Creativity within and outside the linguistic system

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Bergs ◽  
Nikola Anna Kompa
Keyword(s):  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Cognitive Demands ◽  
Linguistic System ◽  
Linguistic Innovation ◽  
Creative Language

AbstractIn this paper, we distinguish two types of creativity (F-creativity and E-creativity; Sampson 2016) and briefly address the question of language change and linguistic innovation in language acquisition. Cognitively speaking, the two types of creativity may impose different cognitive demands on a speaker. But the most pressing question, from our point of view, is the question whether E-creativity itself is constrained or forces us to ‘transcend’ the (rules of the) system. We will, eventually, argue that what looks like creative language use (metaphor, coercion, etc.) is still governed by rules (or hypermaxims). True E-creativity would then mean to step outside the system.

Language in Slavery: Frederick Douglass's Narrative

Prospects ◽  
1983 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 163-182 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ann Kibbey
Keyword(s):  
Language Use ◽  
Family Relations ◽  
Slave Narratives ◽  
Frederick Douglass ◽  
Work Life ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Social Facts ◽  
Linguistic System ◽  
Cultural Traits

For historians who use slave narratives to document the immediate physical and social facts of slave life, Frederick Douglass's Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself offers a frustratingly low yield. Beside Solomon Northup's detailed account of living quarters, diet, work life, holidays, and family relations, Douglass's Narrative must seem spare, incomplete, even misleading in its portrayal of the slave experience—an incendiary polemic written more to fuel the abolitionist cause than to convey the nature of the slave experience. To read the Narrative from this point of view, however, is to misapprehend how Douglass's text treats slavery and to be needlessly disappointed. Unlike Northup, Douglass focuses on the linguistic significance of bondage: He tersely portrays masters and slaves almost solely in terms of their linguistic acts because, for him, the reality of slavery is a profoundly rhetorical one. He charts his own relentless progress to freedom as the acquisition of an ever deeper understanding of language use in a slave economy, and the realization of his own freedom at the Nantucket antislavery convention is preeminently a linguistic event. Douglass's perspective is an important one, for as sociolinguists have discovered, “peoples do not all everywhere use language to the same degree, in the same situations, or for the same things. … Languages, like other cultural traits, will be found to vary in the degree and nature of their integration into the societies and cultures in which they occur.” Douglass was acutely sensitive to the linguistic system of slave society, of the ways in which language was used—and withheld—by one human being to enslave another.

scholarly journals An inquiry into unidirectionality as a foundational element of grammaticalization

2013 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 515-533 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olga Fischer
Keyword(s):  
Language Learning ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Output Level ◽  
Important Principle ◽  
Processing Level ◽  
History Of ◽  
Language Output ◽  
Processing Point

This paper assumes that in order to explain rather than describe language change, historical linguists should not only consider what happens diachronically at the language output level but also, crucially, what speaker-listeners do at the processing level. The reason for this is that the structure of the language is shaped by the properties of the neurolinguistic mechanism underlying both language use and language learning. It will be argued that analogy as an important principle in grammar formation is the main mechanism in grammaticalization and in change in general when looked at from a processing point of view. The paper discusses the workings of analogy in a number of cases in the history of English which have traditionally been interpreted as unidirectional cases of grammaticalization . It will be shown instead that multiple source constructions were involved, which influenced one another and thus gave direction to the change.

English-Estonian code-copying: Comparing blogs and vlogs

2019 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Verschik ◽  
Helin Kask
Keyword(s):  
Structural Changes ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Cognitive Effort ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Community Type ◽  
Holistic View ◽  
Structural Impact ◽  
Estonian Language

AbstractThe article focuses on a comparison of English-Estonian code-copying in blogs and in vlogs. This paper applies a usage-based approach, combining a cognitive angle with the code-copying framework. The aim is to provide a holistic view on contact-induced language change by applying bottom-up analysis of naturalistic multilingual language use. In contact linguistic literature it has been observed that there is a preference for insertions vs. alternations depending on sociolinguistic setting (community type, generation, proficiency) and structural properties of the languages involved. Research on English-Estonian language contacts has shown that in blogs there is no clear preference for either. From a different point of view, it has been observed that lexical impact (global copying in the terms of code-copying framework) precedes semantic and structural impact (selective copying) but provide no explanation. Comparisons between blogs (750 entries and 275,263 words from 45 bloggers) and vlogs (5,5 hours, approximately 36,854 words from 5 vloggers) shows that global copies and alternations heavily prevail over other types of copying, yet the number of selective copies is somewhat higher in vlogs and of mixed copies in blogs. Selective copies are loan translations rather than structural changes. We assume that (1) prevalence of global copies and alternations depends on genre norms (blogs and vlogs are constructed as non-monolingual, highly individualized genres); (2) as selective copies are mostly loan translations, it implies the role of meaning and cognitive aspects: idioms and fixed expressions are figurative and cognitively prominent; combinational properties and grammatical meanings are abstract; so, the more abstract the meaning is, the more cognitive effort and time is required for entrenchment and conventionalization; (3) copying and alternation is denser in vlogs because the genre is oral and spontaneous vs. written, edited genre of blog.

On the structure, survival and change of consonant clusters

2019 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 107-127
Author(s):  
Katarzyna Dziubalska-Kołaczyk
Keyword(s):  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Cluster Size ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Consonant Clusters ◽  
Morphological Complexity ◽  
Auditory Distance ◽  
The Cross ◽  
Diachronic Development

Abstract This paper shows how preferability measures can help to explain the cross-linguistic distribution of consonant clusters, their acquisition, as well as aspects of their diachronic development. Phonological preferability is measured in terms of cluster size and Net Auditory Distance, which interact with morphological complexity and frequency. Predictions derived from the preferability of clusters are tested against the evidence of language specific phonotactics, language use, language acquisition, psycholinguistic processing, and language change.

Unifying entrenched tokens and schematized types as routinized commonalities of linguistic experience

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 167-182 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans-Jörg Schmid
Keyword(s):  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Cognitive Process ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Learning Mechanism ◽  
Cognitive Mechanism ◽  
Language Structure ◽  
Input And Output ◽  
Linguistic Input ◽  
Inherent Component

Abstract Proponents of usage-based models of language acquisition, language structure and language change widely agree that the repetition of specific tokens of words and strings in language use (e.g. give me a break) is conducive to their entrenchment and has a stabilizing and conserving effect, while the repetition of different instantiations of a variable type or pattern (give me a kiss, give me a smile, give me an amen) fosters schematicity and productivity (give me a(n) X). In this paper, I will argue that token-entrenchment and type-schematization are subserved by the same repetition-driven cognitive mechanism. Commonalities observed in linguistic input and output become routinized by repeated activation of patterns of associations. Token-entrenchment and type-schematization do not differ qualitatively but only quantitatively with regard to the variability of what is noticed as being similar. I argue that any form of routinization requires an abstraction over differences between episodes in terms of pronunciation, cotext and context. Therefore, schematization is an inherent component of routinization, but routinization is clearly the more fundamental cognitive process and learning mechanism. I argue that routinized patterns of associations can do the job of constructions in a more flexible, dynamic and parsimonious way and illustrate the potential of this idea with the help of data and insights gleaned from Schonefeld (2015).

Language change across a lifetime: A historical micro-perspective

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (s2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Bergs
Keyword(s):  
Communities Of Practice ◽  
Social Factors ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Historical Data ◽  
Data Sets ◽  
The Social ◽  
Challenges And Opportunities ◽  
Linguistic Behavior ◽  
Micro Analysis

Abstract This paper focuses on the micro-analysis of historical data, which allows us to investigate language use across the lifetime of individual speakers. Certain concepts, such as social network analysis or communities of practice, put individual speakers and their social embeddedness and dynamicity at the center of attention. This means that intra-speaker variation can be described and analyzed in quite some detail in certain historical data sets. The paper presents some exemplary empirical analyses of the diachronic linguistic behavior of individual speakers/writers in fifteenth to seventeenth century England. It discusses the social factors that influence this behavior, with an emphasis on the methodological and theoretical challenges and opportunities when investigating intra-speaker variation and change.

Hybridität als Motor und als Ergebnis von Sprachwandel

Glottotheory ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Csaba Földes
Keyword(s):  
Language Development ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Adaptive System ◽  
Complex Adaptive System ◽  
Explanatory Variable ◽  
Essential Factor ◽  
Language Functions ◽  
Complex Adaptive ◽  
Linguistic Innovation

AbstractThis paper deals with constellations in which, as consequences of linguistic interculturality, elements of two or more languages encounter each other and result in something partially or completely new, an – occasionally temporary – “third quality”, namely hybridity. The paper contributes to the meta-discourse and theory formation by questioning the concept, term and content of “linguistic hybridity”. It also submits a proposal for a typology of linguistic-communicative hybridity that consists of the following prototypical main groups, each with several subtypes: (1) language-cultural, (2) semiotic, (3) medial, (4) communicative, (5) systematic, (6) paraverbal and (7) nonverbal hybridity. At last, the paper examines hybridity as an explanatory variable for language change. In conclusion, hybridity is generally a place of cultural production, with special regard to communication and language it is potentially considered as an incubator of linguistic innovation. Hybridity can be seen as the engine and as the result of language change, or language development. It represents an essential factor by which language functions and develops as a complex adaptive system. Hybridity operates as a continuous cycle. By generating innovation, it triggers language change, which in turn, leads to further and new hybridizations. The processuality of hybridity creates diversity, while at the same time it can cause the vanishing of diversity.

scholarly journals Can Frequency Account for the Grammatical Choices of Children and Adults in Nominal Modification Contexts? Evidence from Elicited Production and Child-Directed Speech

Languages ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 35
Author(s):  
Emanuela Sanfelici ◽  
Petra Schulz
Keyword(s):  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Production Rate ◽  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Spontaneous Speech ◽  
Production Task ◽  
Specific Context ◽  
High Production Rate ◽  
High Production ◽  
Acquisition Order

There is consensus that languages possess several grammatical variants satisfying the same conversational function. Nevertheless, it is a matter of debate which principles guide the adult speaker’s choice and the child’s acquisition order of these variants. Various proposals have suggested that frequency shapes adult language use and language acquisition. Taking the domain of nominal modification as its testing ground, this paper explores in two studies the role that frequency of structures plays for adults’ and children’s structural choices in German. In Study 1, 133 three- to six-year-old children and 21 adults were tested with an elicited production task prompting participants to identify an agent or a patient referent among a set of alternatives. Study 2 analyzed a corpus of child-directed speech to examine the frequency of passive relative clauses, which children, similar to adults, produced very often in Study 1. Importantly, passive relatives were found to be infrequent in the child input. These two results show that the high production rate of rare structures, such as passive relatives, is difficult to account for with frequency. We claim that the relation between frequency in natural speech and use of a given variant in a specific context is indirect: speakers may opt for the less grammatically complex computation rather than for the variant most frequently used in spontaneous speech.

Die Macht der Bilder und Bilder der Macht: die sprachliche Konstruktion von Nationalismus und Konservatismus in der strategischen politischen Kommunikation von Vox España

2020 ◽  
Vol 136 (2) ◽  
pp. 538-566
Author(s):  
Sandra Issel-Dombert
Keyword(s):  
Language Use ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Multimodal Discourse ◽  
The Social ◽  
Core Elements ◽  
The Media ◽  
Right Wing Populism ◽  
The One ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractFrom a theoretical and empirical linguistic point of view, this paper emphasizes the importance of the relationship between populism and the media. The aim of this article is to explore the language use of the Spanish right wing populism party Vox on the basis of its multimodal postings on the social network Instagram. For the analysis of their Instagram account, a suitable multimodal discourse analysis (MDA) provides a variety of methods and allows a theoretical integration into constructivism. A hashtag-analysis reveals that Vox’s ideology consists of a nativist and ethnocentric nationalism on the one hand and conservatism on the other. With a topos analysis, the linguistic realisations of these core elements are illustrated with two case studies.

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