Procesos de conceptualización de eventos en español y en sueco

Revue Romane ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emanuel Bylund
Keyword(s):  
Information Structure ◽  
Progressive Aspect ◽  
Linguistic Differences ◽  
The Relationship

This study examines the relationship between grammaticised aspect (GA) and the information structure of events in discourse. The aim is to test the hypothesis about the influence of grammaticised aspect on event conceptualization processes. The data studied consist of narratives by speakers of Swedish (−GA) and speakers of Spanish (+GA). The segmentation, selection and perspectivation of events carried out by these groups were studied through audiovisual tests. Analyses of the narratives reveal cross-linguistic differences as to information structure: the speakers of Swedish prefer holistic event presentations and verbalize a high number of closed events, whereas the speakers of Spanish show a greater sensitivity towards the phasal structure of the events, manifested in a finer eventive resolution focusing on progressive aspect.

Engagement and constructiveness in online news comments in English and Russian

2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Radoslava Trnavac ◽  
Maite Taboada
Keyword(s):  
Emotional Response ◽  
Online News ◽  
Linguistic Differences ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Qualitative Analyses

Abstract We investigate the relationship between Engagement and constructiveness in online news comments by analyzing the frequency and type of Engagement expressions in a corpus of English and Russian comments, following the Appraisal framework. The comments in question, 10,000 words in each language, were posted in response to opinion articles in the Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail and the Russian online news channel RT. In the context of online news comments, users generally characterize constructive comments as posts that tend to create a civil dialogue through remarks that are relevant to the article and do not provoke an emotional response. Through quantitative and qualitative analyses, we conclude that the language of constructive comments is more explicitly subjective in both languages. The main difference in the use of Engagement expressions in constructive and non-constructive comments lies along the lines of certainty/uncertainty and reliability/unreliability. As for cross-linguistic differences, it seems that English constructive comments place emphasis on the reliability of a commenter’s knowledge, while Russian constructive comments employ more modals of necessity, which have a prescriptive function.

9. ‘They don’t speak our language’

2019 ◽  
pp. 100-113
Author(s):  
Florian Coulmas
Keyword(s):  
Social Class ◽  
Speaker Identification ◽  
Language And Identity ◽  
Instrumental Function ◽  
Symbolic Function ◽  
Linguistic Differences ◽  
Language Identity ◽  
Gender And Age ◽  
The Relationship

‘ “They don’t speak our language”: identity in linguistics’ considers the relationship between language and identity. For individuals and groups, language has instrumental and symbolic functions, which can be in conflict with each other. The instrumental function of communication stands for inclusion, while the symbolic function of identity manifestation stands for exclusion. Language serves identity manifestation with regard to nation, region, social class, ethnicity (race), gender, and age. The respective linguistic differences can be highlighted or downplayed. Yet, on the level of individual expression in both speech and writing, language has biometric qualities allowing for highly reliable speaker identification.

Information Structure and Presupposition

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kjell Johan Sæbø
Keyword(s):  
Information Structure ◽  
The Core ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Focus Marking ◽  
Core Points ◽  
The Relationship

This article surveys and discusses the core points of contact between notions of information structure and notions of presupposition. Section 1 is devoted to the ‘weak’ presuppositional semantics for focus developed by Mats Rooth, describing its properties with regard to verification and accommodation and showing that it can successfully account for a wide range of phenomena. Section 2 examines the stronger thesis that focus–background structures give rise to existential presuppositions, and finds the counterarguments that have been raised to carry considerable weight. Section 3 looks into the relationship between Givenness and run-of-the-mill presuppositions, finding that this relationship is looser than might be expected, mainly because a presupposition may be in need of focus marking instead of givenness marking.

The Oxford Handbook of English Grammar

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Regional Variation ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
English Language ◽  
Critical Survey ◽  
Tense And Aspect ◽  
English Grammar ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
Grammatical Change ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Over Time

This handbook provides an authoritative, critical survey of current research and knowledge in the grammar of the English language. Following an introduction from the editors, the volume’s expert contributors explore a range of core topics in English grammar, beginning with issues in grammar writing and methodology. Chapters in part II then examine the various theoretical approaches to grammar, such as cognitive, constructional, and generative approaches, followed by the chapters in part III, which comprehensively cover the different subdomains of grammar, including compounds, phrase structure, clause types, tense and aspect, and information structure. Part IV offers coverage of the relationship between grammar and other fields – lexis, phonology, meaning, and discourse – while the concluding part of the book investigates grammatical change over time, regional variation, and genre and literary variation.

scholarly journals Topicality and differential object marking

2010 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 239-272 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giorgio Iemmolo
Keyword(s):  
Information Structure ◽  
Comparative Data ◽  
Romance Languages ◽  
Semantic Features ◽  
Personal Pronouns ◽  
Differential Object Marking ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
Left Dislocation ◽  
Object Marking ◽  
The Relationship

The present paper investigates the relationship between dislocation and differential object marking in some Romance languages. As in many languages that have a DOM system, it is usually also assumed that in Romance languages the phenomenon is regulated by the semantic features of the referents, such as animacy, definiteness, and specificity. In the languages under investigation, though, these features cannot explain the distribution and the emergence of DOM. After discussing the main theoretical approaches to the phenomenon, I will analyse DOM in four Romance languages. I will argue that DOM emerges in pragmatically and semantically marked contexts, namely with personal pronouns in dislocations. I will then show that in these languages the use of the DOM system is mainly motivated by the need to signal the markedness of these direct objects as a consequence of being used in (mainly left) dislocation as topics (cf. English “As for him, we didn’t see him”). Finally, the examination of comparative data from Persian and Amazonian languages lends further support to the advocated approach in terms of information structure

The relation between aspect and inversion in English

2015 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 107-128 ◽  
Author(s):  
ASTRID DE WIT
Keyword(s):  
Information Structure ◽  
Native Speaker ◽  
Vantage Point ◽  
Functional Explanation ◽  
Time Inversion ◽  
Progressive Aspect ◽  
Reference Time ◽  
Corpus Data ◽  
Locative Inversion ◽  
And Inversion

This article discusses the peculiar use of the simple present/past in full-verb inversion (i.e. locative inversion, directional inversion, quotative inversion, presentational there), and the corresponding scarcity of progressive aspect in these contexts. While it is normally ungrammatical in English to use the simplex tenses to report events that are ongoing at reference time, inversion seems to defy this restriction. Building on a combination of insights from analyses of aspect and of full-verb inversion in English, this study presents a cognitive-functional explanation for this exceptional characteristic of inversion that has gone largely unnoticed in previous accounts. I argue that there exists a canonical relationship between the preposed ground and the postposed figure in full-verb inversion and that this meaning of canonicity ties in perfectly with the perfective value that I deem constitutive of the English simple tenses. In addition, some cases of directional inversion involve a ‘deictic effect’ (Drubig 1988): in these instances, the conceptualizer's vantage point is anchored within the ground and the denoted (dis)appearance of the figure is construed as inevitable. On the basis of a large sample of corpus data and native-speaker elicitations, I demonstrate that the use of the progressive is disallowed in inverted contexts that involve a deictic effect, while its use is dispreferred but not excluded in other cases of inversion. This study thus brings together insights from the domains of information structure and aspect in English, and merges these into a comprehensive cognitive account.

scholarly journals Sõnajärg, infostruktuur ja objekti kääne eesti keeles

2015 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 197-213 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Ogren
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Structural Features ◽  
Relevant Parameter ◽  
Order Information ◽  
Boundedness Criterion ◽  
Word Order Variation ◽  
Verb Forms ◽  
Order Variation ◽  
The Relationship

Objekti kääne eesti keeles oleneb eelkõige tegevuse ja objekti piiritle- (ma)tusest, kuid da-infinitiiviga konstruktsioonides leidub palju varieerumist objekti käändes, mida ei ole võimalik seletada piiritletuse mõiste abil. Suur osa sellest varieerumisest on seotud sõnajärjega: da-infinitiivile järgnev objekti on pigem totaalne, infinitiivile eelnev objekt on pigem partsiaalne. Artiklis vaadeldakse seoseid sõnajärje ja objekti käände vahel neljas sagedases da-infinitiiviga konstruktsioonis. Kuna eesti keele sõnajärg sõltub suuresti infostruktuurist, uuritakse, kas ja kuivõrd on sõnajärjega seotud varieerumine seletatav infostruktuuriliste parameetrite abil. Jõutakse järeldusele, et objekti käände varieerumist ei mõjuta mitte infostruktuur, vaid sõnajärg ise. Artikli lõpuosas arutletakse selle üle, miks võiks sõnajärg üldse mõjutada objekti käänet ning miks selle mõju piirdub infiniitsete konstruktsioonidega.Abstract. David Ogren: Word order, information structure and object case in Estonian. While object case in Estonian depends primarily on the boundedness of the action and the object nominal, numerous constructions with da-infinitive verb forms exhibit object case variation that cannot be explained by the boundedness criterion. A considerable amount of this variation is related to word order: VO word order in the da-infinitive phrase favors the use of the total object, OV word order favors the partial object. The article examines the relationship between word order and object case in four common da-infinitive constructions. As word order in Estonian is heavily dependent on information structure, the article also investigates whether the relationship between word order and object case can be explained by information-structural features, and finds that the relevant parameter is in fact not information structure, but rather word order itself. The article closes with a discussion of the possible explanations for the relationship between word order and object case and for why this relationship is found only in non-finite constructions.Keywords: object case, da-infinitive, information structure, word order, variation, analogy

Structure and History and X

2019 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-56
Author(s):  
Nancy Levene
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Linguistic Differences ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract In working to understand myths, rituals, and the human beings who craft and use them, Jonathan Z. Smith involved himself in a debate located primarily in anthropology. What is one to make of cultural and linguistic differences? How do differences come to matter? Are there barriers to understanding between one culture-group-tribe and another that surpass the power of translation? Smith’s stance in this debate was partly negative. It cannot be the case that there are differences between cultures that entail ranking some higher than others. More constructively, Smith posed the question of the relationship of two approaches that shape the debate: on one side, the approach of structuralism, which seeks to identify what all cultures share, and on the other, the approach of history, which looks for anomalies and outliers, specificities and accidents. One must commit to both, he claimed. The question is, how?

scholarly journals The information structure of subject extraposition in Early New High German

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caitlin Light
Keyword(s):  
Information Structure ◽  
Quantitative Data ◽  
Argument Structure ◽  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Structural Characteristics ◽  
Structural Effect ◽  
Narrow Focus ◽  
Early New High German ◽  
To Receive ◽  
The Relationship

This paper investigates the information-structural characteristics of extraposed subjects in Early New High German (ENHG). Based on new quantitative data from a parsed corpus of ENHG, I will argue that unlike objects, subjects in ENHG have two motivations for extraposing. First, subjects may extrapose in order to receive narrow focus, which is the pattern Bies (1996) has shown for object extraposition in ENHG. Secondly, however, subjects may extrapose in order to receive a default sentence accent, which is most visible in the case of presentational constructions. This motivation does not affect objects, which may achieve the same prosodic goal without having to extrapose. The study has two major consequences: (1) subject extraposition in ENHG demonstrates that there is not necessarily a one-to-one correspondence between syntactic structure and information structural effect (cf. Féry 2007); and (2) the overall phenomenon of DP extraposition in ENHG fits into a broader set of crosslinguistic focus phenomena which demonstrate a subject-object asymmetry (cf. Hartmann and Zimmermann 2007, Skopeteas and Fanselow 2010), raising important questions about the relationship between argument structure and information structural notions.

Computationally Assessing Expert Judgments of Freewriting Quality

2012 ◽  
pp. 365-382
Author(s):  
Jennifer L. Weston ◽  
Scott A. Crossley ◽  
Danielle S. McNamara
Keyword(s):  
Current Model ◽  
Linguistic Features ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Linguistic Differences ◽  
Study Support ◽  
Expert Ratings ◽  
Prewriting Strategy ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
11Th Grade

This study examines the relationship between the linguistic features of freewrites and human assessments of freewrite quality. Freewriting is a prewriting strategy that has received little experimental attention, particularly in terms of linguistic differences between high and low quality freewrites. This study builds upon the authors’ previous study, in which linguistic features of freewrites written by 9th and 11th grade students were included in a model of the freewrites’ quality (Weston, Crossley, & McNamara; 2010). The current study reexamines this model using a larger data set of freewrites. The results show that similar linguistic features reported in the Weston et al. model positively correlate with expert ratings in the new data set. Significant predictors in the current model of freewrite quality were total number of words and stem overlap. In addition, analyses suggest that 11th graders, as compared to 9th graders, wrote higher quality and longer freewrites. Overall, the results of this study support the conclusion that better freewrites are longer and more cohesive than poor freewrites.

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