Ordinary Phrases Research Articles

Lexical means of expressing emotivity and evaluation in theprose by Gennady Yushkov

Introduction. The paper deals the description of some lexical means of expressing emotivity and evaluation in the prose by Gennady Yushkov (1932–2009). Materials and Methods. The article is based on the texts of the novels and short stories by G. A. Yushkov. The author employs the method of component analysis, it defines such components of connotative meaning as parametric, emotional-evaluative, and figurative. It applies a structural method when describing models of individual phraseological units of the author. Results and Discussion. Emotivity and evaluation in the prose by Gennady Yushkov is expressed by various lexical means. Disapproval of the subject of speech is conveyed by commonly used pejoratives and individual phraseological units of the author, created according to the models of ordinary phrases in a figurative sense, lexical repetitions in the replicas of the characters. Negative evaluation and negative emotions of the speaker are also expressed by figurative verbs, while the intensity component in the connotative meaning of the word becomes a prerequisite for the development of the evaluation component. Conceptually significant for the works by G. A. Yushkov is the component of approval in the connotative meaning of the Komi ethnonym. Such qualities of a Komi person as bringing things to the end, sincerity, purposefulness, perseverance, the ability to feel nature and navigate in the forest, as well as modesty. Conclusion. The lexical means of expressing emotiveness and evaluation in the prose by Gennady Yushkov are quite diverse They are based on both the commonly used resources of the Komi folk language and the author’s own linguistic creativity.

Topic prominency in Japanese

In light of the data regarding the focusing of the particle dake ‘only’, this article shows that in Japanese, wa -marked topic phrases are placed in the CP domain, and argues that this can take place either in overt constituent structure or in LF. Other ordinary phrases – including ga -marked major subjects that are sometimes assumed to reside in the same clause-peripheral position as topics – are shown to be located within TP. It is also argued that Japanese shows no evidence for “overt” wh -movement, despite Takahashi's claim (Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 11: 655–678, 1993, Journal of East Asian Linguistics 3: 265–300, 1994) to the contrary. The discussion suggests that the prominent use of the CP domain is subject to typological variation, and that Japanese, unlike English, is a topic-prominent language, in which a topic is placed in the CP domain – i.e., TopP located above TP – by the LF output in order to form a topic-comment structure.

Event-related Brain Potentials During Recognition of Ordinary and Bizarre Action Phrases Following Verbal and Subject-performed Encoding Conditions

Recognition performance of ordinary and bizarre action phrases was compared under two encoding conditions: In a verbal condition (V), participants learned the phrases by passively listening to them; in a subjectperformed condition (SP), participants learned the phrases by actively performing the denoted actions with imaginary objects. Recognition performance was better in condition SP than V. Moreover, recognition was better for bizarre than for ordinary phrases but only in condition V. Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded during the recognition test. In condition SP a larger fronto-central negativity was found. This confirms the hypothesis that the SP advantage is due to the reactivation of motor information. Additionally, the later part of the recognition memory ERP effect was analysed. This effect reflects the overall familiarity of items in a recognition test. The amplitude increases with decreasing familiarity. In the present study, an enlarged amplitude was found for bizarre phrases in both conditions, V and SP. This suggests that recognition knowledge is present after SP and V. Moreover, according to the behavioural data, this knowledge seems to improve recognition performance only in condition V.

Bizarreness effects in verbal tasks and subject-performed tasks

Abstract Recognition and cued recall of ordinary action phrases (e.g. “open the book”) and bizarre ones (e.g. “plant the hammer”) were compared under two encoding conditions: in verbal tasks (VTs), subjects learned the phrases by simply listening to them; in subject-performed tasks (SPTs), subjects learned the phrases by performing the denoted actions (without real objects). Memory performance was better after SPTs than after VTs in recognition and cued recall. In addition to this already established finding, it was observed that recognition was better for bizarre phrases than for ordinary ones after VTs and that bizarreness was unrelated to recognition after SPTs. Cued recall, on the other hand, depended on bizarreness after VTs as well as after SPTs and, in contrast to the recognition findings, ordinary phrases were recalled better than bizarre phrases. This pattern of findings was explained by the assumptions that lexical and conceptual information is encoded after VTs and motor information is addition...