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The current study investigates variation in the marking of two aspectual subcategories of the imperfective in Bahamian English. First, it looks into variable auxiliary be use in progressive and future constructions, that is, the variation between full, contracted and zero be in non-past V-ing environments and related contexts. Second, the paper examines variable application of preverbal does/is/’s in non-past habitual environments. The two variables were selected to represent the ‘informal’ and ‘anti-formal’ group respectively, that is, one feature that classifies as a reduction of English structure and one direct transfer from the creole (Allsopp, 1996, pp. lvi–lvii). Thus, in addition to examining the linguistic constraints, the study will take a close look at the stylistic factors conditioning the variation, placing a special focus on the distribution of the non-standardized variants over various registers as well as how speakers employ them to create linguistic styles.

Ziel des Beitrags ist es, die Verwendung kanonischer und nicht-kanonischer Syntax von wh-Überschriften in der deutschen und britischen Presse im Rahmen einer explorativen kontrastiven Studie zu untersuchen und Gemeinsamkeiten und Unterschiede hinsichtlich der textstrukturierenden Funktion dieser Überschriften zu diskutieren. Wir gehen von der Annahme aus, dass wh-Überschriften beider Realisierungsformen als Framesetter fungieren, die das Makrotopik des Textes indizieren, dass aber die verschiedenen Formen eine je unterschiedliche Erwartungshaltung in Bezug auf Struktur des folgenden Textes wecken. Diese Annahme überprüfen wir anhand einer quantitativen Untersuchung der Distribution beider syntaktischer wh-Varianten sowie der darin enthaltenen wh-Proformen und anhand von qualitativen Detailstudien zur Textstruktur ausgewählter deutscher und britischer Pressetexte. Der kontrastive Ansatz deckt globale Unterschiede zwischen kanonischen und nicht-kanonischen wh-Überschriften auf, die sich in beiden Pressediskursen zeigen, wobei sich insbesondere in Bezug auf Frequenz und Wahl von wh-Proformen gewisse sprachspezifische Unterschiede ergeben.

Der Beitrag gibt einen systematischen Überblick über Konstruktdefinitionen, Forschungsinstrumente und Befunde aus 29 Forschungsarbeiten zu kognitiver Aktivierung, einer der drei Basisdimensionen von Unterrichtsqualität, im Fremdsprachenunterricht aus dem deutschsprachigen Raum. Diesbezüglich werden drei Forschungsfragen adressiert: (1) Wie wird das Konstrukt kognitive Aktivierung definiert? (2) Welche Verfahren und Operationalisierungen werden zur Untersuchung von kognitiver Aktivierung eingesetzt? (3) Welche empirischen Befunde zu kognitiver Aktivierung liegen bereits vor? Die Ergebnisse des Reviews deuten darauf hin, dass die Entwicklung einer tragfähigen Definition kognitiver Aktivierung innerhalb der Fremdsprachenforschung noch aussteht. In empirischen Forschungsarbeiten wird das Konstrukt kognitive Aktivierung mehrheitlich generisch operationalisiert und mithilfe von Schüler- und Lehrkräftefragebögen gemessen. Die Befundlage zu Einflussfaktoren, der Erfassung und Wirksamkeit kognitiver Aktivierung im Fremdsprachenunterricht ist aufgrund der geringen Anzahl empirischer Untersuchungen und valider Forschungsinstrumente stark begrenzt., This article reviews research findings and research instruments from 29 studies on cognitive activation (kognitive Aktivierung), one out of three dimensions of instructional quality, in foreign language education conducted in German-speaking countries. Within this context, it addresses three questions: (1) How is the construct cognitive activation defined? (2) What methods are employed to research cognitive activation? (3) What empirical findings on cognitive activation have been published? The review findings indicate that a theoretically sound definition of cognitive activation in foreign language education has yet to be developed. In the majority of studies, the construct of cognitive activation is operationalized generically and measured using student and teacher questionnaires. Insight into the effects of cognitive activation is limited due to a lack of empirical findings and valid research instruments.

Ella Hickson’s Oil (2016) and Leigh Fondakowski’s Spill (2014) make palpable to their audiences what I call the Petrocene: the age in which human existence has become impossible to conceive without oil. Each play illuminates the pervasive presence of petroleum infrastructures in its own way: while Spill focuses on the specific and sensational crisis of the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, Oil presents a series of scenes which focus on two women (mother and daughter) who struggle to carve out their existence in various time periods and in the context of different fossil-energy regimes. Both plays succeed in unveiling not only the toxicity of extractive regimes necessary to fuel the Petrocene, but also the toxicity of the narratives that uphold extractive regimes and their attendant injustices. Moreover, both plays convey the intoxicating effects of oil, which appears as a near-magical substance that promises unfettered progress and access to the good life. Examining these plays in conjunction not only highlights the increasing presence of ecological concerns in dramatic pieces, but also illustrates the ways in which dramatic performance can distill enormous oil infrastructures into apprehensible worlds and thus create vital spaces for pondering the Petrocene.

The present study takes a metapragmatics approach to studying language users' conceptualizations of requests and apologies. In particular, two spoken sub-corpora within the BNC and the COCA were searched for inflectional and derivational variants of request and apology, which are part of the meta-illocutionary lexicon. The retrieved items were analyzed with respect to frequency of occurrence and communicative functions in context. Distributions of frequencies and functions were used as indicators of conceptualization, which were then compared across the two illocutions and across the two sub-corpora. The results of this study suggest that while cross-varietal differences are comparatively small, differences across the two illocutions are much more distinct. These and other findings are discussed against the background of semantic and pragmatic characteristics of these illocutions as well as relevant cross-cultural and social factors involved in discussing them. Finally, this study is characterized by its attempt to combine metapragmatics with variational pragmatics.

Our Winter 2023 issue is a contemplative one, filled with explorations of states of mind, of motivations, of cultural and social pressures, of human motivation, and of personal success. Rich in poetry, we’ve included a short story, many essays, some illustrations and some recipes. We hope you enjoy our work!, Diamonds in the Rough: A Literary Magazine, vol. 5, no. 01

This paper examines the linguistic realization of continuative and contrastive discourse relations (DRs) in English argumentative discourse, focusing on both discourse as product and discourse as process. Based on a corpus of 25 argumentative texts with corresponding experimental data stemming from an editing-based task, this study aims to answer the questions of (i) how continuative and contrastive DRs are linguistically realized (i.e., encoded in coherence strands or additionally signaled) in English argumentative discourse, and (ii) how their signaling unfolds during the real-time process of discourse editing. The quantitative analysis of the edited texts shows that contrastive DRs are signaled throughout (e.g., through contrastive discourse connectives), whereas continuative DRs are more frequently encoded only. In addition, the qualitative analysis of the experimental data (i.e., keystroke logging data and corresponding metadata) reveals that while the signaling of contrastive DRs is made manifest right from the start of the editing process across the data, continuative DRs tend to be signaled only at a later stage. This can be explained by the semantic overlap between different types of continuative DRs, which requires that the participants (re-)negotiate the exact nature (and thus the appropriate linguistic signal) of a particular continuative DR more frequently than contrastive DRs, which are clearly interpreted and thus readily signaled as contrastive throughout.

Language change is an essential feature of human language, and it is therefore one of the focal areas of the scientific study of language. Language change is always tacitly at work in all languages of the world and at all levels of a given language, be it phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, etc. It has been suggested that it is precisely the capacity to constantly change and adjust that allows language to keep serving the communicative goals of its users, from ancient to modern times (Fauconnier & Turner, 2003, p. 179). This thesis investigates an especially salient pattern of lexicogrammatical change, namely word-formation of verbs from animal nouns by zero-derivation, in the process of which such nouns as, for example, dog, horse, or beaver change their usage and meaning to produce animal verbs: to dog ‘to follow someone persistently and with a malicious intent’, to horse about/around ‘to make fun of, to ‘rag’, to ridicule someone’ and to beaver away ‘to work at working with great enthusiasm’ respectively. In the previous literature this pattern of language change has been termed verbal zoosemy (e.g. Kiełtyka, 2016), i.e. metaphorical construal of human actions by means of linguistic material from the domain of animals. The approach taken in this study is not to simply report on the objective changes in the morphology, syntactic distribution and meaning of such linguistic units before and after conversion, but to uncover the complexity of cognitive mechanisms which allow the speakers of English to reclassify such well-established nominal units as animal noun into verbs. It is assumed that the grammatical change in these lexical units is predicated on and triggered by preceding semantic change. Thus, the study is set in the framework of Cognitive Historical Semantics and employs the Conceptual Metaphor and Metonymy Theory (CMMT) to untangle the intricacies of the semantic change making the grammatical change of animal nouns into verbs possible and acceptable in the minds of English speakers. To this end, this study employed the Oxford English Dictionary Online (OED Online) to compile a glossary of 96 denominal animal verbal forms tied to 209 verbal senses (most verbs in the dataset displayed polysemy). The data collected from the OED Online included not only the senses of the verbs, but also the date of the earliest recorded use of the verbal form with the given sense (regarded in the study as the date of conversion), the earliest usage examples for individual senses and morphologically or semantically related linguistic units from the lexical field of the respective parent noun which were amenable to explaining the observed instances of semantic change. Each instance of zoosemisation, i.e. of the creation of a separate metaphorical verbal sense, was then carefully analysed on the basis of the data collected and classified with the help of the CMMT. In the final stage, a comprehensive and systematic classification of the senses of animal verbs in accordance with the cognitive mechanisms of their creation (metaphor, metonymy, or a combination thereof) was produced together with a timeline of the first appearance of individual metaphorical senses of animal verbs recorded in the OED. The results show that animal verbs are produced through the interaction of conceptual metaphor and metonymy. Specifically, it was established that two major patterns of metaphor-metonymy interaction underpinning the process of verbal zoosemisation are metaphor from metonymy and metonymy from metaphor. In the former pattern, either an already existing metonymic animal verb is expanded to include the target domain PEOPLE, or the animal noun itself acts as a metonymic vehicle to a certain element of the idealised cognitive model of the given animal, which is metaphorically projected onto people. In the latter mechanism, a metaphorical projection of an animal term initially enters the lexicon in the form of a metaphorical animal noun referring to a human entity, and later in the course of language development it comes to metonymically stand for the action, which the given entity either performs or is involved in. Secondarily, it was observed that individual animal nouns can undergo multiple rounds of zoosemic conversion over time depending on the semantic frame in which the given linguistic unit undergoes denominal conversion, and that results in the polysemy of most animal verbs. Die Masterarbeit untersucht das Phänomen der verbalen Zoosemie im Englischen. Der Begriff verbale Zoosemie steht für Nullableitung von substantivischen Tiernamen zu Verben, die sich metaphorisch auf hauptsächlich von Menschen (aber zum Teil auch von nicht belebten Entitäten oder Tieren) ausgeführte Handlungen beziehen, z.B. von beaver ‚Bieber‘ zu to beaver away ‚fieberhaft an etwas arbeiten‘ oder von horse ‚Pferd‘ zu to horse around ‚rumalbern, rumblöden‘. Das Ziel dieser Untersuchung ist es im Rahmen der kognitiven Linguistik, und insbesondere einer ihrer Tochterdisziplinen, nämlich historischer Semantik, zu bestimmen, welche kognitiven Mechanismen solche Phänomene des Sprachwandels für die Sprecher verständlich machen bzw. ermöglichen. Dafür wurden 96 zoosemische Verben, samt den vom Oxford English Dictionary Online angebotenen Definitionen und datierten Beispielsätzen, zusammengetragen und unter Anwendung der kognitiven Methapher- und Metonymietheorie analysiert. Im Anschluss wurde eine Klassifizierung der zoosemischen Verben im Englischen unternommen. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass die Nullableitung von substantivischen Tiernamen zu Verben auf zwei grundsätzliche kognitive Mechanismen zurückzuführen ist, nämlich Metonymisierung gefolgt von Metaphorisierung oder Metaphorisierung gefolgt von Metonymisierung. Im ersten Fall wird entweder ein bereits lexikalisiertes metonymisches Verb oder der substantivische Tiername, der metonymisch für ein Attribut des Tieres steht, metaphorisch auf Menschenhandlungen projiziert, z.B. von to hound ‚etwas mithilfe eines Jagdhunds jagen’ zu to hound ‚wie ein Jagdhund verfolgen’ bzw. von rabbit ‚Karnickel’ zu to rabbit ‚sich wie Karnickel vermehren’. Im zweiten Fall wird der Tiername zunächst als metaphorisches Substantiv, das sich auf eine Person oder einen Gegenstand bezieht, lexikalisiert, z.B. rat ‚Verräter, Petze’ bzw. pony ‘Spickzettel’. Im weiteren Verlauf des Sprachwandels wird dieses Substantiv durch die Metonymie AGENT FOR ACTION oder OBJECT INVOLVED IN ACTION FOR ACTION zum Verben abgeleitet, z.B. to rat ‚verpetzen, verpfeifen’ bzw. to pony ‚spicken’. Zur Metaphorisierung gefolgt von Metonymisierung gehört eine weitere Subkategorie von zoosemischen Verben, nämlich die Verben die metonymisch für ganze metaphorische Redewendungen stehen, z.b. to wolf für to cry wolf ‚falschen Alarm geben’. Eine Erklärung zu dieser Art von metonymischer Verknüpfung zwischen der Semantik einer ganzen idiomatischen Redewendung und dem Bedeutungsinhalt eines ihrer substantivischen Elemente, das zum Verben konvertiert wird, konnte in der einschlägigen Literatur nicht gefunden werden. Daher bedarf dieser Mechanismus metonymischen Bedeutungstransfers weiterer Forschung. Die quantitative Analyse der identifizierten kognitiven Mechanismen im untersuchten Datensatz von 96 Tierverben hat ergeben, dass die metaphorische Projektion eines Tiernamens, der metonymisch für ein Attribut des Tieres steht, als der prototypische Mechanismus des Bedeutungstranfers der Englischen Zoosemie zu werten ist.

Even though intensifiers have received a good deal of attention over the past few decades, downtoners, comprising diminishers and minimizers, have remained by and large a neglected category (but cf. Brinton, this issue). Among downtoners, the adverb little or a little stands out as the most frequent item. It is multifunctional and serves as a diminishing and minimizing intensifier and also in non-degree uses as a quantifier, frequentative, and durative. Therefore, the present paper is devoted to the structural and functional profile of ( a) little in Late Modern English speech-related data. The data source is the socio-pragmatically annotated Old Bailey Corpus (OBC, version 2.0), which allows, among other things, the investigation of the usage of the item among different speaker groups. Our research charts the semantic and formal uses of adverbial little. Downtoner uses outnumber non-degree uses in the data, and diminishing uses are more common than minimizing uses. The formal realization is predominantly a little, with very rare determinerless or modified instances, such as very little. Little modifies a wide range of “targets,” but most frequently adjectives and prepositional phrases, focusing on human states and circumstantial detail. With regard to variation and change, adverbial little declines in use over the 200 years and is used more commonly by speakers from the lower social ranks and by the lay, non-professional participants in the courtroom.

This issue of Diamonds in the Rough is concerned with social justice and the urgent need to speak one’s mind. Essays cover important political issues like abortion and women’s rights, gay rights, free speech and free thought when democracies are increasingly at risk. We also have some light-hearted writing—an essay on not being a duck—and a critique of a TV series, One Tree Hill. I’m happy to say we have some wonderful art work as well—a series on beer bottles with commentary: “Beer Stories,” and four paintings. As a last word, I’m reprinting a favorite “Coming Down with Covid” chicken soup; you don’t have to endure Covid to like it. Enjoy!, Diamonds in the Rough: A Literary Magazine, vol. 4, no. 02

This study compares the complexity of the noun phrase (NP) in Ghanaian English in a real‐time perspective. Based on the Historical Corpus English in Ghana (1966–1975) and the Ghanaian component of the International Corpus of English (mainly 2000s), representing the early and late stages of structural nativisation in the dynamic model, NP complexity is measured using five criteria (NP pattern, complexity of the premodifier, length of the pre‐ and postmodifier and complexity of the postmodifier). The study uses conditional inference trees, taking into account three potential factors: corpus, text type and syntactic function. The results show that over time the complexity of the NP in Ghanaian English has increased, which is interpreted as Ghanaians becoming more proficient and therefore employing more sophisticated structures. Text type is an important predictor; syntactic function plays only a minor role. By adding a diachronic perspective, the study contributes to current models of the evolution of world Englishes.

The present study longitudinally explores regressive phonological cross-linguistic influence (CLI) in seven adolescents (aged 12–13) and seven adults (aged 21–39) by examining voice-onset time (VOT) of /p,t,k/ in their first, second, and third language (L1, L2, and L3, respectively). All participants had the same language combination (L1 German, L2 English, L3 Polish) and were recorded completing a range of production tasks in all three languages four times over the course of the first year of L3 learning. The scope of previous research on phonological CLI is thus broadened in two ways: (1) by tracing the development of all languages upon the arrival of a new language in a multilingual’s system longitudinally, and (2) by investigating CLI patterns in two age groups when input and learning environment are comparable. Previous L2 age studies have mostly only made retrospective assumptions about (target) language development, so that longitudinal data, including the entire language repertoire of multilingual speakers, are needed to substantiate claims made in that regard. For the adolescent group, significant changes to both their L1 and L2 over time were found, while the adults’ background languages remained relatively stable on the group level. However, for both groups, much individual variation was uncovered., Finanziert durch den Open-Access-Publikationsfonds der Westfälischen Wilhelms-Universität Münster (WWU Münster).

Hongkong-Englisch ist eine in der Entstehung befindliche beziehungsweise neue Varietät der englischen Sprache, die ihre eigenen phonetischen und phonologischen Merkmale aufweist. Frühere Studien zu englischen Frikativen im Hongkong-Englisch deuteten auf einige spezielle Merkmale hin, wie beispielsweise das Fehlen stimmhafter Frikative, TH-Fronting und TH-Stopping. Jedoch gab es bisher keine groß angelegten Studien, die das phonologische System der Frikative und ihre Variabilität in Bezug auf verschiedene sprachinterne Faktoren untersuchten. Die vorliegende Studie soll diese Lücke schließen. Um die Nuancen der Frikative besser erfassen zu können, wurden zudem ihre akustischen Eigenschaften untersucht. Aus den Ergebnissen dieser Studie wurden gewichtete phonologische Regeln abgeleitet und in einem modernen Spracherkennungssystem zur Anwendung gebracht.

This paper presents a variational pragmatic analysis of multilingual question tags in Nigerian English, combining a corpus-pragmatic analysis of the Nigerian component of the International Corpus of English with a survey study on the preferences and attitudes of Nigerian students toward different question tag forms. The corpus study highlights multilingual pragmatic variation in terms of form and function of variant as well as English and non-English (i.e., derived from indigenous Nigerian languages) invariant question tags in six text types: conversations, phonecalls, classroom lessons, broadcast discussions, broadcast interviews, and legal cross-examinations. Nigerian speakers combine a wide range of English and non-English invariant forms, whereas variant question tags only play a marginal role and are not characteristic of Nigerian English. Text type influences the overall frequency of question tags and – together with the pragmatic function – constrains the use of individual forms. The survey study shows diverging results as the participants generally prefer variant over invariant question tags and show a strong dispreference for indigenous Nigerian forms when speaking English. Nevertheless, their preferences for specific forms over others are guided by the communicative setting and requirements of a given situation. The students also hold most positive attitudes toward variant question tags, while non-English tags are rated less positively on items reflecting decency. However, all question tag forms are valued in terms expressiveness. Hence, Nigerian students’ dispositions toward multilingual question tag use are guided by a prescriptive ideology that is biased toward canonized English forms. While indigenous Nigerian forms are well integrated into question tag use, indicating a high degree of nativization of Nigerian English at a pragmatic level, acceptance for these local forms is lagging behind. In general methodological terms, the paper shows that question tags – or discourse-pragmatic-features in general – have high potential for studying multilingual variation in New Englishes. However, studies on the multilingual pragmatics of New Englishes need to consider the full range of multilingual forms, take into account variety-internal variation via text type, and should ideally also study the users’ perspectives.