of deliberate insult to someone can be solved in different ways. Such a feature can be important not only in jurisprudence, but also in linguistics. In real life, even if someone wants to be insulted and humiliated, there are times when the addressee is indifferent and does not feel humiliated. In this case, the question arises as to the existence of the fact of insult.

Isn’t there more than one way to bias a polar question?

I show that speaker bias in polarity focus questions (PFQs) is context sensitive, while speaker bias in high negation questions (HNQs) is context insensitive. This leads me to develop separate accounts of speaker bias in each of these kinds of polar questions. I argue that PFQ bias derives from the fact that they are frequently used in conversational contexts in which an answer to the question has already been asserted by an interlocutor, thus expressing doubt about the prior assertion. This derivation explains their context sensitivity, and the fact that similar bias arises from polar questions that lack polarity focus. I also provide novel evidence that the prejacents of HNQs lack negation, and thus only have an outer negation reading (see, e.g., Ladd in Papers from the seventeenth regional meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society, vol. 17, pp. 164–171, 1981; Romero and Han in Linguistics and Philosophy 27(5):609–658, 2004; Krifka in Contrastiveness in information structure, alternatives and scalar implicatures, pp. 359–398, 2017; AnderBois in Questions in discourse, pp. 118–171, 2019; Frana and Rawlins in Semantics and Pragmatics 12(16):1–48, 2019; Jeong in Journal of Semantics 38(1):49–94, 2020). Based on a treatment of HNQs as denoting unbalanced partitions (Romero and Han in Linguistics and Philosophy 27(5):609–658, 2004), and competition with their positive polar question alternatives, I propose a novel derivation of speaker bias in HNQs as a conversational implicature. Roughly, if the speaker is ignorant, then a positive polar question will be more useful because it is more informative, so the use of an HNQ conveys that the speaker is not ignorant. The denotation of the HNQ then makes clear which way the speaker is biased. The result separates high negation from verum focus, and I argue that it is more parsimonious and has better empirical coverage than prior accounts.

The Spread of English Language Elements During the COVID-19 Period

The global pandemic COVID-19 has made a large difference in our minds and lives. Changes related to COVID-19 have had a significant impact on the Kazakh linguistic community as well. This paper considers the emergence of new concepts associated with greetings, color, education and linguistic changes in Kazakh linguistic society during COVID-19. The main purpose of this study is to show that some concepts related to greeting, education and learning, and ways of using colors have new content and a new quality. The research findings revealed that new words related to greetings, colors, and education had come into the language by the calque (translation-loan) method, and the elements of the English language indicate the flexibility to update the language structure. The study showed the emergence of new calque phrases caused by COVID-19, such as shyntakpen amandasy, kyzyl aymak, sary aymak, zhasyl aymak, ZOOMga shygu, and ZOOMmen otkizu; some of them have new semantic characteristics.

41st Annual Conference of Linguistic Society of Nepal (LSN)

No abstract

Лингвотипирование этномаркированных символов в креолизованном тексте британской телевизионной драмы

The undertaken study aims to map the dominants of the British linguistic society based on the analysis of ethno-marked symbols in the structure of the creolized text of an authentic British television drama. The article provides examples of planetary-molecular modelling of the British national character. The linguistic and cultural potential of the creolized text and ethno-representative symbolization is specified. The linguo-conceptological fields corresponding to the components of “Englishness” are classified. The scientific novelty of the study lies in the cartographic approach to the presentation of the data obtained on the basis of the interpretation of the actual language layer, and the ascertainment of a correlation between the current projection of the British national identity and its static samples in diachrony. The results obtained allow us to develop a mental-associative map of the British national character based on creolized language patterns; to fix the relationship between the index of the quantitative representation of ethno-marked symbols and the level of the ethno-axiological potential of the dominants denoted by them in the context of the British linguo-society in wide and current-time perspectives.

Creaky Voice and Prosodic Boundaries in Spanish: An Acoustic Study

Abstract This study investigates vocalic creak in connection to the demarcation of prosodic boundaries in Spanish. Data from a picture task from 10 native Spanish speakers from diverse dialects was examined word-medially and word-finally. A total of 800 vowels were analyzed acoustically to determine if they involved creak; duration of creak relative to vowel duration was also recorded. The role of prosodic context, vowel quality and gender were examined. Our results show that creak is one of the cues that signals the end of prosodic constituents, particularly at higher prosodic levels: it averages 64% of realizations word-finally, but only 4% medially; and it is more pervasive in higher prosodic domains. Creak is more likely in males than females (80 vs. 53%), and vowel quality has no effect on creak word-finally, although word-medially /a/ is more frequently creaked than other vowels. We discuss the implications of our results in comparison with previous studies on creaky voice in Spanish and English, in particular Garellek, Marc &amp; Patricia Keating. 2015. Phrase-final creak: Articulation, acoustics, and distribution. In Paper presented at the 89th meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, Portland, Oregon, 8–11 January, which report a higher rate of creak for Mexican Spanish females compared to males utterance-finally, and Kim, Ji Young. 2017. Voice quality transfer in the production of Spanish heritage speakers and English L2 learners of Spanish. Silvia Perpiñán. In David Heap, Itziri Moreno-Villamar &amp; Adriana Soto-Corominas (eds.), Selected papers from the 44th linguistic symposium on romance languages (LSRL), 191–207. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, which found creaky voice utterance-finally in L2 Spanish and heritage Spanish speakers, but not in L1 Spanish participants.

Концепт ЧУЖИЙ у свідомості носіїв перської мови (за результатами психолінгвістичного експерименту)

The goal of the paper is to determine the content of the concept of OTHER as a member of “self&nbsp;– other” binary opposition in the consciousness of Persian speakers based on the results of psycholinguistic experiment and their further cognitive interpretation. The need for studying the conceptual structure of this opposition by means of psycholinguistic experiment is determined by the fact that it substantially affects both interpersonal contacts of representatives of a given linguistic society and intercultural relations as a whole. Two methods of psycholinguistic analysis of word semantics have been used in the research, viz. free word association test and the method of direct interpretation of a word meaning. In total 102 Persian speakers of different age and social status took part in the experiment. The associative field of the concept was formed based on the results of processing of the data collected during the 1st stage of the experiment. Its semantic field was determined after analysis of unabridged predications in the course of explanation of the proposed words. Result data were processed using special method of grouping language material based on content-analysis: the benchmark words repeated in the answers of different participants were taken as units of the analysis and regarded as key concept features. At the final stage the cognitive interpretation of the data was performed after the principle of “construing” the meaning of linguistic expressions stipulated by R.&nbsp;Langacker. The obtained results demonstrate that the perceptions of Other in Persian language consciousness completely match the common worldview, in which the notions of Self and Other play an important role in conceptualization of human value system.

An Optimality-Theoretic Study of Nasalization in Mbaise

Within the ambit of Optimality Theory, this paper examined the phonological distribution of nasalized consonants and nasalized vowels in the Mbaise dialect of Igbo (spoken in Nigeria) with a view to identifying the relevant constraint hierarchies controlling their surface realization. Using the West African Linguistic Society Questionnaire and a researcher-designed wordlist, the data were obtained via structured oral interview from two competent native speakers of the dialect, and were analyzed using a descriptive approach grounded on the chosen theoretical framework. Arising from the analysis were the following findings: Mbaise operates two systems of nasal specification ‒ the contrastive type affecting consonants and the context-induced type affecting vowels; nasalized consonants are phonemic while nasalized vowels are allophonic; the nasalized consonants are largely restricted to intervocalic position while the nasalized vowels appear after tautosyllabic nasal(ized) consonants. It was argued that the surface realization of the nasalized consonants is controlled by IDENT-CONS/NAS whereas that of the nasalized vowels is controlled by *NV[-nasal]. Despite the difference in their phonological distribution and functional status, Mbaise nasalized consonants and nasalized vowels have a structural relationship within the syllable in which they occur. Therefore, it was concluded that their well-formedness is governed by a single hierarchy: IDENT-CONS/NAS, *NV[-nasal] &gt;&gt; *FRIC/NAS, *LIQ/NAS &gt;&gt; *CONS/NAS, *V/NAS &gt;&gt; IDENT-IO(nasal).

Book Review. A New Insight into Theory of Conceptual Metaphor

Book Review. A New Insight into Theory of Conceptual Metaphor

Political Soviet posters and modern multimodal texts: cognitive experience in the process of perception and categorization of reality

In the work, the attempt to identify the features of the interaction of signs of different semiotic systems in the context of multimodal texts, which are considered as a special information construct and are perceived through the visual communication channel, which combines verbal, graphic, iconic, color codes. The aim of the work was an attempt to make a comprehensive analysis of multimodal political texts, an important element of which is the image of the historical personality of Stalin. This analysis allows us to trace the transformation of the perception and assessment of the life activity of an ambiguous politician in the minds of Soviet and Russian people and, as a consequence, the linguistic society as a whole. The material for the study was Soviet political posters of the mid-20th century and modern multimodal texts, the total number of which was 53 and 67 examples, respectively. The set of methods systematization and generalization, continuous sampling, contextual, intertextual and comparative analysis, is due to the expediency, logic and historical retrospective of the study. This made it possible to reconstruct the cognitive past recorded in the historical consciousness of the people: the article reveals the image of Stalin, in Soviet posters and in modern political multimodal texts, the specificity of perception, categorization and attitude of Soviet / Russian society to its past and present is revealed. For example, the image of Stalin on the posters of the 1930-1953s is as idealized and metaphorical as possible, which is due to the manipulative function – the need to promote the cult of the personality: the themes of patriotism, duty and beneficence become the leading ones and are called upon to form in the mass consciousness a stable, deliberately positive idea of the bright communist future the whole country and its every single Soviet citizen. In modern multimodal texts, it can be noted that they reflect two diametrically opposed views on the personality and life of Stalin: on the one hand, a positive, idealized image of a politician, a nostalgic perception; on the other hand, there is a negative (ironic) view of the “situation of the past,” which is due to the historical context, the cult of the individual and his debunking of this cult after the death of the leader. The specificity of these types of texts is largely due to the author’s linguistic pragmatic attitude and extralinguistic factors.