Linguistic Usage Research Articles

Passage from India: Asian Indian Immigrants in North America

that Melanesian Pidgin is exceptional in its degree of syntactical and morphological complexity. The richest chapters, understandably, are those dealing with Solomons Pidgin, particularly as spoken in central Malaita, where Keesing has carried out extensive ethnographic research for several decades. A significant result is the demonstration that the grammaticalization of bambae (bye and bye) to mark future and/or irrealist verbs can be dated prior to the period of creolization. (Here Keesing relies on elderly Kwaio informants who learned pidgin in the I9zos and I930S.) Equally fascinating is the argument that the i (he) pronoun following a noun subject corresponds to a widespread Oceanic verbal and cannot be considered merely the cliticization of he. Part of the difficulty in estimating the relative importance of substrate and superstrate languages is that pidgins are interpreted differently by speakers of the two linguistic sources, each group producing mutually acceptable sentences using different grammatical rules of interpretation. This linguistic situation resembles, it seems to me, the more general phenomenon of cross-cutting codes and values in Pacific contact situations that Sahlins has characterized as a chiasmic structure of conjuncture. Given this, it would have been helpful if Keesing had presented data on the differential evaluation of pidgins by both Europeans and Islanders. Of particular interest to readers of this journal is Keesing's attention to the methodological problems of this study, including discussion of the incompleteness and fragmentation of existing linguistic and historical data, the inherent bias or filtering in European recording of Islanders' linguistic usage, the intentional distortion by simplification by Islanders when speaking to Europeans, and the political restrictions on current ethnographic research in various places in Melanesia. Readers should be advised that this book is concerned with pidgins, not creoles, so little space is given to the contemporary question of the political impact of the nativization of pidgins throughout Melanesia. There is, however, an underlying political message in Keesing's insistence on the creative role of Islanders in producing pidgins consistent with their common Oceanic heritage.

Genre as Textual Variable: Some Historical Evidence from Scots and American English

M UCCH OF LINGUISTIC RESEARCH HAS CONCENTRATED ON investigating different varieties of language: regional varieties, social varieties, stylistic varieties. Although long acknowledged as important, stylistic varieties have received the least empirical linguistic investigation until relatively recently. Labov's discoveries of various contextual styles (1972) and of varieties within a relatively homogeneous group (1973) have been followed by considerably more research on stylistic varieties, including some recent studies of language in different types of texts or genres. Most notably, Romaine (1980, 1982) has examined the language of different types of Scottish poetry and prose, and Biber (1986, 1987) has recently studied the language of texts in a number of different contemporary spoken and written genres. Neither Biber nor Romaine takes genre as the primary variable to be investigated. Rather, both assume genre's significance and hence control for genre while investigating another linguistic issue: for Biber, the issue is the communicative of clusters of linguistic features; for Romaine, the issue is the changing use of the relative clause marker in past Scottish texts. Yet, because they control for genre, the data from both scholars' studies demonstrate the significance of genre as a textual variable, its significant correlation with the use of linguistic features. This study continues the examination of genre as a factor in stylistic variation by directly examining its significance as a textual variable both synchronically and diachronically. Confirming Romaine's and Biber's discoveries, my data demonstrate that texts of different genres use different linguistic forms. This study also demonstrates that genre functions as a historical variable, that different genres are affected differently by linguistic change. Two complementary sets of data are presented in this article: some results from a study of linguistic usage in Scots-English genres between 1520 and 1659 and of usage in American English genres between 1640 and 1810.1 Before considering how genre and language correlate in these two studies, however, this article will explore the re-

A Stylometric Study of the New Testament

With the aid of computers, it is becoming possible to clarify some longstanding disputes over Biblical authorship. Using statistical analysis of linguistic usage, Kenny reexamines the authorship of Revelation, the relationship between Luke and the Acts, and the complex problem of the Pauline corpus. He also comments on the general merits of the stylometric approach to textual analysis.

Robert Boyle and Mathematics: Reality, Representation, and Experimental Practice

The ArgumentThis paper is a study of the role of language in scientific activity. It recommends that language be viewed as a community's means of patterning its affairs. Language represents where the boundaries of the community are and who is entitled to speak within it, and it displays the structures of authority in the community. Moreover, language precipitates the community's view of what the world is like, such that linguistic usages can be taken as referring to that world. Thus, language connects on the one side to a community's practical life, and, on the other, to the reality on which it “reports.”The example treated is Robert Boyle's view of the language proper for experimental practice, and his arguments against the value and legitimacy of mathematical representations within the experimental community. Boyle argued that the use of mathematics was inappropriate because (i) it would restrict the number of potential participants; (ii) it would give rise to unwarranted expectations of the certainty and accuracy to be expected of real physical inquiries; (iii) it would suggest views of natural law and God's relations with the natural world which were incorrect and possibly dangerous; and because (iv) the world upon which the experimentalist operated was not such as was represented by mathematical idealizations. I try to establish that decision about the appropriate language for the experimental community was a moral choice.

Ambiguities about realism and utterly distinct objects

Some recent attempts to refute contemporary antirealism are puzzling in at least two important respects: Firstly, it is puzzling how philoso? phers who represent opposite sides of the realist-antirealist debate as this pertains to recent semantic theory, can both be attacked as antirealists and moreover, be attacked on fairly analogous grounds. Thus, we find Michael Devitt, in his 'Dummett's Anti-Realism' offering a refutation of Dummett; and we find Crawford Elder, in his 'The Case Against Irrealism' attacking philosophers like Quine and Davidson as irrealists or antirealists.1 This first puzzle can be cleared up by pointing to an often ignored ambiguity in the recent use of terms like 'realism' and 'antirealism'. But secondly, there is another puzzle having to do with the fact that some of these recent refutations of antirealism seem to succeed, if they succeed, only in virtue of another use or meaning for these terms-a use that seems quite irrelevant to the issues at hand. I think that this puzzle is more serious. Accordingly, I shall first discuss the current (and understandable) ambiguity in the use of terms like 'realism' and 'antirealism', and then address what I consider to be the illegitimate introduction of another meaning for these terms as this occurs, tacitly or otherwise, in some of the recent refutations of antirealism. The contemporary use of the term 'antirealism' is ambiguous-at least in the context of recent semantic theory. On the one hand, the term is associated with philosophers in the camp of Michael Dummett who apply the term primarily to their epistemic notion of truth and derivatively to a theory of meaning that explicates sentence meaning in terms of warranted assertibility or verificationist conditions. This is done in order to satisfy the constraint that any adequate theory must account for a speaker's acquisition and understanding of sentence meaning as this is manifested in publicly discernible speech dis? positions and linguistic usage. In this sense, antirealism is presumably opposed to 'realist' theories like Davidson's that explain sentence meaning in terms of unconstrained truth conditions and construe truth value as a non-epistemic feature of sentences for which the principle

Some observations on expressing politeness in Thai

This paper describes several dimensions of linguistic politeness in Bangkok Thai. These involve elevation of listener and self-effacement of speaker. The role of formal linguistic usage and formulaic deferential expressions in indicating politeness is illustrated. Kinship terms, emphasizing relative age, have been an important traditional means of indicating politeness in the past. This seems to be undergoing a modification at present, linked to social change.

Dialectal Analysis and Linguistically Composite Texts in Middle English

In recent years students of medieval literature and its history have begun increasingly to appreciate the value of their primary source materials the manuscripts. Editors of Middle English texts are less apt nowadays, having found their best text, to jettison as worthless all other surviving copies and renderings of it. It is recognized that a corrupt text may reflect the activity of a contemporary editor, critic, or adapter rather than that of a merely careless copyist. Medieval scribes, whether professional or amateur, clerical or lay, were producing works of literature for their original consumers; close examination of scribal behavior, whether it be script, spelling, or choice and ordering of material, provides insight into the way literary texts were received, understood, and disseminated. The studies of paleographer, dialectologist, textual critic, and literary historian can and should be complementary. The work of the Middle English Dialect Project (now the Gayre Institute for Medieval English and Scottish Dialectology) in Edinburgh has, since its inception in 1953, upheld the usefulness, and indeed necessity, in medieval studies of examining each scribal text separately as a valuable source in its own right. It is obvious perhaps that in order to place geographically the linguistic usage of a scribe his output must be subjected to dialectal analysis. It may be less obvious that such dialectal analysis often provides the means to do far more than place a scribe on the map. By examining the language of scribal texts, it may be possible to identify and isolate archetypal and even authorial spellings. In 1978 Ian Doyle and Malcolm Parkes demonstrated that two of the earliest copyists of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales worked also on manuscripts of Gower.' Comparison of the linguistic usage of these and other London scribes enabled Michael Samuels to identify the most likely forms of language used by Chaucer himself. Samuels judges Chaucer's own spellings to be almost identical with those

XVI. Mendeko bizkaierazko errefrauez: I. Garibairen bildumak

In the introduction, the author points out the various philological problems relating to the texts in Old Biscayan (up to 1745) and he situates this essay within a wider field of studies concerned with solving them. He stresses the importance of the collections of proverbs that have been preserved, reflecting as they do states of the language prior to the date of collection; and he underlines the need to establish the collections' origins and autorship. He puts forth in the first place the hypothesis of Urquijo (1908-9 and 1919), for whom whilst Collection B (= Cc 79 in the Madrid National Library) is Garibay's, Collection A (= G 139 in the MNL) is the work of a 17th century Guipuzcoan writer who used Garibay as a source for some material; in this case, the Refranes y sentencias (RS) of 1596 are, then, Garibay's other collection. The author shows the weakness of Urquijo's reasoning, as well as the existence of important data, not taken into account by him, which demonstrates that both W (= original of A) and B are the work of Garibay; and that the Guipuzcoan who copied A hardly altered the original, nor included any material in A that was not in W. The RS are the work of another unknown author, very different of Garibay in graphic and linguistic usage. In order to arrive at these conclusions, the author carries out a minute examination of the size of the collections, the testimony of the copier of A, the order of the proverbs in A and B and the implications of this, the language of both, the need to assume the use of a Biscayan original different to B in the making of A, and the linguistic and graphic affinity of W and B -this last being contrasted with the divergence of both texts from RS. This divergence is to be seen in the uses of h, sh , c, and O for nasal vowels; the existence of a far higher number of archaisms in RS; and phonetic and morphological variations ( uzen, daude, neuca, cidi and so on) which are accounted for by the more western origin of RS. The author ends by showing that there exist indications, both graphic and in the actual contents, leading one to suppose that B was the first collection made by Garibay and sent to Idiaquez, and that W was the second, made at the latter's request.

Language, Cognition, and Ontogenetic Development: A Reexamination of Piaget's Premises

In any sociocultural system, the coordination of perspectives of reality definitions constitutes a process of fundamental importance in social interaction-a process to which the maintenance and transformation of the shared order is inextricably linked. G. H. Mead's influential view suggests that symbolic and linguistic forms play a vital role in this process of perspective coordination and in the ontogenetic emergence of a cognitive map. The remarkable range of the variation in linguistic usages, many of which intrinsically in-

Norma, Uso Y Autoridad En La Teoría Lingüística Del Siglo XVI

Summary The paper discusses the significance of the concepts of ‘norm’ and ‘usage’ in the linguistic debate in 16th-century Spain. The understanding of what should be accepted as ‘norm’ and what as ‘(grammatical) correctness’ was far from uniform in that period. The concept of ‘authority’ with regard to these questions reveals various interpretations; it is by no means a simple transfer of a Latin classicist model. The authority on what should be regarded as ‘standard’ in the 16th-century discussion appears to have been established along the lines of the importance given to ‘usage’ and the meaning that each grammarian attached to this term. In this paper, altogether three positions are identified: (1) A number of scholars support the Quintilian codification and maintain the classical tradition; (2) others do not recognize any other authority but that of ‘common usage’, understood as the linguistic habits of the speakers, either in terms of a speech community (Valdés), or in terms of the individual speaker (Aldrete), and 3) those who consider ‘reason’, i.e., logic, as the sole principle guiding both grammatical doctrine and linguistic usage (Sanctius).

Some order in ordering; Notes on suruh-constructions in 17th-century Malay

in general, and the form of the first verb and the semantic function of some of the constituents of the construction in particular. menyuruh Ali memanggil Hasan orders Ali to call Fatimah, is one example out of several of the possible types of suruh construction. The diversity of the morphological phenomena connected with the two verbs that form the nucleus of this construction and the mobility of the latter's constituents render these constructions rather complex. Furthermore, s?n//*-constructions seem to belong to those syntactical devices that have undergone change in the course of time. A detailed comparative description of these constructions may allow us to gain an important insight into the development of Malay syntax. As a first step, this case-study attempts to provide a basic description of swrw?-constructions from the 17th century. For the linguistic usage in the surviving manuscripts of that period represents the oldest stage of Malay that furnishes sufficient material to serve as a basis for linguistic research. From among the many traditional Malay texts we must be careful to select those that faithfully reflect 17th-century linguistic usage. This implies that we should use strictly only texts that have been handed down in 17th-century manuscripts. Consequently we have to leave out of consideration texts such as the Sejarah Melayuy which undoubtedly, on the basis of philological/historical evidence, originated in the 17th century or earlier but have been handed down to us only in relatively recent copies (mostly 19th-century). If we take into account the Malay tradition whereby the copyist was at the same time co-author,

The Manifold Obligations of the Dictionary to its Users

THE MANIFOLD OBLIGATIONS OF THE DICTIONARY TO ITS USERS Salikoko S. Mufwene The concern of this paper is in part the dictionary/encyclopedia debate, with which Haiman (1980) and Frawley (1981) in particular have concerned themselves recently. It defends the position that dictionaries and encyclopedias are indeed different, though overlapping, kinds of reference works. It argues, for different reasons than Frawley (even though in support of his position), that this distinction is worth preserving not only for theoretical but also for practical purposes, in particular if lexicographers still care to make dictionaries (more) efficient and affordable. However, it also argues that dictionaries should still remain encyclopedic (which is different from being the same as encyclopedias, see Mufwene, 1983a); otherwise they would be of limited practical help to their users. Strictly linguistic dictionaries would fail to account for one of the most important functions of lexical items,1 viz., labels for cognitive categories by and into which speakers' universes of knowledge are articulated/organized (see German field theory's ergliedern). Much to the partial credit of traditional lexicographic practice, a linguistic dictionary (interpreted literally as such) would account for less than the lexical competence of a normal speaker. The average user of a language knows not only how to pronounce its words and combine them together into grammatical sentences but also what contributions each of the individual lexical items used in the sentences makes to the scenarios he/she wishes to share about some world with his/her addressee. The second concern of this paper is those aspects of the dictionary which have been neglected in some or other dictionaries to varying extents. The first of these aspects regards proper names. For reasons which so far remain unjustified to this writer (see below) most dictionaries omit Obligations of the Dictionary them and thus do not provide some much needed information about their linguistic usage. For instance, they do not indicate: a)whether or not in languages such as French and German a proper name is masculine, feminine, or neuter (e. g., l'Allemagne, l'Angola, Les Pyrénées and Les Alpes in French); b)whether the unmarked usage of a name is with or without a definite article (e. g., Paris vs. le Caire, and Versailles vs. Ie Louvre in French, or Cairo vs. The Hague, and Holland vs. The Netherlands in English); c)whether the name in some less obvious cases behaves as a singular or plural name (e. g., Bahamas-xA. vs. the United States-sing, in English); d)whether a proper name for persons is most commonly used for males or females or is unspecified with regard to gender (e. g. Christopher, and Gail in English). In some languages there may be no way of telling the latter distinction either by the use of personal pronouns or by some particular marks on the noun; yet knowing this is often relevant to the development of a discourse. Secondly, in a rather different vein but in line with the conception of lexical items (qua linguistic signs) as complexes of features [which determine their behavior in the language], a variety of formal and pragmatic aspects of lexical competence will be surveyed which are not always accounted for in traditional lexicography.2 It is argued that their neglect is not consonant with current positions on what it takes a normal person to speak a language fluently. The lexicographic shortcomings uncovered in or emerging from McCawley (1975a and b, 1978 and 1983) in regard to dictionary definitions are endorsed here and will not be discussed any further. The main reason for this is that there is little significant contribution to add to them here which would go beyond the limited proposals in Mufwene (1983b) in regard to the linguistic meanings of proper and common Salikoko S. Mufwene nouns. Many of the aspects of lexicography discussed by, e. g., Fillmore (1971a)3 will not be dealt with here either. They will just be partly enumerated as a reminder so that the space available may be devoted more usefully to those aspects of lexical competence which have generally been overlooked in the lexicographic literature. Dictionaries vs. Encyclopedias Dictionary is being used here essentially with...

Proverbial Wisdom in the Ysengrimus

FROM antiquity to the present day, proverbs have formed an important part of oral culture. So deeply are they embedded in our habits of thought and speech that we take them largely for granted, focusing on their existence only, say, when we wish to find in our own linguistic usages something comparable to the oral formulaic tradition. Tied to no particular class or social group, proverbs embody a popular wisdom, based on the assumption of a common, shared experience, endlessly to be repeated and renewed. Absorbing proverbs as part of the native tongue, we later discover at one and the same time their aptness for the individual situations of our own lives and the comforting assurance that such situations have been similarly experienced by countless others. Individual experience is thus both sustained by the recognition of this pool of common experience to which the proverbs testify, and itself contributes to its increase, justifying the proverbs anew. The force of a proverbial formulation, therefore, derives in the last resort from its appeal to experience; even if it is a particular system of thought or belief that throws up an axiom or exhortation in the first place, its proverbial form assumes its enfranchisement from such a system, its transfer to a realm where its only support is the speaker's willingness to match it with experience and find justification for its use. Proverbs must always have had this role in the oral traditionindeed, one might see it as the condition of their survival. But in the Middle Ages they also had an important role in written tradition. Both biblical and classical literature provided models for the embodiment of traditional wisdom in the form of the proverb collection: on the one hand, the Solomonic books of the Bible-Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Ecclesiasticus;' on the other, the Distichs of Cato and the collection of maxims culled from the works of Publilius Syrus.2 Such collections, as is well known, occupied an important position in medieval education; Cato's Distichs were used as a first Latin reader for students who had mastered the basics of Latin grammar. With similarly pedagogic aims in view, medieval writers compiled their own Latin proverb collections, either by a relatively mechanical excerpting from classical authors, in the manner of the ubiquitous florilegia, or by a more independent recasting of traditional sayings. Egbert of

Medieval Literacy, Linguistic Theory, and Social Organization

Boethius, attempting to convey the sense of the Greek text to an increasingly Latin culture, oversimplified the original. Roughly equating linguistic and material communication, he likened the imposition of meaning onto words to the impressing of the emperor's profile onto an imperial coin. A piece of money, he argued, is not only a metal object; it is also a medium of exchange which represents the value of another thing. Likewise, verbs and nouns are not only physical sounds but also linguistic conventions established for the purpose of signifying what is understood in the mind.1 Some six centuries after Boethius's untimely death in 525/26, Peter Abelard was to write his own set of commentaries on Aristotle and, while adhering to many of Boethius's fundamental tenets, to use the Peri ermeneias, together with Porphyry, Priscian, and others, as the basis for a theory of language and meaning which preoccupied medieval thinkers down to William of Occam. Abelard in fact proposed something similar to Saussure's distinction between langue and parole2-that is, in Aristotelian terms, a distinction between the logic of meaning, by which individual linguistic usage is understood among speakers, and the individual capacity for speaking, along with its phonetic and acoustic properties. Abelard's unique contribution to this theory was to have explored the both abstract and concrete character of signification and to have reshaped traditional thinking on universals to incorporate his ideas. In this, he anticipated not only Saussure but also the later Wittgenstein. In contemporary linguistic terms, Boethius may be called a formalist, while Abelard's approach (which, it should be noted, changed over time) lies somewhere on the spectrum between formalism and functionalism.3

Anatomy of Linguistic Usage. On the Rules, Intentions and Conventions of Human Communication

Anatomy of Linguistic Usage. On the Rules, Intentions and Conventions of Human Communication

English Quantifiers: A Study of Quantifying Expressions in Linguistic Science and Modern English Usage

English Quantifiers: A Study of Quantifying Expressions in Linguistic Science and Modern English Usage

Taalmomen

Norms are not immutable, but are determined by the relations in society. Changes in society are followed from afar and hesitant-ly. Establishing norms only makes sense when they are rooted in reality, i.e. when they are in accord with social relations. Norms for the standard language are determined by various factors, intelligibility, comprehensibility, solidarity and status being among the most important ones. Intelligibility is dependent especially on pronunciation, comprehensibility especially on linguistic form and usage. In oral communication intelligibility is the most important factor, often being a prerequisite for comprehensibility. Whenever conveying linguistic contents is the prime objective in speaking, one must make high demand upon pronunciation, linguistic form and usage, so that phonemes and concepts will not be mis-understood. In this case the room for variation from person to person is limited. Norms related to solidarity and status may allow a much greater variation from group to group and from person to person. Each form of education in a standard language or in another first language will have to consider and will have to teach the importance of the influence of social factors on language norms, as well as the right of each individual and each group to determine one's own position in the "norm space" as defined by social factors. School and society can and should pay much more attention to language as a social skill.

Taalnorm en Onderwijsvisie bij Het Vak Friss in Het Voortgezet Onderwijs.

With respect to the language norm there is less certainty for Frisian than for Dutch. It is a moot point whether there should be a strict norm, and if so what form this norm should take. In the teaching of Frisian three kinds of motives have always played apartj viz. language-political, cultural and pedagogic-didac-tic motives. The problem of the norm has mainly been approached from the first two motives, leading to a norm which is as "Frisian" as possible, free of Dutch influences, but not in keeping with the linguistic usage of the average speaker or' Frisian. Schools may in this way overshoot the target aimed at. It is insufficiently realized that the noria problem in education must be approached from a well-defined concept of man, society and education. in this article the norm problem is approached from an emancipatory point of view. This stand results in a flexible, rather eclectic norm,. I do not aim at teaching my pupils the one and only "real Frisian", but rather at getting started a process of awareness of the issues and at increasing their skill in using their own language. Didactically this means creating as many language situations as possible, in which reflection on the language used by the pupils is an important instrument in increasing the command of the language.

Modification and maintenance: Language among school‐children of Italian background in South Australia

The paper investigates the linguistic systems of children of Italian immigrants in Australia. It is concerned to establish their patterns of linguistic usage, and the extent of their mastery of the standard form of Italian and the various Italian dialects. Evidence is also reviewed in relation to the claims that have been made for the emergence of a new linguistic form labelled as ‘Australitalian’. Data is presented from five different studies conducted in South Australian secondary schools. These show the decline in usage of Italian, except to ethnic elders; the tendency to use mixtures of Italian, dialect and English forms in such discourse; and the positive desire on the part of many students to maintain and develop their Italian linguistic system. Educationally, these findings suggest the need for Australian schools to teach Italian to students of Italian background as a living language, and to ensure that every opportunity is given to master its literary forms.

Grammatical priming of inflected nouns.

In normal linguistic usage, the inflected nouns of Sorbo-Croatian are usually preceded by prepositions that help to specify which particular grammatical case is intended and to stress the noun’s function in the sentence. In a lexical decision task, it was demonstrated that lexical decision times to nouns in a grammatical case that demands a preposition were faster when the preposition was appropriate to the case than when it was either inappropriate to the case or a nonsense syllable. This result lends support to the intuition that priming can occur among sentential components.