The Dynamics of the Linguistic System

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans-Jörg Schmid
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Processing ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Corpus Linguistics ◽  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Language Contact ◽  
Cognitive Linguistics ◽  
Structure Variation ◽  
Speech Communities ◽  
Linguistic System ◽  
Wide Range

This book develops a model of language which can be characterized as functionalist, usage-based, dynamic, and complex-adaptive. Its core idea is that linguistic structure is not stable and uniform, but continually refreshed and in fact reconstituted by the feedback-loop interaction of three components: usage, i.e. the interpersonal and cognitive activities of speakers in concrete communication; conventionalization, i.e. the social processes taking place in speech communities; and entrenchment, i.e. the cognitive processes taking place in the minds of individual speakers. Extending the so-called Entrenchment-and-Conventionalization Model, the book shows that what we call the Linguistic System is created, sustained, and continually adapted by the ongoing interaction between usage, conventionalization, and entrenchment. The model contributes to closing the gap in usage-based models concerning how exactly usage is transformed into collective and individual grammar and how these two grammars in turn feed back into usage. The book exploits and extends insights from an exceptionally wide range of fields, including usage-based cognitive linguistics, psycholinguistics, interactional linguistics and pragmatics, historical linguistics, sociolinguistics and the sociology and philosophy of language, as well as quantitative corpus linguistics. It makes numerous original suggestions about, among other things, how cognitive processing and representation are related and about the manifold ways in which individuals and communities contribute to shaping language and bringing about language variation and change. It presents a coherent account of the role of forces that are known to affect language structure, variation, and change, e.g. economy, efficiency, extravagance, embodiment, identity, social order, prestige, mobility, multilingualism, and language contact.

How optimal is the Optimization Model?

2013 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 743-745 ◽  
Author(s):  
BERND HEINE
Keyword(s):  
Optimization Model ◽  
Language Contact ◽  
Social Cognitive ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Speech Communities ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
High Level

Pieter Muysken's article on modeling and interpreting language contact phenomena constitutes an important contribution.The approach chosen is a top–down one, building on the author's extensive knowledge of all matters relating to language contact. The paper aims at integrating a wide range of factors and levels of social, cognitive, and linguistic accounts, incorporating findings on bilingual individuals in the same way as on language systems in contact and bilingual speech communities. It enables the reader to place seemingly disparate phenomena in a wider perspective and to relate quite divergent manifestations of language contact to one another in a principled way. In accordance with its ambitious goal, the paper proposes a high level of generalization, or abstraction.

Pohľad Na Pomenovanie Cez Prizmu Teoretických Rámcov A Slovníkového Hesla

2018 ◽  
Vol 69 (3) ◽  
pp. 277-301
Author(s):  
Alexandra Jarošová
Keyword(s):  
Corpus Linguistics ◽  
Cognitive Linguistics ◽  
Linguistic Meaning ◽  
Extended Model ◽  
Theoretical Frameworks ◽  
Departure Point ◽  
Lexical Meaning ◽  
Linguistic Pragmatics ◽  
Situational Contexts ◽  
Methodological Procedures

Abstract The first part of this paper outlines the relevant aspects of functional structuralism serving lexicographers as a departure point for building a model of lexical meaning useable in the Dictionary of Contemporary Slovak Language. This section also points to some aspects of Klára Buzássyová’s research on lexis and word­formation that have enriched the functional­structuralist paradigm. The second section shows other theoretical and methodological frameworks, such as linguistic pragmatics, cognitive linguistics and corpus linguistics (all of them departing in some respect from the structuralism and, in other aspects, being complementary with it) that can enhance the structuralist basis of the model. The third section outlines an extended model of lexical meaning that represents a synthesis of all those theoretical frameworks and, at the same time, represents a reflection of three language constituents: 1. The social constituent is present in consideration of communicative functions of utterances, naming functions of lexical units, functional styles and registers, language norms, and situational contexts; 2. The psychological component takes the form of consideration of the prototype effect, the abolition of boundaries between linguistic meaning and other parts of cognition; 3. Thanks to the structural/systematic component, a description of paradigmatic and syntagmatic behaviour of words can be performed, and an inventory of formal­content units and categories (lexemes, lexies, word­forming and grammatical structures) can be provided. In our dictionary practice, the above­mentioned model is reflected in the methodological procedures as follows: 1. Systemization of repetitive (regular, standardized) phenomena; 2. Prototypicalization of meaning description; 3. Contextualization/encyclopedization of meaning description; 4. Pragmatization of meaning description; 5. Continualized presentation of language phenomena, i.e., introduction of numerous phenomena of transient and indeterminate nature and indicating the existence of a semantic­pragmatic and lexical­grammatical continuum; 6. “Discretization” of combinatorial continuum, i.e., identification and description of entrenched word combinations with naming functions.

scholarly journals Subversion of Language Structure in Heterogeneous Speech Communities: the Work of Discourse and the Part of Contact

2008 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 249-273 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katja Ploog
Keyword(s):  
Ivory Coast ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Human Language ◽  
Speech Community ◽  
Language Structure ◽  
Speech Communities ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Phonological Form ◽  
Bilingual Speaker ◽  
Actual Speech

AbstractChange is an ongoing process constitutive of human language to which will be refered by the term of dynamics. It will be worked out how mere interaction conditions the language dynamics and how the disposable structural resources will be coordinated in microsystems. Since from this point of view grammar exists as a process, it will be of interest to work out by what type of mechanisms a bilingual speaker elaborates his/her discourse. It will be discussed what can be called a (more) 'useful' construction and through what type of mechanisms the constructions get coordinated. We will argue that all discursive mechanisms are bound to satisfy the pragmatic demands of an actual speech production and that the most useful items are those which best satisfy these pragmatic demands.One of the most characteristic phenomena of the linguistic dynamics in Ivory Coast is the microsystem of LA: In a highly heterogeneous context of social interaction, LA is used in (the locally dominant) discursive traditions of French and Mande languages, undergoing a grammaticalization process separately in each of them and used - consequently - in various constructions. The wide range of its referential values, the very importance of the negotiation of discourse referents between speaker and hearer and its simple phonological form seem to predestine LA to get reappropriated and to become a 'favorite' form in the emergent speech community.

The Fragmented Mind

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Implicit Attitudes ◽  
David Lewis ◽  
Belief System ◽  
Belief State ◽  
Current Debate ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Relationship

Mental fragmentation is the thesis that the mind is fragmented, or compartmentalized. Roughly, this means that an agent’s overall belief state is divided into several sub-states—fragments. These fragments need not make for a consistent and deductively closed belief system. The thesis of mental fragmentation became popular through the work of philosophers like Christopher Cherniak, David Lewis, and Robert Stalnaker in the 1980s. Recently, it has attracted great attention again. This volume is the first collection of essays devoted to the topic of mental fragmentation. It features important new contributions by leading experts in the philosophy of mind, epistemology, and philosophy of language. Opening with an accessible Introduction providing a systematic overview of the current debate, the fourteen essays cover a wide range of issues: foundational issues and motivations for fragmentation, the rationality or irrationality of fragmentation, fragmentation’s role in language, the relationship between fragmentation and mental files, and the implications of fragmentation for the analysis of implicit attitudes.

​Re-sequencing of Whole Genome Jordanian Awassi Ewes using Hiseq Sequencing Technology: Major Step Towards Sheep Genomic Selection

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hussein Migdadi ◽  
Nizar Haddad ◽  
Ruba AlOmari ◽  
Mohammad Brake ◽  
Mustafa AlShdaifat ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Production Systems ◽  
Ovis Aries ◽  
Domestic Sheep ◽  
Major Step ◽  
Illumina Hiseq ◽  
Structure Variation ◽  
Awassi Sheep ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Number Variation ◽  
Paired End Sequencing

Background: Jordanian Awassi sheep (Ovis aries) is the dominant fat tail sheep breed that appeals to customers because of its various production systems, including fiber, meat and milk. This report is the first whole ewe genome sequence (WGS) of O. aries submitted in the NCBI database from Jordan. Methods: 64 Paired-end sequencing libraries were constructed and subjected to Illumina Hiseq 2500 sequencing system. High-quality reads were aligned against the reference sheep genome and detecting comprehensive sources (SNPs, InDels, SV, CNVs) of genetic variations. We have deposited data sequences at the NCBI under SRA (sequence reads archives) under the accession numbers SRR11128863, PRJNA574879. Result: Genome resequencing of Jordanian Awassi ewe was carried out with approximately 93.88 Gb with a mapping rate and effective mapping depths were 99.28% and 36.32. Around 19 million SNPs, 3,6 million InDels, 35,180 Structure variation and 13,524 copy number variation among the Jordanian ewe genome were detected. This wide range of genetic variation provides a framework for further genetic studies that will help understand the molecular basis underlying phenotypic variation of economically important traits in sheep and improve intrinsic defects in domestic sheep breeds.

Introduction: Multicultural youth vernaculars in Paris and urban France

2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 161-164 ◽  
Author(s):  
JENNY CHESHIRE ◽  
PENELOPE GARDNER-CHLOROS
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Young Children ◽  
Language Contact ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Social Research ◽  
Nursery School ◽  
Peer Groups ◽  
Recent Immigrant ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Linguistic Backgrounds

The papers in this Special Issue present some of the results of theMulticultural London English/Multicultural Paris Frenchproject, supported by the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) from October 2010 to December 2014 and by the FrenchAgence Nationale de la Recherche(ANR) from 2010–2012. The project compared language variation and change in multilingual areas of London and Paris, focusing on the language of young people of recent immigrant origin as well as that of young people whose families had lived in London or Paris for many generations. Similar projects in other European cities have documented the emergence of new ways of speaking and rapid language change in the dominant ‘host’ language, which are attributed to the direct and indirect effects of language contact; see, for example, Wiese 2009 on young people's language in Berlin, Quist 2008 on youth language in Copenhagen, and Svendsen and Røyneland 2008 on Norwegian). In London, young children from diverse linguistic backgrounds tend to acquire English in their peer groups at nursery school rather than from their parents, many of whom do not speak English or are in the early stages of learning English. Since their peers speak a wide range of different languages, the only language the young children have in common is English; and since many of their friends are also acquiring English, there is no clear target model, a high tolerance of linguistic variation, and plenty of scope for linguistic innovation. By the time they reach adolescence, young people's English has stabilized, and many innovations have become part of a new London dialect, now known as Multicultural London English (Cheshire et al., 2013). New urban dialects and language practices such as these have been termed ‘multiethnolects’: they contain a variable repertoire of innovative phonetic, grammatical, and discourse-pragmatic features. In multiethnic peer groups, where local children from many different linguistic backgrounds grow up together, the innovative features are used by speakers of all ethnicities, including those of local descent such as, in London, young monolingual English speakers from Cockney families. Nevertheless they tend to be more frequent in the speech of bilingual young people of recent immigrant origin, and by young speakers with highly multiethnic friendship groups (see further Quist 2008 for an account of the use of features associated with a multiethnolect in conjunction with nonlinguistic ‘markers’ of style, such as tastes in music and preferred ways of dressing). Our project aimed to determine whether a similar outcome had occurred in multicultural areas of Paris.

scholarly journals Language contact within the speaker: Phonetic variation and crosslinguistic influence

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Khia A. Johnson ◽  
Molly Babel
Keyword(s):  
Language Contact ◽  
Mutual Influence ◽  
Spontaneous Speech ◽  
Recent Model ◽  
Phonetic Variation ◽  
English Bilingual ◽  
Speech Communities ◽  
Crosslinguistic Influence ◽  
Cross Language ◽  
Language Influence

A recent model of sound change posits that the direction of change is determined, at least in part, by the distribution of variation within speech communities (Harrington, Kleber, Reubold, Schiel, & Stevens, 2018; Harrington & Schiel, 2017). We explore this model in the context of bilingual speech, asking whether the less variable language constrains phonetic variation in the more variable language, using a corpus of spontaneous speech from early Cantonese-English bilinguals (Johnson, Babel, Fong, & Yiu, 2020). As predicted, given the phonetic distributions of stop obstruents in Cantonese compared to English, intervocalic English /b d g/ were produced with less voicing for Cantonese-English bilinguals and word-final English /t k/ were more likely to be unreleased compared to spontaneous speech from two monolingual English control corpora (Pitt, Johnson, Hume, Kiesling, & Raymond, 2005; Swan, 2016). Cantonese phonology is more gradient in terms of voicing initial obstruents (Clumeck, Barton, Macken, & Huntington, 1981; W. Y. P. Wong, 2006) than permitting releases of final obstruents, which is categorically prohibited Bauer & Benedict (2011); Khouw & Ciocca (2006). Neither Cantonese-English bilingual initial voicing nor word-final stop release patterns were significantly impacted by language mode. These results provide evidence that the phonetic variation in crosslinguistically linked categories in bilingual speech is shaped by the distribution of phonetic variation within each language, thus suggesting a mechanistic account for why some segments are more susceptible to cross-language influence than others in studies of mutual influence.

scholarly journals Channels of Electoral Representation in Advanced Industrialized Democracies

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcus Kreuzer
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Social Control ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Direct Democracy ◽  
Electoral Systems ◽  
Control Function ◽  
Political Representation ◽  
Complex Relationship ◽  
Wide Range

Electoral systems and political parties not only are at the core of a wide range of representational mechanisms (others being lobbying, direct democracy, corporatism) used in modern democracies to project societal interests into the formal, legislative decision-making process, but also they vary greatly in their respective make-ups. Political parties differ in their internal decision making, membership size, funding, links with interest groups, and ideology. Electoral systems, in turn, are differentiated into systems of proportional representation (PR), single-member district (SMD), or first-past-the-post electoral systems (FPTP). Despite all these differences, parties and electoral systems are the two primary mechanisms for aggregating and then translating the preferences of private individual citizens. They also are the oldest, most widely studied, and arguably the most democratic channel of political representation. Parties and electoral systems certainly are important, but they are still only intermediary mechanisms that interact in complex ways with other factors, such as actors’ preferences, resources, other representational mechanisms, and the larger constitutional context. This complex interaction makes it intriguing to study how they affect political representation and explains why they are studied from so many different angles, methodologies, and theoretical perspectives. The following bibliographic suggestions are intended to reflect this diversity in the literature. The literature points out that parties and electoral systems function not just as mechanisms of political expression, through which voter preferences are bundled, articulated, and electorally weighted, but also as mechanisms of social control. The social control function becomes apparent in the ability of parties and electoral systems to contain the risks of overly expressive and potentially anarchic forms of direct and, hence, unorganized participation (i.e., protest, extremism, violence) as well as their potential to integrate individual citizens into the political order by creating political identities crucial for social order. Thus, parties and electoral systems have an as yet little understood but also fascinatingly complex relationship to popular sovereignty because they are indispensable for it while at the same time they give politicians the ability to mute and manipulate that sovereignty. In large part, the literature on parties and electoral systems tries to untangle this complex relationship by studying how their cross-national and historical variations influence the extent to which they have facilitated or distorted political representation.

The cycle of the new left in the recent history of Argentina

2021 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 252-279
Author(s):  
Maria Cristina Tortti ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Order ◽  
New Left ◽  
Social Protest ◽  
Political Regime ◽  
The Political ◽  
Recent Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
History Of ◽  
Multiple Actors

This paper aims at outlining the main processes that, in Argentina’s recent past, may enable us to understand the emergence, development and eventual defeat of the social protest movement and the political radicalization of the period 1960-70s.Here, as in previous papers, we resort to the concept of new left toname the movement that, though heterogeneous and lacking a unified direction, became a major unit in deeds, for multiple actors coming the most diverse angles coincided in opposing the vicious political regime and the social order it supported. Consequently, we shall try to reinstate the presence of such wide range of actors: their projects, objectives and speeches. Some critical circumstances shall be detailed and processes through which protests gradually amalgamated will be shown. Such extended politicization provided the frame for quite radical moves ranging from contracultural initiatives and the classism in the workers’ movement to the actual action of guerrilla groups. Through the dynamics of the events themselves we shall locate the peak moments as well as those which paved the way for their closure and eventual defeat in 1976.

The complexity of grammatical gender and language ecology

2020 ◽  
pp. 193-229
Author(s):  
Francesca Di Garbo
Keyword(s):  
Language Contact ◽  
Grammatical Gender ◽  
The Other ◽  
Linguistic Identity ◽  
Gender Agreement ◽  
Language Ecology ◽  
Morphological Complexity ◽  
Languages In Contact ◽  
Speech Communities ◽  
The Prestige

This chapter investigates the evolution of grammatical gender agreement, taken as an instance of paradigmatic and syntagmatic morphological complexity, in a sample of thirty-six languages, organized per sets of closely related languages with different sociolinguistic profiles. Both loss and emergence of gender agreement occur in areas of intense language contact between diverse speech communities. However, given similar contact scenarios, asymmetries in the structure of the bilingual population and/or in the prestige dynamics between the languages in contact tend to favour one development over the other. Loss of gender agreement occurs when the demographically dominant and/or more prestigious language lacks grammatical gender. Conversely, borrowing of gender agreement is favoured when the demographically dominant and/or more prestigious language has grammatical gender. Finally, the data suggest that patterns of gender marking may have important ties to the way in which speakers construe their linguistic identity in opposition to that of their neighbours.

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