Present Tense Verbs Research Articles

Au bonheur des fautes: confessions d'une dompteuse de mots by Muriel Gilbert

Reviewed by: Au bonheur des fautes: confessions d'une dompteuse de mots by Muriel Gilbert Harley Jay Siskin Gilbert, Muriel. Au bonheur des fautes: confessions d'une dompteuse de mots. Vuibert, 2017. ISBN 978-2-311-10154-6. Pp. 256. What could be more boring than an elaboration of the responsibilities of a proofreader? Unless that proofreader begins her reflections during a session of aquagym, coiffed with a flowered rubber bathing cap. Gilbert's interlocutor—her aquacollègue—poses a question that inspires the author with dread, out of breath from her exertions. How is it possible to explain simply the function of a proofreader, a profession that is sadly diminishing in prestige and numbers? Is it even conceivable that a corrector of spelling, grammar, and content still exists? Gilbert undertakes her apologia with humor, quirkiness, and linguistic charm. Her playfulness begins as she seeks to stall her aquapote, consciously using a mix of registers to signal her openness to linguistic variation. From inverted verbs in the first-person present tense (gagnéje) and the more formal/written car, she moves to the familiar c'est pas encore and produces a neologism, the adjective pâquerettale, playing on the expression"au ras des pâquerettes." Gilbert takes great pleasure in pushing the expressive boundaries of language. She cites an official document with four errors, the series being condemned with a parenthesized rereresic. She adores creating hyphenated compound adjectives such as maternello-élémentaire. She indulges in representations of medieval usage. In a more pragmatic vein, Gilbert bemoans the reflex to look for technological"solutions" to replace the proofreader. This money-saving move, imposed by the print media that has survived electronic publication, reduces the potential income of a professional proofreader and results in poorer quality. Fewer publishers have a robust cassetin. On the other hand, there are fewer readers who are able to make an informed judgment on linguistic precision. The imperative to communicate rapidly has subordinated spelling to an economy of language. Coincidently, but not necessarily causally, spelling instruction has deteriorated. Mistakes abound in the electronic media. "Globish" has further blurred correct usage, creating calques and troublesome borrowings. Moreover, proofreaders must be content experts, correcting errors in description or context, a competence that requires more than a decontextualized Google translation. In a less [End Page 249] despairing shift of focus, Gilbert offers useful chapters on the evolution of French as well as the language's future. Despite her language play, Gilbert has not abandoned a prescriptive approach, which is after all a job requirement! The intermittent textbox entitled Un bonbon sur la langue offers rules and explanations for opaque cases of grammar and usage as well as entertaining language trivia. While privileging correct usage, Gilbert's linguistic virtuosity inspires a renewed appreciation of the expressive tools that validate the good health of French. From a pedagogical perspective, this book will do little to answer our questions about techniques of error correction or the delicate balance between communicative pragmatics and accuracy. Yet, Gilbert's rich professional autobiography commands our attention. So, when do we write bohème vs. Bohême? Should we ask Rodolfo or Mimi (pace Murger/Puccini)? No, better to consult Muriel Gilbert! Harley Jay Siskin University of California, Santa Cruz Copyright © 2019 American Association of Teachers of French

Linguistic analysis of the autobiographical memories of individuals with major depressive disorder.

BackgroundMajor depressive disorder (MDD) is characterized by biases in memory, attention, and cognition. The present study utilized the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) to examine the content of specific autobiographical memories (AMs) recalled by individuals with MDD during an autobiographical memory task.MethodsWe examined various features of the text (including use of affective, cognitive, and self-referential terms), as well as their associations with clinical and cognitive features of MDD (depression severity, autobiographical memory specificity, amygdala activity), in 45 unmedicated adults with MDD compared to 61 healthy controls.ResultsWhen recalling positive memories MDD individuals used the word “I” less, fewer positive words, more words indicating present focus (present tense verbs), and fewer words overall to describe memories compared to controls. When recalling negative memories, MDD individuals used “I” more, more words indicating present focus, and more words overall to describe memories relative to controls. Depression severity was correlated with word count, the use of “I”, and words indicating present focus in negative memories and inversely correlated with word count and the use of “I” in positive memories. Autobiographical memory specificity was correlated with word count, the use of “I”, and words indicating present focus for positive memories and inversely correlated with the use of “I” and words indicating present focus for negative memories.LimitationsDue to the nature of AM recall, we could not control for the number of memories which participants recalled in each mnemonic category.ConclusionsResults align with literature implicating rumination and intensive self-focus in depression and suggest that interventions targeting specific word use may be therapeutically beneficial in the treatment of MDD.

Epistemic commitment and mood alternation: A semantic-pragmatic analysis of Spanish future-framed adverbials

In Spanish subordinate adverbial clauses containing cuando and a present-tense verb, it is assumed that the indicative is used for actions prior to or simultaneous with speech time, while the subjunctive is the only option for unrealized actions. However, in Porteño Spanish, the indicative may occur in future-framed adverbials, as in (1), conveying pragmatic meaning not otherwise encoded in the grammar.(1) Te aviso cuandollego [I].‘I'll let you know when I arrive.’Here I pair naturally-occurring data with constructed examples evaluated by native-speaker respondents to identify the contextual factors conditioning variable mood selection. I demonstrate that, although native-speaker acceptance of the indicative is highly variable, the indicative is felicitous with immediate and temporally-specific actions, and when epistemic certainty is conveyed. The subjunctive, on the other hand, is preferred for distant and unrestricted future actions, or when the speaker is uncertain that the action will occur. These findings reveal previously unattested nuances in Spanish mood variation and lead to a conception of mood choice as a gradient means of conveying pragmatic information about speaker epistemic commitment. Furthermore, I argue for the importance of qualitative analyses that carefully examine and control for the role of context in laying the groundwork for subsequent quantitative analyses.

Patterns and Causes of Deviations in English Verbal Inflectional Suffixes among Thai ELF Learners

This study investigates the use of three verbal inflectional suffixes, i.e., the present tense -s, the past tense -ed, and the progressive -ing, among Thai ELF learners. It examines how they deviate from ENL norms and the causes of deviations are analysed. Data were taken from the academic writing of 116 English-major students at a university in Bangkok. The results showed that Thai ELF learners who have advanced and upper-intermediate level English knowledge and skills have acquired the ability to use these three suffixes, but they sometimes deviate from ENL norms. They tend to omit the -s ending when there is a long distance between the main subject and main verb, when there is a heavy subject containing a head and pre-/post-modifiers, and when the subject appears as a structurally complex category. They often omit the -ed ending when there are several past tense verbs in a sentence. They extend the use of the progressive aspect to talk about a general truth or habit which is typically expressed by the present simple tense in ENL. Results suggest that linguistic and functional causes are responsible for these deviations. Thai ELF learners use the zero forms of present and past tense verbs as a result of both syntactic complexity and the pragmatic motives of the efficiency of communication as well as the exploitation of redundancy. They use progressive verbs with general truths or habits due to the attractive form and meaning of this aspect and also the pragmatic motive of added prominence. Keywords: Thai ELF learners; deviations; the present tense -s; the past tense -ed; the progressive -ing

Encoding and Retrieval Interference in Sentence Comprehension: Evidence from Agreement.

Long-distance verb-argument dependencies generally require the integration of a fronted argument when the verb is encountered for sentence interpretation. Under a parsing model that handles long-distance dependencies through a cue-based retrieval mechanism, retrieval is hampered when retrieval cues also resonate with non-target elements (retrieval interference). However, similarity-based interference may also stem from interference arising during the encoding of elements in memory (encoding interference), an effect that is not directly accountable for by a cue-based retrieval mechanism. Although encoding and retrieval interference are clearly distinct at the theoretical level, it is difficult to disentangle the two on empirical grounds, since encoding interference may also manifest at the retrieval region. We report two self-paced reading experiments aimed at teasing apart the role of each component in gender and number subject-verb agreement in Italian and English object relative clauses. In Italian, the verb does not agree in gender with the subject, thus providing no cue for retrieval. In English, although present tense verbs agree in number with the subject, past tense verbs do not, allowing us to test the role of number as a retrieval cue within the same language. Results from both experiments converge, showing similarity-based interference at encoding, and some evidence for an effect at retrieval. After having pointed out the non-negligible role of encoding in sentence comprehension, and noting that Lewis and Vasishth’s (2005) ACT-R model of sentence processing, the most fully developed cue-based retrieval approach to sentence processing does not predict encoding effects, we propose an augmentation of this model that predicts these effects. We then also propose a self-organizing sentence processing model (SOSP), which has the advantage of accounting for retrieval and encoding interference with a single mechanism.

Sexual Orientation Self-Concept Ambiguity and Alcohol Use Disorder Symptomology: The Roles of Motivated Psychological Distancing and Drinking to Cope.

Women whose sexual identity is not exclusively heterosexual are at risk for alcohol use disorder (AUD) and problematic drinking. A textual analytic approach focusing on motivated psychological distancing in language style use was used to detect sexual minority women who are at greatest risk for an AUD. Young adult women (N = 254) were asked to complete a self-report measure of sexual orientation self-concept ambiguity as well as free-write about their sexuality. In addition, they completed a questionnaire assessing AUD symptoms according to criteria from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition. The Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) program assessed language markers within participant-written essays that reflected acute states of aversive self-focus (i.e., fewer first-person pronouns, fewer present-tense verbs). Drinking to cope with negative affectivity mediated the relationship between sexual orientation self-concept ambiguity and AUD symptomology. This indirect effect was conditional, moderated by higher use of language reflecting motivated psychological distancing, such that the indirect effect was significant only for women whose writing included fewer instances of first-person pronouns and present-tense verbs (-1 SD) compared with those with greater instances of first-person pronouns and present-tense verbs (+1 SD), reflecting motivated psychological distancing. Sexual minority women are at an increased risk for AUD. Further, this study suggests mechanisms that may exacerbate the relationship between sexual identity uncertainty and problematic drinking. The study presents a novel method of identifying individuals most at risk for alcohol misuse: detecting aversive self-focus in language style and word choice.

Uma análise dos aspectos semânticos de ter, tener e haber em construções com o particípio passado, no português brasileiro e no espanhol

Este artigo objetiva descrever as construções “ter + particípio”, “tener / haber + particípio”, com o verbo no presente do indicativo, no português brasileiro (PB) e no espanhol. No PB, é consenso entre os linguistas da área dos estudos semânticos a inadequação da nomenclatura “pretérito perfeito composto”, atribuída a tal perífrase pela tradição gramatical. No espanhol, conforme a Real Academia Española (RAE), tener não é considerado um verbo formador de tempo composto (TC), mas sim de perífrase verbal. O TC é formado exclusivamente por haber. Entretanto, na RAE afirma-se que existe outra variante dialetal em que o verbo tener se aproxima do auxiliar do TC do PB. Busca-se defender, então, que os falantes da língua espanhola recorrem ao uso de tener em TC por ele ser capaz de expressar iteratividade, sentido esse que haber não expressa. Acredita-se, dessa forma, que tener esteja seguindo os passos de “ter” no processo de gramaticalização.

English

Although Lunyu (The Analects) is well-known and often mentioned in Confucian scholarship, there have been no focused examinations of the comprehensive linguistic features of its English translations. This study seeks to report a comparative multidimensional investigation into the similarities and differences in the lexico-grammatical features of Lunyu (The Analects) translated by James Legge and Ku Hungming. The comparison is made along five functional dimensions (involved versus informational production, narrative versus non-narrative concerns, explicit versus situation-dependent reference, overt expression of persuasion, and abstract versus non-abstract information), and the prominent lexico-grammatical features (based on a 67-item feature set) in the two texts are singled out. It is found that there are more private verbs, present tense verbs, be as main verb, past tense verbs, third-person pronouns, and public verbs in Legge’s The Analects of Confucius , whereas Ku’s The Discourses and Sayings of Confucius uses nouns, adjectives, long words, nominalisations, and time adverbials more often. The identified differences in lexico-grammatical patterns are related to the distinct goals of the two translators. The results demonstrate that the multidimensional (MD) approach is effective in differentiating the linguistic features of the two translation versions and motivating a micro-analysis of the texts, seeking to discern the translators’ underlying assumptions about the relations of Confucius and his followers. It is considered that these findings may have implications for the understanding of the translations of The Analects .

A Five-Day Lesson Plan for Level 1 High School Korean

ABSTRACT This forum presents lesson plans on the topic of family for high school students at the beginning level in the public school system in areas where many community members speak Korean. The lessons would typically be taught in week 8 as part of the unit entitled, “Personal and Family Life,” which has a total of 20 lessons. Since this is the first unit, students' ability for speaking and writing Korean is very limited, while they should have learned how to introduce themselves using name, school year, school, and nationality, and to produce the copula verb and existence verb. For this topic on the family, students will learn family-related terminology and action verbs in simple present tense in order to talk about family events and Chu-suk and compare it with Thanksgiving. This unit plan meets the national 5C and state standards. The objectives are to enable students to use Korean to talk and write about their own family as well as to demonstrate understanding of Korean culture related to families (e.g., family relationship, family events). They should be able to compare this information with American culture through these lessons.

Severity of Alzheimer’s disease and language features in picture descriptions

ABSTRACTBackground: Studies of connected speech of individuals with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) report significant impairments relative to the language of cognitively intact participants. Considerably less research has focused on the association between dementia severity and language features.Aims: The current study examines how scores on a dementia screening test (the Mini-Mental Status Examination, MMSE) correlate with features of connected speech.Methods & Procedures: Thirty-five individuals with AD (range of MMSE scores = 3–25) and 35 cognitively intact participants provided picture descriptions. Ten language features were derived from their descriptions using an automated text analysis tool: total word number, percentage of content words, pronoun ratio, type-token ratio, mean word frequency, percentage of verbs, percentage of verbs in the most common morphological form in Hebrew, percentage of verbs in present tense, percentage of prepositions, and percentage of subordination markers. Information content was also analysed.Outcomes & Results: Group differences emerged in five language features as well as in information content, attesting for substantial lexical impairment in AD. Within the AD group, MMSE scores were correlated with type-token ratio, with mean word frequency, and with the number of information units. No equivalent correlations were found within the control group.Conclusions: Dementia severity associates with decreasing lexical diversity, increasing word frequency, and a reduction in relevant information content, but not with changes in grammatical features of language. A simple automated analysis of connected speech could be used clinically to define and track the decline in language abilities in AD.

A linguistic signature of psychological distancing in emotion regulation.

Effective emotion regulation is critical for mental health and well-being, rendering insight into underlying mechanisms that facilitate this crucial skill invaluable. We combined principles of cognitive linguistics and basic affective science to test whether shifting components of one's language might foster effective emotion regulation. In particular, we explored bidirectional relations between emotion regulation and linguistic signatures of psychological distancing. In Study 1, we assessed whether people spontaneously distance their language (i.e., shift their word use to be less socially and temporally proximate) when regulating emotions. Participants transcribed their thoughts while either passively viewing or actively regulating their emotional responses to negative images. Regulation increased linguistic markers of social and temporal distance, and participants who showed greater linguistic distancing were more successful regulators. Study 2 reversed this relation and investigated whether distancing one's language spontaneously regulated one's emotions. Participants wrote about negative images either using psychologically "close" or "distant" language in physical, social, and temporal domains. All 3 domains of linguistic distancing spontaneously reduced negative affect. Distancing language also "bled" across domains (e.g., temporal distancing spontaneously produced social distancing). This suggests that distancing one's language in 1 domain (e.g., reducing use of present-tense verbs) produces shifts in deep representations of psychological distance that are measurable across domains (e.g., reduced use of the word "I"). Results extend understanding of language-emotion interactions and reveal novel strategies for reducing negative affect. (PsycINFO Database Record

Quality of Memories in Women Abused by Their Intimate Partner: Analysis of Traumatic and Nontraumatic Narratives.

Traditional models of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) claim that the high emotional intensity of traumatic events leads to deficits in the voluntary access of traumatic memories. This may result in disorganized narratives, with a high sense of emotional and sensory reliving. Alternatively, the basic mechanisms view suggests that high arousal leads to more available involuntary and voluntary memories. Traumatic narratives would not be impaired; indeed, they would be immersive and rich in detail. To test this perspective, this study compared the trauma narratives of 50 battered women (trauma-exposed group) with narratives about positive experiences and narratives of 50 nonexposed women (controls), and analyzed the relationship between trauma narrative aspects and the severity of PTSD. Results showed that trauma narratives were detailed, oriented, and coherent. Affective process words and emotional tone were related to trauma centrality and anxiety during disclosure, and predicted the severity of PTSD (R2 = .26). These variables, together with the use of present tense verbs, accounted for a significant variance in intrusions (R2 = .34). As hypothesized, narrative aspects related to a sense of reliving and narrative immersion were better predictors of PTSD than aspects reflecting impaired access to voluntary traumatic memories.

The Old English Gloss to the Lindisfarne Gospels: Language, Author and Context eds. by Julia Fernández Cuesta and Sara Pons-Sanz

Reviewed by: The Old English Gloss to the Lindisfarne Gospels: Language, Author and Context eds. by Julia Fernández Cuesta and Sara Pons-Sanz Greg Waite Fernández Cuesta, Julia and Sara Pons-Sanz, eds, The Old English Gloss to the Lindisfarne Gospels: Language, Author and Context ( Anglia Book Series, 51), Berlin, De Gruyter, 2016; cloth; pp. xii, 432, R.R.P. €99.95, US $140.00, £74.99; ISBN 9783110449105. This volume contains papers from a 2012 workshop on the Lindisfarne gloss held at the University of Westminster, with the addition of others. The aim is to gather different perspectives (palaeography, glossography, history, linguistics, and philology) to understand better 'the socio-historical context and the cultural and intellectual milieu in which [the gloss] was produced' (p. 1). The Old English (OE) continuous interlinear gloss inserted into the Lindisfarne Gospels by Aldred in the later tenth century, as an act of reverence and devotion, has long attracted the attention of historical linguists and those studying the book's cultural history. It provides key evidence for the Northumbrian dialect of OE, in an era when literary production was dominated by the West Saxon standardized written dialect exemplified in the works of Ælfric, Wulfstan, and others trained in the monastic reform era. In Part I, 'The Gloss in Context', five papers address wider cultural and historical issues. Michelle Brown further develops ideas advanced in her earlier study The Lindisfarne Gospels: Society, Spirituality and the Scribe (British Library, 2003), arguing that Aldred's gloss must be understood against a background of Anglo-Scandinavian political relations, where it was necessary to assert 'Englishness' and Christian character in the North. Jane Roberts investigates Aldred's colophon, and its evidence for the Gospels' origin at Lindisfarne, [End Page 196] revisiting her hypothesis that a vernacular poem served as a source of evidence for Aldred's claims. She also considers points of comparison and contrast between Aldred's glosses to the Gospels, and the Durham Collectar. Philip Rusche's examination of Aldred's glossing indicates that he was influenced mainly by older traditions of Psalter glossing from the ninth century, rather than new developments in the period of monastic reform. Paul Cavill, on the other hand, finds that Aldred's marginalia appear to embody a reforming spirit and a desire for his monastic community to embrace material poverty and purity of heart. Stuart Brookes presents a survey of the varieties of letter-form in the gloss. Aldred's work betrays knowledge of both Square minuscule and Carolingian letter-forms, in addition to his principal script, a somewhat old-fashioned Insular minuscule, and his practice embodies a creative response to the script variety he encountered in the Latin text. Part II, 'The Language of the Gloss', begins with Robert McColl Millar's examination of noun phrase morphology simplification. This paper, along with some others, shows how developments found in early Middle English are already occurring in Northumbria, in contrast with southern OE dialects. Marcelle Cole's paper on present-tense verb morphology contributes to another important line of enquiry. Building on studies by Brunner, Blakeley, and others, she shows how the distribution of variant forms indicates that Aldred's work does not reflect a uniform idiolect throughout, and must have been based on earlier source materials. Luisa García García examines the use and morphological status of causative (-jan) verbs, concluding that the pace of change in inflectional morphology is not paralleled in derivational morphology. María Nieves Rodríguez Ledesma examines morphology and word order for genitive phrases, and George Walkden null subjects as evidence for syntactic variation. Julia Fernández Cuesta compares Skeat's edition with MS Cotton Nero D.iv, highlighting problems of using the print version for linguistic analysis. Part III, 'Glossing Practice', contains an analysis of multiple glosses to present tense forms of beon by Christine Bolze, and another by Sara Pons-Sanz on the principles of ordering of double or multiple semantic glosses. Patrizia Lendinara examines words left unglossed by Aldred, arguing that informed principles are at work here, rather than gaps in his knowledge. Karen Jolly brings her expert knowledge of the Durham Collectar to bear upon Aldred's work...

English Tense Use In Indonesian Journal Articles

<p>This paper reports a study of English tense use in second language writing. Attempting to validate Oster’s (1981) claims on tense use as a rhetorical device in discourse, the study seeks to find out whether Indonesian writers’ use of English tense conforms or confront the previous claims. The data are drawn from twelve journal articles taken from three different Indonesian scientific journals. The use of tense is accounted and analyzed according to the rhetorical functions it plays. The results show that 89% of the present tense verbs are used differently. Contrary to Oster’s claim, this study proves that present tense is also used for generalization. This study also indicates that simple present tense is used more frequently within non-integral citations than the use of simple past tense and present perfect tense in reporting past literature. This paper argues that professional writers are more likely to employ non-integral citations to promote their own ideas to the readers. This is shown by the prominent use of non-integral citations and their combination with the present tense.</p>

“he saith yt he thinkes yt”: Linguistic Factors Influencing Third Person Singular Present Tense Verb Inflection in Early Modern English Depositions

“he saith yt he thinkes yt” : Linguistic Factors Influencing Third Person Singular Present Tense Verb Inflection in Early Modern English Depositions

AN ERROR ANALYSIS OF ENGLISH SIMPLE PRESENT TENSE OF THE SECOND YEAR STUDENTS OF SMP N 1 SUSUKAN REGENCY OF SEMARANG IN THE ACADEMIC YEAR 2003/2004

The aim of this research is to find out how far the errors of simple present tense produced bythe second year students of SMP N 1 Susukan. The research was conducted at State Junior High School (SMP N) 1 Susukan, Regency of Semarang, Central Java, Indonesia. The objects of this research were the eighth graders. This is quantitative research. The writer uses random sampling by lottery. There are about 75 students and the writer took 50% as the sample.The errors made by the students were divided into eight aspects. (1) Error in using auxiliary is 36.75%. (2) Error in using plural noun is 22.90%. (3) Error in using to be is (am, is, are,) is 7.69%.(4) Error in adverb of manneris 4.27%. (5) Error in using verb in simple present tense is 4.78%. (6) Error in using possessive sentence 5.24%. (7) Error in using imperative sentence is 0.34%. (8) Error due to ignorant is 11.28%. Relating to those errors there should be the preventing efforts by the teachers such as providing lots of examples of English and Indonesian sentences so that the students have greater understanding about the difference of those languages.

AN ERROR ANALYSIS OF ENGLISH SIMPLE PRESENT TENSE OF THE SECOND YEAR STUDENTS OF SMP N 1 SUSUKAN REGENCY OF SEMARANG IN THE ACADEMIC YEAR 2003/2004

The aim of this research is to find out how far the errors of simple present tense produced bythe second year students of SMP N 1 Susukan. The research was conducted at State Junior High School (SMP N) 1 Susukan, Regency of Semarang, Central Java, Indonesia. The objects of this research were the eighth graders. This is quantitative research. The writer uses random sampling by lottery. There are about 75 students and the writer took 50% as the sample.The errors made by the students were divided into eight aspects. (1) Error in using auxiliary is 36.75%. (2) Error in using plural noun is 22.90%. (3) Error in using to be is (am, is, are,) is 7.69%.(4) Error in adverb of manneris 4.27%. (5) Error in using verb in simple present tense is 4.78%. (6) Error in using possessive sentence 5.24%. (7) Error in using imperative sentence is 0.34%. (8) Error due to ignorant is 11.28%. Relating to those errors there should be the preventing efforts by the teachers such as providing lots of examples of English and Indonesian sentences so that the students have greater understanding about the difference of those languages.Keywords: Error Analysis; Simple Present Tense; SMP N 1 Susukan

Present Moment Contact and Nonjudgment: Pilot Data on Dismantling Mindful Awareness in Trauma-Related Symptomatology

Conventional views purport that mindfulness includes two components: present moment contact (PMC) and nonjudgment. While mindfulness-based interventions that target a broad spectrum of psychopathology, including posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), emphasize “being present” as a key mechanism toward wellness, researchers have struggled to measure PMC and assess its clinical utility. Is there any inherent value in PMC or is its clinical utility contingent upon simultaneously engaging in nonjudgment? This pilot study introduces an experimental paradigm designed to dismantle mindfulness and examine the utility of these two components. Forty women with interpersonal victimization histories were assigned to either a nonjudgment condition or a control condition. Next, participants recalled their trauma and then wrote down whatever information was present in their awareness. PMC was measured in both conditions by assessing the frequency of present tense verbs used within these written protocols. As predicted, in the absence of nonjudgment, PMC was related to high negative affect and low positive affect, though unrelated to trauma intrusion frequency. In the nonjudgment condition, PMC was no longer related to state affect and inversely related to trauma intrusion frequency. These pilot data suggest that isolating PMC from nonjudgment may be unhelpful and perhaps iatrogenic.

Untangling Synchronic and Diachronic Variation: Verb Agreement in Palmerston English

This paper examines documents and recordings from the past 100 years to analyse the factors that affect the selection of verb form in Palmerston English. Palmerston Island is a small island in the Cook Islands group that was settled by a small group in the 1860s, which included an Englishman, a Portuguese or Portuguese-creole-speaking man, and a small group of Cook Islanders. The descendants of this population speak a dialect of English, and early documents from the island were primarily also written in vernacular English. As is the case in many varieties of English around the world, present tense verb endings do not exactly follow the Standard English pattern of -s following a third person singular subject and bare verbs elsewhere. The variation in -s marking, both historically and synchronically, has been abstracted away in previous descriptions of the dialect. This paper describes for the first time the variant verb agreement patterns found at each stage of the dialect's history, examines various grammatical and social factors that contribute to the distribution of the forms, and uses a logistic regression analysis to model the interactions of the factors and their contributions to the output. This contributes to a growing literature on the -s alternation in English dialects, and is one of only a few studies that has been able to include data from multiple individuals and also from a relatively long historical timeframe. I find that significant predictors of third person verb forms include subject type, subject number, whether the verb is be or not, and at least in the later data, the proximity of the subject to the verb. I also find that the amount of individual variation among speakers is large enough that it almost obscures diachronic variation. This is a finding that has methodological implications for future research into the phenomenon in other varieties, for example casting doubt on the usefulness of ‘apparent time’ studies.

Semitic Poetic Techniques in the Magnificat: Luke 1:46–47, 55

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)The Magnificat (Luke 1:46b-55) imitates the form and content of various biblical psalms and odes, including the Song of Hannah (1 Sam 2:1-10). But to what extent does it show flashes of its own poetic sophistication? How convincing is the pastiche? In this article, I will address these questions through the lens of two grammatical peculiarities in the hymn that are generally dismissed as nonstandard Greek usage. The first aligns two verbs in a synonymous parallelism but sets them in diffferent tenses (vv. 46b-47). The second references the same object through two different object constructions (v. 55).An earlier study has already argued that the first alternation finds a background in Hebrew poetry.1 In this article I will elaborate on this thesis and discuss the literary merits of this technique in the broader hymn. In turn, I will apply a poetic analysis to the second construction as well. I believe the two anomalies are comparable and can be classed together as stylistic or nonsemantic grammatical alternations. This category of poetic devices is amply attested in the Hebrew Bible and evidently plays a vital role in the marked language of this hymn as well. When one adds these techniques to the inventories of the hymn's poetic features, the skill of its poet stands out in stronger relief.2I. Tense Alternation (Luke 1:46b-47)A. Analysis of the GreekIn the opening couplet of the Magnificat, a present-tense verb (µeγαλ?νeι, magnifies, v. 46b) stands opposite an (?γαλλ?ασeν, rejoiced, v. 47) in a synonymous parallelism:Luke 1:46b-47...My soul magnifies the Lord,and my spirit rejoiced in God my savior.The juxtaposition of these tenses has attracted considerable attention in secondary literature. Since for most interpreters, the immediate occasion of Mary's song justifies the present tense of µeγαλ?νeι, those treatments focus almost exclusively on the choice of an form in verse 47.Interpretations of the Aorist in Verse 47One set of approaches identifies ?γαλλiασeν with one of several non-past uses of the aorist. BDF, for instance, identifies ?γαλλiασeν as a gnomic aorist.4 This type, rare in Hellenistic Greek, is associated with aphorisms and statements of general fact. Since the motive clauses following this couplet identify Mary's rejoicing as a reaction to particular events of her recent experience (vv. 48-49), however, a gnomic sense is unlikely in this instance. It is still less likely when one compares ?γαλλ?ασeν to the true gnomics in verses 51-53.5 The in verse 47 differs considerably from these verbs, which include features of proverbial statement, such as nouns with generic articles, indefinite noun or pronoun reference, and an eye toward universal occurrences of the event.6An alternative explanation would identify ?γαλλ?ασeν as one of the few New Testament examples of a dramatic aorist, or an aorist of present state.7 A dramatic here would represent a Hebraism, capturing qualities of the stative perfect (a type emphasizing a present condition resulting from a past, completed action).8 The LXX translates some 47 percent of Hebrew perfects with a present or future value as aorists.9 Four such verbs appear in the first line of the Song of Hannah, an obvious template for the phrasing of Luke 1:46b-47:101 Sam [LXX 1 Kgdms] 2:1...My heart has been made to exult in the Lord.My horn has been exalted in my God.My mouth has been enlarged against my enemies,Because I have been gladdened in your salvation.Although this comparison provides a compelling explanation for the form in verse 47, it ignores the fundamental difficulty of verses 46b-47, namely, the shiftin tense. Why does the poet11 of the Magnificat use a different tense in each line? Why not render both verbs as dramatic aorists, especially with 1 Sam 2:1 as a model? …