scholarly journals Efficiency in human languages: Corpus evidence for universal principles

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (s3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalia Levshina ◽  
Steven Moran

Abstract Over the last few years, there has been a growing interest in communicative efficiency. It has been argued that language users act efficiently, saving effort for processing and articulation, and that language structure and use reflect this tendency. The emergence of new corpus data has brought to life numerous studies on efficient language use in the lexicon, in morphosyntax, and in discourse and phonology in different languages. In this introductory paper, we discuss communicative efficiency in human languages, focusing on evidence of efficient language use found in multilingual corpora. The evidence suggests that efficiency is a universal feature of human language. We provide an overview of different manifestations of efficiency on different levels of language structure, and we discuss the major questions and findings so far, some of which are addressed for the first time in the contributions in this special collection.

Author(s):  
Ilana Mushin ◽  
Simona Pekarek Doehler

Abstract In this introductory paper to the inaugural volume of the journal Interactional Linguistics, we raise the question of what a theory of language might look like once we factor time into explanations of regularities in linguistic phenomena. We first present a historical overview that contextualises interactional approaches within the broader field of linguistics, and then focus on temporality as a key dimension of language use in interaction. By doing so, we discuss issues of emergence and its consequences for constituency and dependency, and of projection and its relation to action formation within and across languages. Based on video-recorded conversational data from French and Garrwa (Australian), we seek to illustrate how the discipline of linguistics can be enriched by attending to the temporal deployment of patterns of language use, and how this may in turn modify what we understand to be language structure.


Author(s):  
Stuart Dunmore

Situated within the interrelated disciplines of applied sociolinguistics and the sociology of language, this book explores the language use and attitudinal perceptions of a sample of 130 adults who received Gaelic-medium education (GME) at primary school, during the first years of that system’s availability in Scotland. The school is viewed by policymakers as a crucial site for language revitalisation in such diverse contexts as Hawai’i, New Zealand and the Basque Country – as well as throughout the Celtic-speaking world. In Scotland, GME is seen as a key area of language development, regarded by policymakers as a strategic priority for revitalising Gaelic, and maintaining its use by future generations of speakers. Yet theorists have stressed that school-based policy interventions are inadequate for realising this objective in isolation, and that without sufficient support in the home and community, children are unlikely to develop strong identities or supportive ideologies in the language of their classroom instruction. For the first time, this book provides an in-depth assessment of language use, ideologies and attitudes among adults who received an immersion education in a minority language, and considers subsequent prospects for language revitalisation in contemporary society. Based on detailed analyses using mixed methods, the book offers empirically grounded suggestions for individuals and policymakers seeking to revitalise languages internationally. 


2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 18
Author(s):  
Dr. Zelda Sam Elisifa

The present study sought to make a descriptive account of how forms language use is violence against young women. It specifically sought to identify various forms of linguistics violence against women and assess the diversity of such linguistics violence on the women’s self image. The study involved 107 students of different levels of secondary education out of whom 71 were females and 35 males. Data were gathered through questionnaire and observation. The findings revealed that linguistics violence is plural as it involved different forms and strategies which were captured under six themes: pejorizing, sexualizing, animalizing, feminizing, masculining and stupidizing. I was also noted that of the six forms of linguistics violence, pejorizing was the most prevalent and most diverse. However, it was sexualizing which was the most pervasive and the most offensive since the women’s sexual and excretory organs and processes are used as disgusting and sickening sight. Further, the continuous use of female-related body parts and psycho-sexual behaviors and processes has resulted in women being adversely affected so much that they are not only the source of linguistic repository from which insults are mined and served to male and female victims, but also the perpetrators of the same.


2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 138-150
Author(s):  
Veronika Valková ◽  
Hana Ďúranová ◽  
Jana Štefániková ◽  
Michal Miškeje ◽  
Marián Tokár ◽  
...  

AbstractThe current study was designed to enhance the functionality of white bread by replacement of wheat flour with different levels (1%, 2%, 5%, and 8%) of grape seeds micropowder (GSMP) with nanosized particles (10 µm). Chemical composition of GSMP, volume and sensory attributes, evaluated with the panel of evaluators and an electronic nose (e-nose) and an electronic eye (e-eye) were investigated in the tested breads. It has been found out that GSMP contained appreciable amounts of flavonoids including catechin, epicatechin, gallic acid and minerals especially, Ca, K and Mg. The data from rheological analysis showed that the addition of GSMP (mainly at 5% and 8% levels) to the wheat flour had a positive effect on dough manifesting with rheology by increased dough stability. The volume of the experimental breads (above 1% concentration) was demonstrably declined (P < 0.0001) in comparison with the control bread. Sensory rating revealed that the bread fortified with 1% GSMP was judged by the consumer panelists as the most acceptable with the highest scores for all quality attributes which was also confirmed by the data of e-nose and e-eye. Our results suggest for the first time that 1% GSMP addition appears to be a promising functional ingredient to improve bread with required qualitative and sensory properties.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
James Trujillo ◽  
Asli Özyürek ◽  
Judith Holler ◽  
Linda Drijvers

AbstractIn everyday conversation, we are often challenged with communicating in non-ideal settings, such as in noise. Increased speech intensity and larger mouth movements are used to overcome noise in constrained settings (the Lombard effect). How we adapt to noise in face-to-face interaction, the natural environment of human language use, where manual gestures are ubiquitous, is currently unknown. We asked Dutch adults to wear headphones with varying levels of multi-talker babble while attempting to communicate action verbs to one another. Using quantitative motion capture and acoustic analyses, we found that (1) noise is associated with increased speech intensity and enhanced gesture kinematics and mouth movements, and (2) acoustic modulation only occurs when gestures are not present, while kinematic modulation occurs regardless of co-occurring speech. Thus, in face-to-face encounters the Lombard effect is not constrained to speech but is a multimodal phenomenon where the visual channel carries most of the communicative burden.


2008 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 249-273 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katja Ploog

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.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Álvaro Clua Uceda

On 11 October 1935, the inauguration of the Slussen urban cloverleaf took place in front of the excited citizens of Stockholm. It had the attributes of a pure traffic machine taken from the most advanced traffic engineering publications, and it expressed the optimistic cultural modernism that five years ago the Stockholm International Exhibition had promoted.1 This urban cloverleaf was made of translucent glass, reinforced concrete, metallic handrails, and reflective tiles and was meant to solve, in one single gesture, the complex urban link between the Lake Mälaren and the Baltic Sea, between Gamla Stan – the historic city centre – and Södermalm – the southern district built on top of the 35-metre-high plateau [1]. The solution made difficult urban compromises between the foothills of the Brunkeberg topography, the smooth water surfaces of the Stockholm archipelago, the architecture of the historic urban tissue, and the demands of a complex articulated mobility. Boats, goods, suburban trains, subways, trams – later buses – pedestrians, cyclists, and automobiles finally converged on this place at different levels, completing the intricacies of a threedimensional geometry which, for the first time in history, was inserted into a compact city.


Author(s):  
Daniel GARCÍA VELASCO

ABSTRACT Functional Discourse Grammar (FDG) is a typologically-based theory of language structure which is organized in levels, layers and components. In this paper, I will claim that FDG is modular in Sadock’s sense, as it presents four independent levels of representation with their own linguistic primitives each. For modular grammars, the relation between the different levels (more technically, the nature of the interfaces) is a central issue. It will be shown that FDG is a top-down grammar which follows two basic principles in its dynamic implementation: Depth-first and Maximal depth. Together with external constraints, these principles conspire to create linguistic representations which are psychologically adequate and which allow levels to be circumvented if necessary, thus simplifying representations and creating mismatches among them.


Author(s):  
Е.И. КОБАХИДЗЕ

В статье впервые анализируются раннесоветские практики формирования финансово-бюджетной сферы Северной Осетии в контексте государственной политики управления финансами. Их изучение представляется актуальным в связи с очевидным параллелизмом с процессами первого постсоветского десятилетия, когда в России формировалось новое политическое и экономическое пространство, в котором были активно задействованы восстановительные хозяйственно-экономические механизмы, применявшиеся в 20-х гг. XX в. Становление финансовой и бюджетной системы в Северной Осетии рассматривается в ее тесной связи с ходом государственного строительства; отдельное внимание уделено вопросам налогообложения, формирования бюджетов разных уровней, конкретным показателям хозяйственно-экономического развития Осетии на разных этапах переходного периода и в рамках политико-экономических стратегий «военного коммунизма» и «новой экономической политики». Общая специфика исследуемых процессов обусловлена значительными политическими трансформациями, переживаемыми страной в ходе построения советского государства и социалистической экономики. В то же время анализ документов и материалов, в том числе впервые вводимых в научный оборот, показывает, что Осетия, оказавшись в советской системе власти и управления, приобрела собственный опыт построения основ государственности и ее институтов, в том числе в финансовой сфере. For the first time, the article analyzes the early Soviet practices of the formation of the financial and budgetary sphere of North Ossetia in the context of the state policy of financial management. Their study is relevant in connection with the obvious parallelism with the processes of the first post-Soviet decade, when a new political and economic space was formed in Russia, in which the restorative economic mechanisms used in the 1920s were actively involved. The formation of the financial and budgetary system in North Ossetia is considered in its close connection with the progress of state building; special attention is paid to the issues of taxation, the formation of budgets of different levels, specific indicators of economic development of Ossetia at different stages of the transition period and within the framework of political and economic strategies of “war communism” and “new economic policy”. The general specificity of the processes under study is due to the significant political transformations experienced by the country in the course of building the Soviet state and socialist economy. At the same time, the analysis of documents and materials, including those introduced into scientific circulation for the first time, shows that Ossetia, having found itself in the Soviet system of power and administration, has acquired its own experience in building the foundations of statehood and its institutions, in the financial sphere as well.


2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Joanna Jabłońska-Hood

Conceptual integration theory (henceforth CIT), aka conceptual blending, was devised by Fauconnier and Turner (2002) as a model for meaning construction and interpretation. It is based on the notion of a mental space, which originated in Fauconnier's early research (1998). Mental spaces are structures that constitute information pertaining to a particular concept (Fauconnier and Turner 2002: 40). Interestingly, mental spaces can be linked together and blended so as to produce a novel quality not previously present. In this manner, conceptual integration serves the purpose of a theoretical model which throws light on creativity in language use. In my paper, I will apply CIT to British humour in order to use its multiway blending together with its dynamic, online running of the blended contents for the purpose of comedy elucidation. It is crucial to observe that British humour is a complex phenomenon which pertains to many different levels of interpretation, i.e. a linguistic, cultural or a discourse one. CIT possesses a well suited cognitive apparatus which can encompass the complexity of British humour with all its layers. The primary goal of the article is to analyse a selected scene from a sitcom entitled Miranda in order to show the validity of the theory in respect of humour studies. In particular, I will undertake to demonstrate that CIT, with a special emphasis on its principles such as compression and the emergent structure of the blend can deal with many processes that accumulate within British humour and result in laughter. Simultaneously, I will try to demonstrate that frame-shifting, as proposed by Coulson (2015: pp. 167-190), can be of help to CIT in humour explanation.


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