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Among Muslims there is a dogmatic belief in the linguistic inimitability of Qur’anic discourse that places limitations on its translatability at different linguistic levels and constitutes a minefield of hurdles when translating it between incongruous and incommensurable languages. One understudied linguistic level is the lexical-semantic level and one unstudied issue is the frames and functions of ancillary antonymy in the Qur’anic discourse. This article explores the translatability of ancillary antonym frames and functions from Qur’anic Arabic into English, using a lexicosyntactic approach to seven English translations available and accessible in the Quranic Arabic Corpus (QAC). Findings demonstrate that the Qur’an translators in focus are at great variance in rendering the syntactic frames and discourse functions of ancillary antonymy into English. There are also noticeable variations in the translatorial syntagmatic chains and paradigmatic choices as a result of adopting different translational strategies, notably explicitation, implicitation, domestication, foreignization, reproduction, substitution, and exonymy. The main conclusion is that ancillary antonym pairs co-occur within syntactic frames and co-perform discourse functions which must be attended and rendered into target texts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper aims to account for the semantic properties of eventive personal name compounds in German (e.g. Brezel-Bush/Pretzel-Bush). These are compounds where the compound constituents are combined based on the discursive event in which the name bearer has participated. In this regard, the question arises of how the relationship between the compound constituents can be modelled given that the knowledge about the discursive event plays a central role. Starting from the corpus data collected from the German Reference Corpus (DeReKo), the Digital Dictionary of the German Language (DWDS) and Twitter (X), we test the hypothesis that the relationships between the constituents of eventive personal name compounds cannot be captured by existing approaches to the semantics of compounds. Instead we apply two frame semantics approaches to this compound type: an approach based on the German FrameNet and an approach based on Barsalou frames and show how they contribute to the linguistic operationalization of discursive events that underlie the relationship between the constituents. The analysis indicates that well-known advantages and disadvantages of both frame semantic approaches also apply to the eventive personal name compounds. Whereas the limited set of frame elements from the German FrameNet in combination with construction morphology can account for the non-compositional compound meaning, Barsalou-Frames are recursive and therefore provide better evidence for different aspects of knowledge involved in the interpretation of eventive personal name compounds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to reason about the behaviour of programs described in a programming language, a mathematically rigorous definition of that language is needed. In this paper, we present a machine-checked formalisation of concurrent Core Erlang (a subset of Erlang) based on our previous formalisations of its sequential sublanguage. We define a modular, frame stack semantics, show how program evaluation is carried out with it, and prove a number of properties (e.g. determinism, confluence). Finally, we define program equivalence based on bisimulations and prove that side-effect-free evaluation is a bisimulation. This research is part of a wider project that aims to verify refactorings to prove that particular program code transformations preserve program behaviour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on analyzing verb marking and classifying adjectival predicates in creole languages, with specific emphasis on Vincentian Creole. It explores how tense marking interacts with different predicate types and influences temporal readings and syntactic behavior in creoles. It aims to contribute to a better understanding of adjectival predicates in English-based creoles and reevaluate the notion of the creole prototype.

Through discourse analysis, this article explores strategies used in the speeches and public statements of former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos (2017–2020), as she employed marketing tactics in service of a neoliberal educational agenda. I identify DeVos’s framing and lexical choices deployed to increase memory and attention salience, thereby highlighting the role words play in shaping political and cultural outcomes. Although the paper provides only a snapshot of DeVos’s framing, the discussion is situated within a broader neoliberal discourse designed to manipulate public sense-making and trigger emotions through emotionally charged rhetoric. Through careful lexical choices, DeVos crafts a worldview for primary and secondary audiences that likewise informs macro-level educational narratives, policies, and practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses media frames employed by the Nigerian media in reporting events of the COVID-19 pandemic. It determines the linguistic choices that shaped the intentions of the media and how they aligned with the timing and effectiveness that impacted the thoughts and actions expressed by Nigerians. Agenda setting theory, framing theory and speech act theory elucidated the media practice of consciously selecting words or expressions for creating frames of news reports to achieve their desired intentions of controlling public perceptions of events regardless of the authenticity. This study adopted a mixed-method research methodology. Data were obtained from Nigerian online media reports on COVID-19, and also from a questionnaire to collect quantifiable data from 500 respondents in Nsukka metropolis in Nigeria using cluster and purposive random sampling techniques. We adopted Austin's speech act (1962) and Bateson's (1972) framing theories as theoretical frameworks to analyse our data. We observed the domination of frames involving assertive, declarative and directive speech acts in the Nigerian media reports to create a 'death-sentence' image about COVID-19 and to evoke greater belief in their stories, and fear among the public. However, with unfolding events not matching the media frames, Nigerians began to doubt the media and the government. This development showed that such media frames had outlived their effectiveness and needed to change to retain the public's attention after their 'optimum effectiveness duration' had expired. The failure to change them made the public develop their counter-frames. The study, therefore, advocates a constant change of news frames to retain public attention and a review of Bateson's framing theory to reflect societal and environmental impacts on frame effectiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, the author applies the theory of frame semantics, a usage-based model of construction grammar, and quantitative corpus-based methodology to investigate the nature of the ADV speaking-construction in American English, an adverbial participle construction that has not been previously explored using quantitative corpus-based methods. To investigate this construction, the author extracted its occurrences from the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA), analysed its structural, semantic, distributional and discourse-functional properties, and identified adverbs that frequently appear in the construction. The investigation reveals that the construction tends to combine with speech-functional adverbs, which evoke different semantic frames. It commonly occurs in spoken and written registers and serves various functions in discourse. In particular, it is used frequently in spoken discourse and academic prose to comment on the manner of conveying a message and to express speakers' stances and attitudes toward various topics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

First, Mattiello's core hypothesis is that the meaning of - o is essentially derogatory (35), but the lexicographic analysis is said to only focus those senses that "revolve around aggressive languages" (39): in this way, uses of the suffix that could (potentially) falsify the hypothesis were excluded since the beginning. Those that do, however, represent important contributions to our understanding of the grammar-pragmatics interface in hateful discourse and are likely to establish themselves as crucial references in this growing field of studies. Otherwise, particularly welcome aspects of the chapter are the explicit definition of aggressive discourse and distinction of different types thereof, as well as the discussion of the prosody of expressive compounds. [Extracted from the article]

This research examines the Expansion phenomena in translation using the strategies by Chesterman (2016). The expansion here means simply the phenomena of adding words from Source Text into Target Text Translation. The main purpose of this research is to find out how effective the Expansion is in helping to resolve translation problems in translating Indonesian to English. This research uses a mixed qualitative and quantitative research method, with the main focus on qualitative. The research uses a quantitative method for presenting the result. The descriptive research method is used to explain how the data was collected, classified, analyzed, and then summarized to get the conclusion. The data of this research are expansion, taken from the novel by Ahmad Tohari, entitled "Mata yang Enak Dipandang." The Expansion would be identified and collected by comparing the texts in both the target language (Indonesian version) and The source Text (English version) up to 150 data. The random sampling technique is used. The researcher will take 150 data. From the 150 data, 21 data will be chosen randomly and then taken to be analyzed. Thus, the research uses a random sampling technique. There are three primary groups of categories in Chesterman's strategies, namely syntactic/grammatical (4 out of 21 data), semantic (8 out of 21 data), and pragmatic (9 out of 21 data). There are 150 data of expansion but only 21 data were purposely chosen to be analyzed, with the use of Chesterman strategies which are: Information Change (1 data), Trope change (2 data), Abstraction Change (2), Explicitness Change (5), clause Structure Change (2), Distribution Change (4 data), Cohesion Change (1), Scheme Change (1 data), Emphasis Change (1 data), Interpersonal Change (2 data), Illocutionary Change (1). The result shows that most of the translations in the novel by Ahmad Tohari most of it using Explicitness Change (5 out of 21 data). As part of Semantic strategies, Exlpicitness change serves as an indicator of an idea that to translate a novel; the translator must commit a lot of manipulating in the process to reach the equivalency of work. The use of translation strategies by Chesterman in the expansion phenomena proves that only 20% of translation uses syntactical; the rest of it belongs to Semantic (38%) and Pragmatic (42%). It means that translating a literary work is quite challenging. The fact that literature work, which in this case is a novel, has a deeper meaning than it appears and how the work mostly uses figurative language to convey the message pressurize the translator to immerse the Source text carefully and also demands the translator to have a broad knowledge of the language and its social content. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A recent trend in corpus-based genre analysis emphasizes the relationship between syntactic complexity and rhetorical units, with a primary focus on English texts for research and publication purposes. The present study extends this trend into research on argumentative writing, a genre that L2 learners have to write and master, by examining the syntactic features of rhetorical stages and their variation across these stages through a comparative analysis. Based on a corpus of argumentative texts (written by 162 native English speakers and 148 Chinese English learners), analyzed for rhetorical structures and assessed for syntactic complexity, this analysis reveals robust differences between the two writing groups in the syntactic features of specific rhetorical stages. It also shows some consistency but more variation between the two groups in their patterns of syntactic variation across these stages. The findings reveal a strong relationship between syntactic complexity and the rhetorical stages of argumentative texts, thus demonstrating the feasibility and necessity of studying the function-form relationship in L2 learner writing. The authors suggest that genre-based L2 writing teachers should focus on the syntactic features of rhetorical stages and increase students' awareness of the function-form relationship. • The function-form relationship exists in English argumentative texts. • Syntactic complexity varies across different rhetorical stages of argumentative essays. • L2 learners differ from L1 writers in the syntactic complexity of specific stages. • The two writer groups differ in cross-rhetorical-stage variation patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reviews anthropological paradigms that link language and race with a focus on the United States and other settler colonial nations that continue to use language as a tool of racialization to bolster White supremacy. Enduring colonial ideologies, along with Boas's "salvage anthropology," which separated race and language, have enshrined White racism in anthropological studies of language as well as in the field of linguistic anthropology. Contemporary studies frame linguistic racialization through markedness theory and use paradigms of language ideology, language materiality, and semiotics to forward discursive and ontological analyses that span communities and institutional spaces. I offer "disruption" as a way to consider the impact of epistemologies that inform academic research agendas as well as institutional power dynamics between BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of color) scholars and White practitioners in linguistic anthropology and discuss how these disruptions could form the basis from which to decolonize aspects of linguistic anthropology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this presentation I want to show in simple terms how monastic life provides spiritual practices for our community to live the Gospel in a way that is responsive and respectful to the environment. Consequently, I organize my presentation around four words or phrases from the Rule of Benedict (RB). The first one is the community of goods. The second is stability. The third is frugality, and the fourth is a contemplative stance. These four words or phrases provide the frame for this presentation and are central to spirituality of the Rule of Saint Benedict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of this paper is to offer a unified account of Place as a central theoretical notion across different disciplines. We show that while psychology, geography and other sciences have been converging to a unified view of this notion, linguistics still offers a fragmented perspective. Consequently, place names lack a full-fledged analysis that connects this category to the psychological concept of place. We propose to overcome this impasse by introducing a multi-modal Discourse Representation Theory (DRT) account of place as a conceptual construct and place concepts as specific instances of this construct. We show that current variants of DRT permit us to model place names and their senses, i.e., the meaning(s) that individuals associate with Sydney. We then model non-linguistic place concepts, i.e., the mental representation(s) that individuals can have of the city carrying this name. We present a model of the relation between linguistic meaning and conceptual content via the notion of anchoring relations applied to place. We pair this formal treatment with a morpho-syntactic account of place names building on current generative syntax treatments of proper names. Once we have a morpho-syntactic and semantic model of place names, we use a frame semantics treatment to account for lexical relations among place names. We test the overarching model on a set of recalcitrant problems afflicting current linguistic and multi-disciplinary treatments of place. These are the grammatical complexity and lexical content of place names, place concepts and their networks, and inter-subjective, communicative models of place in discourse. By solving these problems, our account integrates several frameworks (DRT, conceptual analysis, generative syntax, frame semantics) and connects several disciplines (linguistics, psychology, geographic information science, communication models) via a novel, multi-modal account of place. We conclude by discussing the theoretical and empirical import of these results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

CLIL studies on language specific areas such as morphosyntax are still quite limited, particularly those with young learners. Likewise, the pseudo-evolution of morphosyntactic aspects across age and proficiency deserves particular attention. This paper will fill these gaps by investigating production accuracy and syntactic complexity in two different age/proficiency groups of CLIL primary school learners (grade 4 and 6). In terms of accuracy, L1 Spanish transfer effects associated with the pro-drop parameter (i.e. subject omission and subject-verb inversion), and the third person singular -s morpheme omission will be explored. Syntactic complexity will be operationalised through the production of simple and complex clauses. The findings obtained align with previous research in that the accumulated hours of CLIL + EFL exposure by grade 6 seem to positively affect the development of complexity measures. However, the lack of progress in the case of the rest of the features examined (i.e. subject omission, inversion of the subject and the third person singular -s omission) calls for the incorporation of focus-on-form components in CLIL programmes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has been argued that V-stranding VP ellipsis exists in Bantu languages such as Kiswahili, Ndendeule, Chingoni, Kikuyu and Shingazidja. In the derivation, the verb moves to I0 in a tensed clause and thus survives VP ellipsis. However, through an examination of the components of a VP and their syntactic positions, we demonstrate that isiXhosa does not have V-stranding VP ellipsis. The article shows that VP-internal constituents – including object DPs, VP-internal adverbials and locative arguments – are prohibited from being elided and that the constituents that can be deleted are actually dislocated to a VP-external position before VPE takes place. We further examine the reasons why isiXhosa does not have V-stranding VP ellipsis and find that in the conjoint form the Immediately After Verb (IAV) constituent receives a focus reading, whereas in the disjoint form, it is the verb that receives a focus reading, which suggests that the VP does not comply with the e-GIVENNESS condition. We also explore the properties of the missing object and conclude that the missing object DP is a consequence of PF-deletion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A number of discourse functions of canonical antonyms have been quantified and classified in English and across languages, each of which is associated with typical syntactic frames. Taking such a classification of canonical antonymy as an analytical toolkit, (Davies, Matt. 2012. A new approach to oppositions in discourse: the role of syntactic frames in the triggering of noncanonical oppositions. Journal of English Linguistics 40(1). 41–73) quantified and qualified the role of these frames in triggering non-canonical oppositions in English news discourse. Synergizing the provisional typologies of canonical antonymy (Hassanein, Hamada. 2018. Discourse functions of opposition in Classical Arabic: The case in ḥadīth genre. Lingua 201. 18–44; Jones, Steven. 2002. Antonymy: A corpus-based perspective. London and New York: Routledge.) and non-canonical opposition (Davies, Matt. 2012. A new approach to oppositions in discourse: the role of syntactic frames in the triggering of noncanonical oppositions. Journal of English Linguistics 40(1). 41–73), this study has sought to develop a dynamic toolkit for the quantitative and qualitative analyses of non-canonical opposition across Arabic varieties and potentially other languages. The toolkit was tested quantitatively and qualitatively against a dataset of 2125 non-canonical oppositional pairs collected from the Qur'an with reference to the Qur'anic Arabic Corpus. Results showed that the syntactic frames which house a wide range of co-occurring canonical antonyms also house a wider range of non-canonical oppositions in binary and trinary representations of abstract and concrete entities. The role of syntactic frames in the triggering of non-canonical oppositions is quantitatively and qualitatively significant for locating and explicating the ideological repercussions of oppositions towards Qur'an interpretation. It is concluded that a synergy of typologies results in a replicable pathway for analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to analyze the structure of code-switched sentences uttered by Albanian bilingual students. It examines the predictions made by two theoretical viewpoints, namely Myers-Scotton's Matrix Language Frame (MLF) and MacSwan's approach within the Minimalist Program (MP). The students were observed in informal environments within Prishtina international school settings, such as during recess time, on the playground, etc. Tape recordings of the conversations were used to record this naturalistic data, which was then transcribed. In particular, examples from the Albanian/English pair were analyzed, and the MLF and MP predictions regarding combinatorial possibilities were tested. The findings show that our data can only partially be accounted for by the MLF and MP approaches. Switching is mainly unidirectional, with insertions from English into an Albanian syntactic frame. Determiners, such as demonstrative pronouns, indefinite pronouns, adverbs of quantity, as well as copular verbs, auxiliary verbs, and clitics, come from the Matrix Language (ML), complying with the MLF model. However, violations of the MLF model are encountered as well, such as the non-occurrence of stem/affix switching, the occurrence of bare forms, and Embedded Language (EL) islands not always constituting the maximal projection of the phrase, which are further described and predicted in MP model. The paper provides evidence that neither MLF nor MP are able to adequately account for the possible combinations in the mixed clause. According to what the literature to date indicates, integrating the approaches rather than using each one individually results in a better understanding of the grammar of code-switchin [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dependency distance has increasingly become a key measure of interest in cross-linguistic corpus studies from multiple perspectives. Based on a syntactically annotated corpus of 400 PhD dissertation abstracts written by native English (L1) and English as a foreign language (L2) academic writers, the current study investigated the mean dependency distance (MDD) variation across language backgrounds and disciplines, which is followed by a grammatical description based on fine-grained indices related to particular syntactic structures. The findings include: (1) L2 academic writers produce an averagely longer MDD than L1 academic writers because of their heavy use of prepositional phrases; (2) The MDD of the linguistics abstracts is significantly longer than that of the physics & chemistry abstracts because of the relatively higher syntactic complexity of the language of linguistics. The findings suggest that MDD can effectively differentiate academic texts with different language backgrounds and disciplines, that both L1 and L2 academic writers write under the constraint of dependency distance minimization, and that L2 PhD dissertation writers have achieved native-like writing proficiency in extending nominal structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A psycholinguistic study was conducted to assess the level of trust in different fictional products with varying framing. It was found that the product type has the greatest influence on the level of acceptance, while the expert or layperson status of the participants has the least influence. The second most relevant influencing factor is framing. The level of trust is estimated higher by all groups when a product description using the frame SUPPORTING rather than the frames DECIDING or CONTROL is presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding language variations opens a wider perspective to language enthusiasts in boosting sociolinguistic awareness as regards to the different ways of using the language in different language contexts. It provides people from different geographical locations of Blaan to understand the language and its use. The study aimed to describe the linguistic variations of Blaan language in the four (4) sociolinguistic contexts of Blaan in Soccsksargen Region, Mindanao, Philippines such as Sarangani Blaan (SBL) of Sarangani Province, Koronadal Blaan (KBL) of South Cotabato Province, Columbio Blaan (CBL) of Sultan Kudarat Province, and Tulunan Blaan (TBL) of Cotabato Province in terms of phonological variations, morphological variations, semantic variations, and syntactic variations. Labov's (1966) variationist sociolinguistic framework was employed in describing the linguistic variations of Blaan which was qualitative in nature. The study was participated by purposively selected sixteen (16) research participants who were composed of Blaan elders and Blaan teachers. The findings of the study reveal ample linguistic variations in SBL, KBL, CBL, and TBL in terms of sound, word formation, meaning, and sentence structure. The phonological variations include the number of vowel phoneme production for/a/,/e/,/é/,/i/,/o/and/u/, the use of accent marks on vowel phonemes, the number of accented and unaccented vowel phonemes, phonetic and phonological change, and phoneme addition. The morphological variations include differences on tense markers, degrees of comparison markers, and other morphological features of the lexical categories of Blaan. The semantic variations include words that have positive meanings in one context but have offensive meanings as compared to the other context. The syntactic variations include forming of yes-no questions in Blaan and the placement of question markers. The study concludes that variations of language, in the perspective of sociolinguistics, prove that language is indeed changing, evolving, and adapting to the sociolinguistic contexts of different language communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Distance minimization is a general principle of language. A special case of this principle in the domain of word order is swap distance minimization. This principle predicts that variations from a canonical order that are reached by fewer swaps of adjacent constituents are lest costly and thus more likely. Here we investigate the principle in the context of the triple formed by subject (S), object (O) and verb (V). We introduce the concept of word order rotation as a cognitive underpinning of that prediction. When the canonical order of a language is SOV, the principle predicts SOV < SVO, OSV < VSO, OVS < VOS, in order of increasing cognitive cost. We test the prediction in three flexible order SOV languages: Korean (Koreanic), Malayalam (Dravidian), and Sinhalese (Indo-European). Evidence of swap distance minimization is found in all three languages, but it is weaker in Sinhalese. Swap distance minimization is stronger than a preference for the canonical order in Korean and especially Malayalam. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As an innovative and systematic genre in the academic community, Ph.D. theses have been heatedly researched in the field of English for Academic Purposes. Although research on the functional and formal features of Ph.D. theses has been abundant, their stylometric traits regarding textual activity have not been explored. Accordingly, this study explored the textual activity of Ph.D. theses and its dynamic changes across natural sciences, social sciences and humanities. A total of 150 Ph.D. theses (50 from each discipline) were analyzed, and the Q and χ² values were calculated to determine the textual activity of theses as well as its dynamic changes with the progression of texts. The results showed that, although the theses were found to be active in general, significant differences across disciplines do exist, in that the theses in natural sciences and humanities were more active while those in social sciences were more likely to lean towards the descriptive mode. This study has implications for widening the scope of cross-disciplinary academic genre analyses from an innovative quantitative linguistic perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Studies about Language / Kalbu Studijos is the property of Studies about Language / Kalbu Studijos and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Adab Al-Kufa is the property of Republic of Iraq Ministry of Higher Education & Scientific Research (MOHESR) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Word order is crucial when we study the functions of words in different sentences and constructions. The position of words in sentences and their function are closely observed in comparative studies. Function is not solely determined by the position of words in sentences. There are languages with fixed word order (like English language) and languages with flexible word order (like Albanian language). An important difference discussed in this paper is that English is a non-null subject language which means that subjects are grammatically mandatory. On the other hand, Albanian language is a null subject language and there are various sentences without a subject. Having in mind that the term empty subject is some how new in English, questions are raised whether there are empty subjects in other languages and if they are recognized as syntactic constituents. The empty subject expressed with the pronoun ‘it’ is used to introduce a clause or provide a grammatical structure with no clear referent, but serves as a grammatical necessity. Examples with empty subjects in English language are translated to Albanian language in order to see if there are similarities or differences, or if there are empty subjects in Albanian language. However, the analysis in this paper found no such equivalents in translated sentences to Albanian language, especially when talking about empty subjects.Subjects in Albanian language are expressed explicitly and clearly and there is no need of an empty subject when the grammar of Albanian language and the word order allows sentences with no subject. Subjects, whether they are real or empty subjects (semantically empty), are usually found in the initial position in English. While this is generally true in English language, with some exceptions, it is not always the case with Albanian language because of the word order and null subject properties. Empty subjects have been studied for some time in English language, but there are not vast studies comparing empty subjects in English and Albanian language. The pronoun ‘it’ is an essential feature of English language to refer to time, weather, emotions and more (It is ten o’clock. It is sunny. It is unbelievable!). The pronoun ‘it’ in English language is not used only to express empty/dummy subjects. It can also be used as anticipatory ‘it’, which means that ‘it’ can be used to refer to a real subject found after the verb (It is likely that we will be late.). These are not rare occasions in English, but when these sentences are translated from English to Albanian language there are differences, including different word order or no subject at all in Albanian language (It is late./Është vonë.). Another important use of the pronoun ‘it’ is that it can be used in passive constructions as an empty subject (It is believed that he is guilty./Besohet se është me faj.) and the real subject is extraposed. Empty subject ‘it’ can be challenging for non-native speakers to master its varied uses and functions. Learners must master the use of ‘it’ in a variety of contexts and understand nuances and differences in meaning with translated sentences from English to Albanian language.The analysis of similarities and differences highlights divergences between these two languages. These findings contribute to understand the syntax and semantics of English and Albanian language by highlighting cross-linguistic variations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Novice Geography researchers need to be acquainted with the rhetorical move structure and organization of scientific research article abstracts (RAAs); yet there is a lack of studies investigating the linguistic realizations involved and their connections to the rhetorical move structure in Geography RAAs. This paper conducted a multidimensional analysis to explore phrase frames/collocations and move length and their connection to the rhetorical move structure and sequence in 190 Geography RAAs from journals indexed in the Web of Science Master Journal List. The move structure was investigated employing Hyland’s (2004) move scheme, Introduction-Purpose-Method-Product-Conclusion. The results revealed that Geography RAAs have a five-move structure, consisting of three “essential” moves whose functions are to present Purpose, Methods and Results, and two “conventional” moves, whose functions are to present Introduction and Conclusion. The findings of the multidimensional analyses indicated that the moves that occurred most frequently in Geography RAAs (Purpose, Methods and Results) occupied most text space and included more phrase frames. The findings indicate the importance of combining investigations of the rhetorical move structure in a particular genre with an exploration of the linguistic realizations in each move as this may provide both researchers and English for Academic Purposes (EAP) tutors with valuable resources for understanding the rhetorical and linguistic characteristics of specific RAA types. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the prosodic patterns of complex DP structures in Xitsonga by looking at penultimate lengthening in DPs with marked and unmarked word orders of different types. We discuss the underlying syntactic structures and prosodic realizations of Xitsonga DPs. We are particularly interested in the way in which recursion applies in the Xitsonga DP, where it surfaces in DPs with multiple modifiers of the same or different categories that appear in fronted (i.e., pre-nominal) positions. We propose that in Xitsonga nominal constituents move to a left-periphery-like position within the DP domain and that this position matches to a focus-marked phonological phrase. This type of phonological phrase is forced to remain in the phonology even if the one-word phrase violates the Binarity constraint. We argue that the penultimate lengthening effects found in Xitsonga with the reordering of DP internal elements are best analyzed as showing sensitivity to this focus-marked phonological phrase. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines switch reference (SR) in A'ingae, an understudied isolate language from Amazonian Ecuador. We present a theoretically informed survey of SR, identifying three distinct uses of switch reference: in clause chaining, adverbial clauses, and so-called 'bridging' clause linkage. We describe the syntactic and semantic properties of each use in detail, the first such description for A'ingae, showing that the three constructions differ in important ways. While leaving a full syntactic analysis to future work, we argue that these disparate properties preclude a syntactic account that unifies these three constructions to the exclusion of other environments without SR. Conversely, while a full semantic account is also left to future work, we suggest that a unified semantic account in terms of discourse coherence principles appears more promising. In particular, we propose that switch reference in A'ingae occurs in all and only the constructions that are semantically restricted to non-structuring coordinating coherence relations in the sense of Segmented Discourse Representation Theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing studies have highlighted the close link between language and society (Fairclough, 1992) and demonstrated the impact of Covid-19 on language (Mahlberg and Brookes, 2021). There are no studies to date that have examined the changing representations and conceptual shifts of freedom in the pre-pandemic and post-pandemic years, which are expected to be affected by government policies on Covid-19. The present study aims to fill this gap. Specifically, the objective is to examine the conceptual evolution of freedom in the years 2019 and 2021 and to interpret it in the light of socio-historical issues derived from the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. The study is a corpus-based investigation undertaken on The Sun Corpus (TS), i.e. a self-compiled corpus including newspaper articles published in the UK during the years 2019 and 2021. Media including newspapers are, indeed, influential discourses that shape the public view of particular events, current issues, and play "an important role in framing how people understand and respond to" contextual happenings (Brookes and Baker, 2021, p. 1; see Baker et al. 2013). The analysis reveals that there is a shift in the use of the word freedom, which is depicted as an enjoyable experience in 2019 and seen in a negative shade in 2021. These results support the social conceptualization of language and reveal aspects that are of particular concern in Critical Discourse Analysis (Fairclough, 1992), aiming to examine how socio-historical aspects frame the linguistic representations of social issues like the Covid-19 disease. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we build on earlier work by Standefer (Logic J IGPL 27(4):543–569, 2019) in investigating extensions of substructural logics, particularly relevant logics, with the machinery of justification logics. We strengthen a negative result from the earlier work showing a limitation with the canonical model method of proving completeness. We then show how to enrich the language with an additional operator for implicit commitment to circumvent these problems. We then extend the logics with axioms for D, 4, and 5, which requires additional justification term operators, following the work of Pacuit (in proceedings of the fifth panhellenic logic symposium, 2005) and Rubtsova (in Grigoriev D, Harrison J (eds) Computer science—theory and applications, CSR 2006; J Logic Comput 16(5):671–684, 2006), and present the required modifications to the frame semantics. We present a simplification of the neighborhood frames from the earlier work and we close by investigating the distinctive contribution of the + operator to the logic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research articles generate and disseminate disciplinary knowledge in a specific field of study. They are expected to be objective, faceless, and free from expressions of emotion. However, linguistic expressions of confusion that signal authors' affective attitude toward the propositional information are not uncommon in research articles. To determine and describe the dynamic changes that occurred in the deployment of such expressions in communicating disciplinary knowledge, this study examined linguistically expressed confusion in a corpus of 160 research articles in applied linguistics that were published in two periods separated by 30 years. Drawing on a frame-based analytical approach, this study revealed that time of publication was a robust predictor of academic authors' overall use of confusion markers and the presence of some subcategories across the four frame elements of the Confusion frame. This study sheds new light on the possibilities of applying frame semantics to academic discourse analysis. More importantly, it has pedagogical implications in terms of helping raise the awareness of novice writers about the necessity of acquiring a time-sensitive repertoire of discursive resources to convey an appropriate authorial identity for effective academic communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigated an English teacher's pedagogical strategies for increasing students' English use in her bilingual class framed by a linguistic ethnographic design. It observed the teacher's classroom with field notes, using the framework developed by Schwartz and Asli (2014). A semi-structured interview was also conducted to learn about the teacher's perspective and challenges while teaching her bilingual class. It was found that translanguaging (intra sentence) was the most often employed approach by the teacher, followed by gesture. A translation approach was seldom adopted. Despite the use of pedagogical strategies, the teacher also encountered the following obstacles: (1) students who spoke the local language rather than English, and (2) time management issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the decipherment of the Maya script expression T78: 514 and its various substitutions. The author discusses different proposals for the meaning of T78: 514, including "fellow, companion," "portrait, property," and "spear-fellow, spear-edge." They argue that the most viable solution is a pair of near-homophones that represent the relationship between a captor and a captive in military contexts. The article also considers the possibility that T78: 514 is connected to the concept of "sacred service for the gods." The author provides linguistic and archaeological evidence to support their interpretations. [Extracted from the article]

News video is a complicated medium for journalism students to grasp. It is bounded by its own set of conventions, some of which are drawn from film theory and others from pragmatic considerations in under-resourced newsrooms. Although video production is increasingly a required skill for students graduating from journalism programs, there is a dearth of resources for undergraduate students interested in understanding why certain kinds of videos work better in some settings than others. This paper aims to develop a taxonomy of news video communication designed to help students further their understanding of the nuances, challenges, and strengths of video as a tool for today's multimedia-savvy journalist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Here, I combine the semantics of Mares and Goldblatt [20] and Seki [29, 30] to develop a semantics for quantified modal relevant logics extending ${\bf B}$. The combination requires demonstrating that the Mares–Goldblatt approach is apt for quantified extensions of ${\bf B}$ and other relevant logics, but no significant bridging principles are needed. The result is a single semantic approach for quantified modal relevant logics. Within this framework, I discuss the requirements a quantified modal relevant logic must satisfy to be "sufficiently classical" in its modal fragment, where frame conditions are given that work for positive fragments of logics. The roles of the Barcan formula and its converse are also investigated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The media have an important persuasive power over the audience. One of the most relevant media phenomena in recent years was Brexit. The objective of this study is to find out the editorial position of the Spanish press in relation to the actors of Brexit (European Union and United Kingdom). To do this, a lexical analysis based on the Frame Semantics was carried out. The results of the investigation shown that Spanish newspapers maintained a pro-European stance throughout the entire Brexit process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research paper analyses the syntactic and semantic properties of Urdu verbs with the help of machine learning techniques. In order to comprehend the syntactic and semantic characteristics of Urdu verbs the sentences were obtained from the online corpus and analysed in an algorithm. A general framework was adopted for Urdu natural language processing task (NLP) which incorporated machine learning (ML) and deep learning techniques to analyse Urdu verb text. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research study aims to design and explore a morphosemantic taxonomy of converted deverbal nouns conveying the semantic trait [+human], particularly in English slang and colloquial lexis (e.g. a creep, a bang, a lie-about). For the purpose of analysis, data were first extracted from descriptive dictionaries in the form of a list of senses (N=163). Based on the prototype and construction morphology approaches, the words were modeled according to (i) their input semantics (Sem) and output semantics (SEM), and (ii) their prototypical and marginal patterns. This modeling demonstrates the existence of two types of evaluative recategorization: internal (or linguistic) and external (or non-linguistic). Also, on the basis of the semantic and syntactic frames of the lemmas listed in the dataset, three general categories are identified: agentive, patientive and causative. Agentive models are the most frequent in the data, where the evidence also suggests that the suffix -er and the zero morpheme (-∅) are in competition (e.g. creeper/creep). The data also demonstrate that most of the converted words (95% of the dataset) convey negative meaning, which is the result of a metonymic process whereby the trait [+human] is used in lieu of [+action]. On average, negative traits are not necessarily inherited from the verbal base (as in a cheat), but rather from how the action or the person performing this action is perceived by speakers (as with a bang). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I consider the plausibility of developing anti-skepticism by framing the question in linguistic terms: instead of asking whether we know, we ask what falls within the extension of the word "know". I first trace two previous attempts to develop anti-skepticism in this way, from Austin (particularly as presented by Kaplan) and from epistemic contextualism, and I present reasons to think that both approaches are unsuccessful. I then focus on a recently popular attempt to develop anti-skepticism from the "function-first" approach associated with Craig, which I also show to be problematic. I then argue that the apparent prima facie plausibility of fighting skepticism on linguistic grounds is due to a methodological spill-over from linguistics. Once we recognize this, it becomes clear that the skepticism debate should not be conducted in linguistic terms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I consider the positive logic of Boolean groups (i.e. Abelian groups where every non-identity element has order 2), where these are taken as frames for an operational semantics à la Urquhart. I call this logic BG. It is shown that the logic over the smallest nontrivial Boolean group, taken as a frame, is identical to the positive fragment of a quasi-relevance logic that was developed by Robles and Méndez (an extension of this result where negation is included is also discussed). It is proved that BG satisfies the variable sharing property and is Halldén complete, while failing to satisfy the disjunction property. Sound and complete subscripted tableaux are presented for BG. An axiomatization (in the positive language extended with fusion) is presented, which is sound with respect to BG and, with respect to a related ternary relational semantics, complete; the problem of identifying a complete axiomatization for BG itself is left open. Connections between BG and the quasi-relevance logic KR are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adopting processability theory (Pienemann, 1989), the present study sought to trace the dynamic trajectory of the morphosyntactic development in the English speech of 24 Iranian learners. The participants recruited were interviewed in the initial experiment and the final experiment sessions. The data were obtained through some simple communicative tasks which mediated the interviews the participating learners gave. English speech fragments elicited were submitted to a distributional analysis and emergence criteria. They appeared to be collectively explained by the processability theory hierarchy, notwithstanding their idiosyncratic structures. While regularities speak to universal stages, individual variations are an indication of constraints imposed by the developing L2 system. The findings of the present study have pedagogical implications for syllabus designers and teachers alike, which are discussed in due space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: With the increasing incidences of dementia in aging societies, attention should be paid to the social context in which people with dementia live. One of its aspects is language transmitting beliefs, perceptions, and behavioral patterns. An analysis of understanding the diagnostic label of dementia may reveal the role of semantics in the process of social cognition of this disease.Objective: The overall aim of this study was to investigate the understanding of the word dementia (otępienie) in the Polish language.Methods: Frame semantics approach was applied. The structure of semantic information was uncovered with the concept of frame utilizing The National Corpus of Polish (the biggest corpus of contemporary Polish language of 1,500 million words). Additional data was collected from Polish speaking adults in Poland.Results: The analyses allowed to identify the otępienie frame for Polish and verify how its elements are filled in by the general population, indicating the selectivity of colloquial knowledge about dementia. Dementia deviates from the prototypical disease. Need to care for the person with dementia outweighs treatment options. The cognitive symptoms and characteristics of the subject are salient. The perceptions of people with dementia embedded in semantics of the diagnostic label might create a basis for prejudicial attitudes among lay part of the society.Conclusion: Findings give foundation to further studies on relationship between semantics and social cognition of dementia which has a real impact on the social and clinical situation of people with dementia and may facilitate formulation of tailored messages aimed at building dementia-friendly society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines Kosovar football in the context of national identity, with the designation of the national team causing much debate in the country. It aims to use lexical frame analysis to examine the impact of specific frames and argumentation patterns on the use and meaning of the terms kombëtar(e) (Engl. national) and përfaqësuese (Engl. representation) in relation to the designation of the Kosovar football team. The incipient discussion on the nation has gained particular intensity since Kosovo's admission as an equal member of UEFA (Union of European Football Associations) and FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association), both in 2016. Whether Kosovo has a "national football team" or only a "representation of Kosovo" continues to polarise public discourse. Previous studies have confirmed that the relationship between sport and national identity is complex and multifaceted. This article will delve into the complexity and diversity of the discussion in the case of Kosovo with potential ramifications for the national political discourse in the youngest European nation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses the study of the theory of frame semantics applied to heritage access. Based on the conception proposed by cognitive linguistics of the semantic framework as a tool for understanding, we present a study that explores the possibilities of this instrument as a catalyst for processes of teaching-learning of heritage. Taking into account the features of the a/r/tographic approach, the study is organized as a visual art practice in which research, education, and artistic creation are presented as simultaneous actions that feed back on each other. In such a way that the process and the resulting images are themselves an object of analysis, a research instrument and an educational proposal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In two visual-world eye-tracking experiments, we explore the extent to which conflicting first-language (L1) based grammatical parses influence second-language (L2) learners' on-line and off-line interpretation of sentences in the L2. We used cross-linguistic structural priming to potentially boost competition from the L1 grammar during the processing of wh-questions in English. For L1-German learners (Experiment 1), sentence-final interpretations showed effects of conflicting L1 parses in the greater number of misinterpretations of English subject as object wh-questions than vice versa. In a follow-up experiment with a comparison group of L1-Japanese learners (Experiment 2), we found the reverse pattern in sentence-final interpretations, with lower accuracy on English object than subject wh-questions. The asymmetry in comprehension accuracy between Experiments 1 and 2 demonstrated that the effect observed among L1-German learners reflected grammar competition from the L1 rather than general L2 effects. In both experiments, we observed cross-linguistic priming from L1 object questions to L2 object questions in on-line processing. Yet, cross-linguistic priming did not enhance competition from L1 object questions on L2 subject questions in Experiment 1 as reflected in comprehension accuracy or eye-gaze during processing. Together, these findings present evidence of cross-linguistic structural priming for equivalent interpretations (object–object), but indicate that priming does not extend to competing L1 interpretations of word-order equivalent structures cross-linguistically (object–subject). We suggest that interference from conflicting L1-based grammatical parses is narrowly delimited in intermediate to advanced L2 sentence processing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a case study on German compounds which have -stoff ('stuff /material/matter') as their head. The basic claim is that the head noun narrows down the range of interpretations by introducing a pragmatic scaffold which we pin down as a conceptual script. We obtained a data set by querying a large corpus selecting 4,026 nominal Stoff-compound lemmas. Using the 100 most frequent compounds as our development set, we observed 72 substance-denoting, five fabric-denoting and 11 knowledge-denoting compounds (corresponding to the basic meanings of Stoff in isolation according to standard dictionaries). From the observation that substance compounds (e.g. Farbstoff 'colouring agent'; Impfstoff 'vaccine') cluster around two events, synthesis and application, we induce a script consisting of these two event frames connecting three kinds of states. A Stoff-compound may thus be expected to denote an entity which is either the starting material of a synthesis (Rohstoff 'raw material'), an addendum in synthesis (Süßstoff 'sweetening agent'), the product of synthesis and, at the same time, an occasion for application (Kunststoff 'synthetic material'), or the instrument of application (Sprengstoff 'explosive'). As for fabric compounds (e.g. Seidenstoff 'silk fabric'), we argue that fabrication is a special kind of synthesis. Knowledge compounds (e.g. Lesestoff 'reading material') arguably result from a metaphoric transfer to the immaterial domain, with the two events acquisition (counterpart of synthesis) and contribution (counterpart of application). In this article, we test the obtained model against two test sets comprising 50 compounds with medium and low frequencies, respectively. Since it turns out that almost all test items successfully integrate into the script, our study provides support for pragmatic theories of compounding, according to which the interpretation of a compound is crucially guided by stereotype knowledge associated with the given compound's constituents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]