scholarly journals Verbs of falling in English language: corpus data and typology

2020 ◽  
Vol XVI (1) ◽  
pp. 115-151
Author(s):  
O. Vinogradova ◽  
◽  
A. Viklova ◽  
K. Pospelova ◽  
◽  
...  

The paper presents the results of the studies carried over the group of English verbs with the meaning of falling. The research goals included classification of the lexical meanings, both direct and metaphorical, rendered by those verbs, on the basis of the analysis of the components of the situations put together in the special questionnaire. This was carried out together with native speakers of English, after which the collected set of examples was verified and expanded with searches in the big corpora of English speakers’ oral and written production available at the SketchEngine platform. Besides being a great source of extracting lexical meanings, Sketch Engine also provided the data and the statistics for the analysis of collocational behaviour of the verbs in question used with different subjects of falling. The scope of application of the umbrella verb fall and the distribution between it and its two rivals — drop and fall down — was in focus of the three corresponding sections in the paper, while the range of peripheral verbs of falling with all the comparative analysis of their lexical features formed one more section. Separately from the verbs conveying the direct meanings of falling, metaphoric shifts in the meanings of these verbs made up the content of section 6. Based on the findings presented in the previous sections, the conclusions regarding the concept of falling in English are discussed in the last part of the paper. The research confirmed that the verb fall is by far the most widely used in various contexts of falling. Whether used alone or combined with adverbial or prepositional particles, it covers the overwhelming majority of meanings of falling, both literal and metaphorical. Although drop proved to be the most frequent synonym of fall, there is a distribution of meanings between the two related to the nature of the subject and the intentionality of the action. As shown in the paper, the choice between fall and fall down appears to be determined by the trajectory of the fall and whether the typical position of the subject is vertical or not. Likewise, the distribution between fall off and fall down is conditioned by the trajectory, with the surface mentioned with the latter. Among the various peripheral verbs of falling, come and go — the most general verbs of movement — are also used in combination with down in specific cases of falling.

2015 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 294 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mehdi Solhi Andarab

<p><em>The cultural and linguistic hegemony of the native speakers of English over the non-native speakers in the process of language learning and teaching has paved the way for the stereotypical and biased representations of the non-native speakers of English in majority of the English Language Teaching (ELT) coursebooks. Actually, this essentialist approach in the process of materials development is likely to result in reductionist overgeneralization and otherization of foreign societies (Holliday, 1994). However, in recent years, with the advent of English as a International Language (EIL), the issue of native speakerism, the ownership of English, and consequently the cultural content of ELT coursebooks have been the subject of debates. Despite the dominance of native speaker varieties of English in ELT coursebooks, there has been a growing awareness among publishers over the past years and accordingly some EIL-based coursebooks targeted specifically at EIL learners have been published. In this study, a sample group of such coursebooks was subject to close scrutiny. In so doing, an attempt was made to examine the representation of the characters in the claimed EIL-targeted coursebooks. According to the results of the study, despite the claim to be based on EIL, the biased representation of the non-native speakers of English is observed throughout the entire series of the analyzed coursebooks and they superficially surface a stereotypical association of culture and location/country.</em><em></em></p>


2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Branka Drljača Margić

AbstractThis paper draws on the perception of English as a lingua franca (ELF) as an activity, rather than a variety, whereby speakers of different lingua-cultural backgrounds respond to the needs of the immediate communicative environment. Such dynamic and context-related nature of ELF involves collaboration and accommodative behaviour of all interlocutors. As the main focus of research on ELF has been interaction predominantly among non-native speakers of English, the present study investigates how native English speakers behave in ELF interaction, that is, whether/how they accommodate their English and what their stance is towards linguistic accommodation. Responses were collected by means of an online questionnaire, yielding 377 respondents in total, who report making adjustments when communicating with non-native speakers, most frequently by enunciating clearly, using fewer idioms and speaking more slowly. The main reasons native speakers give for adjusting their language are promoting mutual intelligibility, showing courtesy and helping the interlocutor hone their English language skills. A fifth of the respondents, however, worry that accommodation might prevent the improvement of non-native speakers’ English proficiency, be perceived as being patronising, and reduce the quality of conversation.


Author(s):  
Nurfarahin Ahmad ◽  
Nalini Arumugam ◽  
Kaarthiyaini Supramaniam

The present study aims to examine the speech act of complaining performed by consumers of a particular organisation by investigating the pragmatics strategies employed by the consumers in complaining. The behaviours of Malaysian non-native English speakers when making online complaints directed to an organisation is expected to have different approaches and preferences compared to complaints produced by native speakers of English. A case study approach was used in this qualitative study to investigate the preference of Malaysian non-native speakers of English language when making online complaints with respect to the components of the speech act set of complaining by analysing 50 online complaints, posted by 50 customers via www.complaintsboard.com. The results indicated that the component of complaining is found to be the most frequent in online complaints. Besides, it was also found that the complaints made by non-native speakers did not appear in isolation but accompanied by other components of speech act like criticism, justification, request for explanation, warning and threat and sarcasm. In addition, Malaysian non-native English speakers employed complaint strategy that lies under the third level of severity of complaint which means they produced the complaint by expressing it explicitly.


2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 154 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Waterworth

The effective teaching of the English language is regarded as an essential element in the creation of a culturally vibrant, economically sound and socially stable ASEAN community. The ASEAN region is populated by a culturally diverse collection of peoples with very different and complex linguistic histories, some of which included a strong English component. This paper examines the opinions and understandings of teachers of English in eight of the ten ASEAN nations. It arose out of a research study of English teaching in ASEAN being conducted jointly by Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia and CfBT Brunei. Although the teachers differed in their levels of competence in English and in their experience of local, national and international culture, they shared a remarkably similar story in attempting to provide the best instruction they possibly could to their students. As non-native speakers of English, they shared the responsibility of representing not only the English language but also the culture of first language English speakers to their non-native speaking students. The conflicts and tensions of their roles were identified and examined. The study concluded that teachers need support in their intercultural role as well as in their pedagogical responsibilities. Teachers reported that their students had little knowledge or appreciation of the ASEAN community or of the importance of their own capacity to speak English in it.


Interpreting ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-20 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ena Hodzik ◽  
John N. Williams

We report a study on prediction in shadowing and simultaneous interpreting (SI), both considered as forms of real-time, ‘online’ spoken language processing. The study comprised two experiments, focusing on: (i) shadowing of German head-final sentences by 20 advanced students of German, all native speakers of English; (ii) SI of the same sentences into English head-initial sentences by 22 advanced students of German, again native English speakers, and also by 11 trainee and practising interpreters. Latency times for input and production of the target verbs were measured. Drawing on studies of prediction in English-language reading production, we examined two cues to prediction in both experiments: contextual constraints (semantic cues in the context) and transitional probability (the statistical likelihood of words occurring together in the language concerned). While context affected prediction during both shadowing and SI, transitional probability appeared to favour prediction during shadowing but not during SI. This suggests that the two cues operate on different levels of language processing in SI.


2010 ◽  
Vol 22 (12) ◽  
pp. 2728-2744 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Pakulak ◽  
Helen J. Neville

Although anecdotally there appear to be differences in the way native speakers use and comprehend their native language, most empirical investigations of language processing study university students and none have studied differences in language proficiency, which may be independent of resource limitations such as working memory span. We examined differences in language proficiency in adult monolingual native speakers of English using an ERP paradigm. ERPs were recorded to insertion phrase structure violations in naturally spoken English sentences. Participants recruited from a wide spectrum of society were given standardized measures of English language proficiency, and two complementary ERP analyses were performed. In between-groups analyses, participants were divided on the basis of standardized proficiency scores into lower proficiency and higher proficiency groups. Compared with lower proficiency participants, higher proficiency participants showed an early anterior negativity that was more focal, both spatially and temporally, and a larger and more widely distributed positivity (P600) to violations. In correlational analyses, we used a wide spectrum of proficiency scores to examine the degree to which individual proficiency scores correlated with individual neural responses to syntactic violations in regions and time windows identified in the between-groups analyses. This approach also used partial correlation analyses to control for possible confounding variables. These analyses provided evidence for the effects of proficiency that converged with the between-groups analyses. These results suggest that adult monolingual native speakers of English who vary in language proficiency differ in the recruitment of syntactic processes that are hypothesized to be at least in part automatic as well as of those thought to be more controlled. These results also suggest that to fully characterize neural organization for language in native speakers it is necessary to include participants of varying proficiency.


2020 ◽  
Vol 76 (4) ◽  
pp. 149-155
Author(s):  
SVETLANA S. UZHAKINA ◽  

The classification of Russian culture-bound terms used in the novel “Quiet Flows the Don” by M. A. Sholokhov and in its translation into the English language. The novel “Quiet Flows the Don” by M.A. Sholokhov and its translation into English done by Robert Daglish have served as the source for the research of culture-bound terms. These terms have been classified on the basis of the subject division offered by S. Vlakhov and S. Florin. It is proved that the interest to the study of culture-bound terms is still important. The relevance of the research is determined by the fact that despite numerous research papers in this field the origin, classification and translation of these terms still need some investigation. The aim of the present study is to classify the culture-bound terms taken from the novel “Quiet Flows the Don” by M.A. Sholokhon and its translation into the English language. As a result, there have bben taken 407 samples of the lexical units with a cultural component which were classified according to the subject principal offered by S. Vlakhon and S. Florin. The culture-bound terms have a great influence on a foreign reader as they are cultural units that transmit the information of the daily routine and the historical epoch described in the novel. The culture-bound terms taken from the novel “Quiet Flows the Don” by M.A. Sholokhov and its translation are analyzed and classified. The division of the culture-bound terms according to the subject principal allowed to reveal that most terms refer to the daily routine, social and political life and military terms.


LETS ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Muh. Ikhlasul Amal ◽  
Syahdan ◽  
Risal Pandi ◽  
Halid M ◽  
Arialdi

The aim of the study was  to  analyze  and  describe  the  process of  improving students’ listening skill for eleventh grade students of MAN 1 Majene, West Sulawesi Province through  watching English movies. The subject of this research is XI Agama 2 Class that consisted of 16 students. The method used in this study is Classroom Action Research (CAR) which the writer works  collaboratively with the English teacher. The results in this study indicate that there  was  improvement of the students’ skill listening. Most of the students gradually gained good scores at the end of the cycle. The data were collected from a questionnaire, observation note of performance, pre-test and post-test. The study was conducted with cycle model through the steps of planning, conducting, observation, and reflection. The results of this study show a significant relationship between students' learning by English movie with delay subtitle related to their listening skills as shown in their improvement of post- test and positive responses of students than  E nglish movie  with not delay. The questionnaire shows that more than 75% students felt easy to understand listening materials from native speakers. Consequently, it was suggested that teaching learning process using English movie with English subtitle is recommended  into  learning  process  to  improve students' listening skills in English language classroom. In conclusion, watching English movie can improve students listening skill.


2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (12) ◽  
pp. 96-104
Author(s):  
Samar Alharbi

English language considers a global language spoken by a majority of people around the world. It is a language used mainly for communication, trades and study purposes. This widespread of English language being wildly spoken lead to different varieties of English as a lingua franca (ELF) means that non native speakers of English still be able to communicate with each other. Using ELF as a legitimate variety of English in language classrooms is questioned by some researchers. This paper will provide an overview of the concept of ELF. It will also present implications and limitations of using ELF in Saudi English as foreign language classrooms.


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