scholarly journals Deverbal -mine action nominals in the Estonian dialect corpus

Author(s):  
Maarja-Liisa Pilvik

This article describes the typical properties and functions of Estonian -mine action nominals, using dialect corpus data. The dialect data entails non-standard spoken language with a regional dimension and therefore has the potential to display more variation in terms of the behaviour of action nominals in actual language use. This will be demonstrated, inter alia, by the non-canonical realization of arguments, e.g. retaining the sentential form of the patient argument, in phrases headed by -mine action nominals. The article also discusses the problems of assigning a word class to the regularly derived and productive type of action nominals, when taking into account all the possible contexts and constructions in which they can occur.Kokkuvõte. Maarja-Liisa Pilvik: Deverbaalsed mine-teonimed eesti murrete korpuses. Artiklis kirjeldatakse eesti keele mine-teonimede tüüpilisi omadusi ja funktsioone, kasutades eesti murrete korpuse andmeid. Murdekorpus sisaldab mittestandardset kõneldud keelt, millel on ka geograafiline dimensioon, ning seetõttu on korpuse andmetel potentsiaal näidata mine-teonimede käitumises tegelikus keelekasutuses laiemat varieerumist. Seda ilmestab muuhulgas verbi argumentide mittekanooniline realiseerumine, nt patsienti väljendav lauseliige võib säilitada oma lauselise vormi nimisõnafraasides, mille peasõnaks mine-teonimi on. Artiklis puudutatakse ka probleeme, mis seonduvad regulaarselt tuletatavatele mine-teonimedele sõnaklassi määramisega, kui võtta arvesse kontekste ja konstruktsioone, milles mine-teonimed võivad esineda.Võtmesõnad: murdesüntaks; teonimed; nominalisatsioon; konstruktsioonid; eesti keel

2020 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreas Krogull ◽  
Gijsbert Rutten

AbstractHistorical metalinguistic discourse is known to often prescribe linguistic variants that are not very frequent in actual language use, and to proscribe frequent variants. Infrequent variants that are promoted through prescription can be innovations, but they can also be conservative forms that have already largely vanished from the spoken language and are now also disappearing in writing. An extreme case in point is the genitive case in Dutch. This has been in decline in usage from at least the thirteenth century onwards, gradually giving way to analytical alternatives such as prepositional phrases. In the grammatical tradition, however, a preference for the genitive case was maintained for centuries. When ‘standard’ Dutch is officially codified in 1805 in the context of a national language policy, the genitive case is again strongly preferred, still aiming to ‘revive’ the synthetic forms. The striking discrepancy between metalinguistic discourse on the one hand, and developments in language use on the other, make the genitive case in Dutch an interesting case for historical sociolinguistics. In this paper, we tackle various issues raised by the research literature, such as the importance of genre differences as well as variation within particular genres, through a detailed corpus-based analysis of the influence of prescription on language practices in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Dutch.


2016 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 42-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
MARCEL R. GIEZEN ◽  
KAREN EMMOREY

Many bimodal bilinguals are immersed in a spoken language-dominant environment from an early age and, unlike unimodal bilinguals, do not necessarily divide their language use between languages. Nonetheless, early ASL–English bilinguals retrieved fewer words in a letter fluency task in their dominant language compared to monolingual English speakers with equal vocabulary level. This finding demonstrates that reduced vocabulary size and/or frequency of use cannot completely account for bilingual disadvantages in verbal fluency. Instead, retrieval difficulties likely reflect between-language interference. Furthermore, it suggests that the two languages of bilinguals compete for selection even when they are expressed with distinct articulators.


2021 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 101-139
Author(s):  
Abigail C. Cohn ◽  
Margaret E. L. Renwick

Abstract We pursue the idea, implicit in much current phonological research, that understanding the multiple factors that shape speech production and perception is within the purview of phonology. In particular, increased access to naturalistic data has highlighted the multidimensional reality of variation in spoken language. At the same time, longstanding methods of doing phonology – including impressionistic analysis, and laboratory and experimental studies – remain crucial to understanding native speaker competence and grammar. We advocate for an expanded methodological toolbox in phonological analysis, using an iterative approach that crucially includes naturalistic corpus data. Integrating across multiple data sources offers fuller insight into the nature of the phonological system and native speaker-hearer ability. Several case studies highlight findings gained through linked, iterative studies, showing the importance of naturalistic data for a richer understanding of phonological phenomena, and leading us to reflect on desiderata for corpora to reveal speaker-specific patterns in fine phonetic detail and variability, which we argue are part of a speaker-hearer’s phonological competence. Phonological analysis that embraces the full spectrum of variation in spoken language data (from categorical to gradient, and systematic to sporadic) contributes to a deeper understanding of phonology in this richer sense.


2013 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 224-241
Author(s):  
Yevgen Matusevych ◽  
Ad Backus ◽  
Martin Reynaert

This article is about the type of language that is offered to learners in textbooks, using the example of Russian. Many modern textbooks of Russian as a foreign language aim at efficient development of oral communication skills. However, some expressions used in the textbooks are not typical for everyday language. We claim that textbooks’ content should be reassessed based on actual language use, following theoretical and methodological models of cognitive and corpus linguistics. We extracted language patterns from three textbooks, and compared them with alternative patterns that carry similar meaning by (1) calculating the frequency of occurrence of each pattern in a corpus of spoken language, and (2) using Russian native speakers’ intuitions about what is more common. The results demonstrated that for 39 to 53 percent of all the recurrent patterns in the textbooks better alternatives could be found. We further investigated the typical shortcomings of the extracted patterns.


1968 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 279-287 ◽  
Author(s):  
John B. Brannon

The spoken language of three groups of subjects—normal, hard-of-hearing, and deaf—was analyzed by means of a new classification system devised by Jones, Goodman, and Wepman. Each spoken word was sorted into one of 14 word classes. Group means for each word class were compared. It was concluded that a significant hearing impairment reduces productivity of both tokens and types of words. A moderate impairment lowers the use of adverbs, pronouns, and auxiliaries; a profound impairment reduces nearly all classes. In proportion to total word output the deaf overused nouns and articles, underused prepositions, quantifiers, and indefinites.


1992 ◽  
Vol 35 (6) ◽  
pp. 1333-1343 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lauren B. Adamson ◽  
Mary Ann Romski ◽  
Kim Deffebach ◽  
Rose A. Sevcik

Communication devices designed to augment the language development of individuals with severe cognitive disabilities and little or no functional speech typically contain primarily nouns because they seem easiest to acquire and evaluate. In this study, the effect of a more diverse vocabulary was assessed. Systematic observations of the use of computerized speech-output devices by 12 youth with moderate or severe mental retardation and severe spoken language disability and by their partners were made over a 2-year period. Social-regulative symbols (e.g., "please," "I’m finished") were used as soon as they were introduced, and their availability expanded the focus of conversations both at home and at school. Implications for conceptualizing variation in early language use and for the design of language intervention programs are discussed.


2010 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 88-105 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fred Karlsson

There are no grammatical limits on multiple final embedding of clauses. But converging corpus data from English, Finnish, German and Swedish show that multiple final embedding is avoided at levels deeper than three levels from the main clause in syntactically simple varieties, and at levels deeper than five levels in complex varieties. The frequency of every successive level of final embedding decreases by a factor of seven down to levels 4–5. Only relative clauses allow free self-embedding, within the limits just mentioned. These restrictions are regularities of language use, stylistic preferences related to the properties of various types of discourse. Ultimately they are explained by cognitive and other properties of the language processing mechanisms. The frequencies of final embedding depths in modern languages such as English and Finnish is not accidental. Ancient Greek had reached this profile by 300 BC, suggesting cross-linguistic generality of the preferences.


2017 ◽  
Vol 55 (2) ◽  
pp. 276-286 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer R. Frey ◽  
Ann P. Kaiser ◽  
Nancy J. Scherer

Objective: The purpose of this study was to investigate the influences of child speech intelligibility and rate on caregivers’ linguistic responses. Design: This study compared the language use of children with cleft palate with or without cleft lip (CP±L) and their caregivers’ responses. Descriptive analyses of children’s language and caregivers’ responses and a multilevel analysis of caregiver responsivity were conducted to determine whether there were differences in children’s productive language and caregivers’ responses to different types of child utterances. Setting: Play-based caregiver-child interactions were video recorded in a clinic setting. Participants: Thirty-eight children (19 toddlers with nonsyndromic repaired CP±L and 19 toddlers with typical language development) between 17 and 37 months old and their primary caregivers participated. Main Outcome Measures: Child and caregiver measures were obtained from transcribed and coded video recordings and included the rate, total number of words, and number of different words spoken by children and their caregivers, intelligibility of child utterances, and form of caregiver responses. Results: Findings from this study suggest caregivers are highly responsive to toddlers’ communication attempts, regardless of the intelligibility of those utterances. However, opportunities to respond were fewer for children with CP±L. Significant differences were observed in children’s intelligibility and productive language and in caregivers’ use of questions in response to unintelligible utterances of children with and without CP±L. Conclusions: This study provides information about differences in children with CP±L’s language use and caregivers’ responses to spoken language of toddlers with and without CP±L.


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