Cognition, complexity and context as other minds: a tribute to T. Givón

Linguistics is made up of great individuals. Throughout its not so long history as compared with other sciences, linguistics boasts many remarkable contributors who paved the way for human language study and thus led us into exploring the rising, development and evolution not only of natural languages, but also that of our own species. This book is a tribute to one of those great contributors to linguistics, T. Givón. As he argues for an evolutionary approach to communication and language, Givón has covered various research fields in linguistics such as morphosyntax, semantics, pragmatics, discourse and text, second language acquisition, pidgins and creoles, language universals, grammaticalization, and cognitive science.

An exploration of the structural and colligational characteristics of lexical bundles in L1–L2 corpora for English language teaching

Multi-word expressions are formulaic language universals with arbitrary and idiosyncratic collocations. Their usage and mastery are required of learners of a second language in achieving naturalness. However, despite the importance of multi-word expressions to mastering a second language, their syntactic architecture and colligational possibilities have received little attention in English language teaching (ELT). This study examined lexical bundles, a type of multi-word expressions, to understand their structure and co-occurrence possibilities with other syntactic elements. It was aided by an automated frequency-driven approach using two corpora, the British component of the British National Corpus – a first language (L1) corpus – and a purpose-built Nigerian Media Discourse corpus – a second language (L2) corpus. Two items of lexical analysis software were used to extract three-word lexical bundles with a minimum of 50 frequencies per corpus. The syntactic structures of the identified lexical bundles were determined, and their in-corpus usages were analysed for their colligational characteristics. Results showed that both corpora had instances of general and genre-specific lexical bundles (LBs) with varying frequencies. Five categories of lexical bundles with different structural patterns and peculiar colligational characteristics were identified in the study. Since lexical bundles are more frequently found in both L1–L2 texts, mastering how they are used will further enhance the teaching of English as a second language. The teaching of lexical bundles as a multi-word expression is therefore recommended in ELT as a way of enhancing learners’ proficiency and naturalness in English.

Talk Isn’t So Cheap

Spoken and signed languages differ because of the affordances of the human body and the limits of each medium. But can commonalities between the two be compared to find abstract language universals?

Demonstratives in Spatial Language and Social Interaction: An Interdisciplinary Review

This paper offers a review of research on demonstratives from an interdisciplinary perspective. In particular, we consider the role of demonstratives in current research on language universals, language evolution, language acquisition, multimodal communication, signed language, language and perception, language in interaction, spatial imagery, and discourse processing. Traditionally, demonstratives are analyzed as a particular class of spatial deictics. Yet, a number of recent studies have argued that space is largely irrelevant to deixis and that demonstratives are primarily used for social and interactive purposes. Synthesizing findings in the literature, we conclude that demonstratives are a very special class of linguistic items that are foundational to both spatial and social aspects of language and cognition.

Gdzie mieszka język?

The article is devoted to the problems of the ontological assumptions of linguistics. It is argued that the thesis on the diversity of these assumptions goes beyond the classic positions in the dispute over language universals. The dependence of ontological assumptions on the empirically established linguistic theories is indicated.

Large and ancient linguistic areas

Large-scale areal patterns point to ancient population history and form a well-known confound for language universals. Despite their importance, demonstrating such patterns remains a challenge. This chapter argues that large-scale area hypotheses are better tested by modeling diachronic family biases than by controlling for genealogical relations in regression models. A case study of the Trans-Pacific area reveals that diachronic bias estimates do not depend much on the amount of phylogenetic information that is used when inferring them. After controlling for false discovery rates, about 39 variables in WALS and AUTOTYP show diachronic biases that differ significantly inside vs. outside the Trans-Pacific area. Nearly three times as many biases hold outside than inside the Trans-Pacific area, indicating that the Trans-Pacific area is not so much characterized by the spread of biases but rather by the retention of earlier diversity, in line with earlier suggestions in the literature.

Homonymy and the Cognitive Operator of Norm in German

The works of many linguists view homonymy as a negative phenomenon, which interferes with communication, complicates the perception of information, and decreases the effectiveness of the language as a means of communication. At the same time homonymy is a positive phenomenon which contributes to the compactness of the language, and allows to economize the units of the plain of content. The objective of our research is to determine the factors that differentiate the meaning of homonymic units, based on the broad factual material and psycholinguistic experiments. The components of intralinguistic homonymic rows based on the category of markedness, which correlates with the cognitive operator of norm / deviation. Among the criteria of markedness for homonymic differentiation are areal, social, chronological, and stylistic. The fact that one of the elements of the homonymic row is unmarked was proved by a number of psycholinguistic experiments, where we offered the German speakers to suggest the first association word which occurred to them referring the homonyms in the list. The experiment was carried out in a group of students from the Institute of German Studies, Technical University Chemnitz (Germany), aged 21-25, whose native language is German. The psycholinguistic analysis shows that 97 per cent of homonymic pairs have both marked and unmarked components. This allows to explain homonymy from the point of view of the correlation of “markedness/unmarkedness”, and wider – “norm/deviation”. From the cognitive point of view language markedness is derived from cognitive markedness, i.e. the unmarked language meaning corresponds to the cognitively normal (natural, expected) state of things, and the marked language meaning corresponds to cognitive deviation, i.e. unnatural, unexpected state of things. Normal state of things belongs to the cognitive image of human experience, and is conceptualized with the minimal mental calculating effort, i.e. is activated automatically; and deviations from this image require additional calculating resources for their activation. Thus, language markedness reflects cognitive operators of norm/deviation in the specific language means in language structures, including homonymic pairs and homonymic rows. References Bridges, R.S. (2004). On English Homophones. Society for Pure English Tract 02. Oxford: Clarendon Pr. Retrieved from: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/14227/14227-h/14227-h.htm (01.05.2020) Cairns, H.S. (1973). Effects of bias on processing and reprocessing of lexically ambi­guous sentences. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 97, 337-343. Croft, W. (2003). Typology and universals. 2-d ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ducháček, O. (1953). O vzájemném vlivu tvaru a významu slov. Praha: Státní peda­go­gické nakladatelství. Ferreira, L. (2010). Metaphor comprehension in foreign language. In L. Scliar-Cabral, (Ed). Psycholinguistics: Scientific and Technological Challenges. (pp. 84-98). Porto Alegre: EDIPUCRS, Foss, D.J. & Jenkins C.M. (1973). Some effects of context on the comprehension of ambiguous sentences. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 12, 577-589. Greenberg, J. (1966). Language universals, with special reference to feature hie­rarchies. The Hague: Mouton. Hogaboam, T.W. & Perfetti, C.A. (1975). Lexical ambiguity and sentence compre­hension. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behaviour, 14, 265-274. Кибрик, А.Е. (2008). Лингвистическая реконструкция когнитивной структуры. Вопросы языкознания. 4, 51-77. Кійко, С.В. (2016). Синергетика омонімії як мовного, мовленнєвого і міжмовного явища. Чернівці: Родовід. Mаулер, Ф.И. (1983). Грамматическая омонимия в современном английском языке. Ростов: Изд. Рост. университета. Новиков, Л.А. (1982). Семантика русского языка. М.: Высшая Школа. Реформатский, А.А. (2004). Введение в языкознание. 5 изд. М.: Аспект Пресс Press. Ruoff, A. (2014). Häufigkeitswörterbuch gesprochener Sprache. 2. Auflage. Berlin: de Gruyter. Reprint 2014. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110916058 References (translated and transliterated) Bridges, R.S. (2004). On English Homophones. Society for Pure English Tract 02. Oxford: Clarendon Pr. Retrieved from: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/14227/14227-h/14227-h.htm (01.05.2020) Cairns, H.S. (1973). Effects of bias on processing and reprocessing of lexically ambi­guous sentences. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 97, 337-343. Croft, W. (2003). Typology and universals. 2-d ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ducháček, O. (1953). O vzájemném vlivu tvaru a významu slov. Praha: Státní peda­go­gické nakladatelství. Ferreira, L. (2010). Metaphor comprehension in foreign language. In L. Scliar-Cabral, (Ed). Psycholinguistics: Scientific and Technological Challenges. (pp. 84-98). Porto Alegre: EDIPUCRS. Foss, D.J. & Jenkins C.M. (1973). Some effects of context on the comprehension of ambiguous sentences. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 12, 577-589. Greenberg, J. (1966). Language universals, with special reference to feature hie­rarchies. The Hague: Mouton. Hogaboam, T.W. & Perfetti, C.A. (1975). Lexical ambiguity and sentence compre­hension. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behaviour, 14, 265-274. Kibrik, А.Е. (2008). Lingvističeskaya rekonstrukciya kognitivnoy struktury [Linguistic reconstruction of cognitive structure]. Voprosy yazykoznaniya, 4, 51–77. Kiyko, S.V. (2016). Synergetyka omonimii yak movnoho, movlennevoho i moshmovnoho yavyshcha. [Synergy of homonymy as language, speech and interlanguage phenomenon]. Chernivtsi: Rodovid. Mauler, F.I. (1983). Grammatičeskaya omonimiya v sovremennom angliyskom yazyke [Grammatical homonymy in Modern English]. Rostov: Rostov University Publishers. Novikov, L.А. (1982). Semantika russkogo yazyka [Semantics of Russian language]. М.: Vys. shkola. Reformatskiy, А.А. (2004). Vvedeniye v yazykoznaniye [Introduction into linguistics]. 5-th ed. Мoscow: Aspekt Press. Ruoff, A. (2014). Häufigkeitswörterbuch gesprochener Sprache. 2. Auflage. Berlin: de Gruyter. Reprint. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110916058.

Misused Terms in Linguistics

Many terms in linguistics, Evelina Leivada observes, are often used inconsistently, incorrectly, or incoherently: Universal Grammar, language universals, parameter, feature, linguistic genotype, language faculty in a narrow sense, hardwired, and grammaticality judgment. These are the very terms that linguists have learned to love, striking evidence that love is often blind.

Consonantal Structures in Phonetics and Phonology

The purpose of this study is to present and compare two different approaches (a phonetic approach and a phonological one) for the speech sound systems of natural languages. To this end, this study investigates natural speech sound systems with the consonantal systems of four Slavic languages, Russian, Polish, Czech and Serbian and Croatian, on the basis of phonetic and phonological approaches. In the phonetic approach, the consonant inventories of the four Slavic languages are analyzed with the theory of maximal and sufficient dispersion and the size principle, together with a frequency-based statistical approach. Segmental universals are discussed regarding sound types such as obstruents and sonorants. From the phonetic approach, it is shown that Slavic consonant systems are very unusual in terms of natural languages. Palatalized sounds in Russian and affricates and fricatives in Russian and Polish support that the Slavic consonantal system is far removed from the general aspect of human languages. On the other hand, with the phonological approach, four of the five feature-based principles proposed by Clements are employed to reveal the universals of the languages. They are Feature Economy, Marked Feature Avoidance, Robustness and Phonological enhancement. What we have seen is that some unsolved problems from the phonetic approach are explained by phonological accounts. The fact that Russian has plenty of segments represented by [+palatal] may not be unusual with respect to a feature-based approach. In addition, while the phonetic approach claims that Slavic languages (in particular, Russian and Polish) have different consonantal systems from the general aspect of natural languages because of the marked segments, the phonological approach accounts for the universals of these languages in the light of Robustness and Feature Economy. In short, what we get from phonetic accounts are language universals, found by frequency-based statistical approach while what we get from phonological accounts, using a feature-based approach, are linguistic universals.