Current trends in grammar writing

Over the last few decades, there has been a tremendous increase in the production of descriptive grammars for languages that had previously been poorly described or lacked description altogether. In most cases, these are minority languages, and many of them are endangered. To enhance the dialogue between grammar-writers and typologists, the conference Descriptive Grammars and Typology was held at the University of Helsinki (Finland) at the end of March, 2019. In this paper, we discuss three current trends in grammar writing that emerged from the conference plenaries as well as from many other presentations: (i) the target audience of grammars and the role of language communities in grammar writing, (ii) the digitalization of grammaticography and (iii) themes that have earlier been more or less neglected in grammars but that would bring more insight into typological research as well as into understanding the structures of individual languages: discourse, variation, diachrony and contact effect of languages.

The use of specific linguistic features within the context of a casual conversation in a speech community

There seems to be nothing remarkable about the interaction between two interlocutors who have never been in contact with each other. These persons are able to understand themselves in contact situations because most times, a common language of communication is known that can sustain the exchange for the time necessary. However, when such exchange is between individuals with some level of contact or familiarity, the concept of speech community comes into play. The concept is useful but may be problematic at times and one cannot avoid applying this idea when trying to make sense of the process that takes place in the conversation, specifically a causal conversation. The aim of this sociolinguistic study is to explain how individuals are able to build social history, construct interactional talk, maintain relations with each other and reinforce solidarity from a two hour audio recorded conversation (ARC) between an ethnic Indian and a Nigerian in Marylebone, London using interactional socio-linguistic and conversation analytic. By doing so, the concept of a speech community as well as how a group can be identified as being members of a community is understood. A particular focus is paid to such linguistic features as the register of conversation, turn taking, discourse variation, phonological variation and grammatical variation characteristic of London, Nigerian and Indian English observed in the speech of the participants and how these features function to build and maintain relations. Keywords: Speech community, Casual conversation, Linguistic features, Sociolinguistics, ARC

General extenders and discourse variation

The present study accounts for the use of general extenders (GEs) in spoken and written registers. The repertoire and usage of GEs is analysed in Lithuanian by focusing on their distribution across different registers, their structural properties, and discourse-pragmatic functions. The study is based on a reference corpus of Lithuanian, which includes four subcorpora of written discourse and a subcorpus of spoken discourse. The findings indicate that there are some significant cross-generic differences in GE frequency, but most frequently GEs in Lithuanian are used in written academic discourse. With regard to the structural types of GEs, adjunctives are considerably more frequent than disjunctives. GE structure allows for a large degree of variation, and in spoken interaction GEs can include deictic elements. Concerning discourse-pragmatic functions, GEs are predominantly used to serve textual and interpersonal functions, which appear to be strongly related to the structural type of the GE and discourse settings.

HISTORY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE THE USE OF THE LANGUAGE AS MEANS OF COMMUNICATION

English language has obtained the status of the prime world language due to its multiple functions in international communication: it is the lingua franca for politics, diplomacy, international academic and business conferences, the leading language for science and technology, mass media, computers and entertainment. English language as the main medium worldwide is important both in global and local sense. The expansion of communities of users of English has indicated pragmatic, conceptual and discourse variation that has created new communicative needs. Before continuing to refer to other matters connected to English language as one of the main global and most widely used languages, the primary step is to look at its history, its origins and development.

HISTORY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE THE USE OF THE LANGUAGE AS MEANS OF COMMUNICATION

English language has obtained the status of the prime world language due to its multiple functions in international communication: it is the lingua franca for politics, diplomacy, international academic and business conferences, the leading language for science and technology, mass media, computers and entertainment. English language as the main medium worldwide is important both in global and local sense. The expansion of communities of users of English has indicated pragmatic, conceptual and discourse variation that has created new communicative needs. Before continuing to refer to other matters connected to English language as one of the main global and most widely used languages, the primary step is to look at its history, its origins and development.

Discourse variation of vague language: vague quantifiers in spoken and written Lithuanian

Vagueness is a controversial issue, which was long stigmatised by both researchers and laypeople and largely neglected in linguistics until the publication of Channell’s (1994) study, which demonstrated that vague language (VL) is a multi-faceted phenomenon of high pragmatic importance. The present study focuses on one of the most central categories of VL in Lithuanian, i.e. vague quantifiers, which can be defined as non-numerical expressions used for referring to quantities, e.g. daug (“a lot”), mažai (“little/few”), keletas (“several”), or šiek tiek (“a little bit”). The meaning of quantifiers frequently encodes some evaluative content concerning the significance of a quantity. The evaluative function is an important and intended speaker’s message, expressed by choosing a vague expression, and is lost if reformulated into a precise expression. A systematic account of this pragmatic category has not been carried out yet in Lithuanian, and the vast majority of research on vague quantifiers focuses mainly on English with only very few exceptions. VL is omnipresent and is used in all discourse types, but to a different extent and for different purposes; therefore, this investigation has a two-fold aim: (a) to determine the distribution of quantifiers in different discourses including spoken interaction and a variety of written texts (i.e. academic texts, newspapers and magazines, publicist texts, administrative texts, and fiction); and (b) to overview when and why vague quantifiers are prioritized over precise numerical references. The data for this investigation has been obtained from the Corpus of the Contemporary Lithuanian Language (tekstynas.vdu.lt), which is a reference corpus comprising over 140 mln words; it represents five major discourse types analysed in this paper. The present analysis has been carried out within the framework of corpus linguistics, pragmatics, variationist sociolinguistics, and discourse analysis; it is primarily quantitative, but to explain some dominant tendencies in the results, it also deals with some qualitative aspects. The findings obtained from spoken and written discourse have revealed that quantifiers are distributed very unevenly in the two modes of language; the results have also shown some dramatic differences in the use of quantifiers in different written texts. Their distribution and functions depend on the formality of quantifiers and their semantic type. Multal quantifiers (i.e. those referring to large quantities) are emphatic, whereas paucal quantifiers (i.e. those referring to small quantities) are mainly used for mitigation and are more prone to soften the effect of negatively loaded lexemes. Importantly, quantifiers are used for persuasion since they evaluate a quantity and convey the speaker’s interpretation of its significance. They can be important in discourse structuring, in shaping interpersonal relationships, and as a face-saving strategy. Due to the large variety of communicative functions that quantifiers can perform, they are an important category in second language teaching and should be adequately dealt with in lexicography.

The New Racial Politics of Welfare: Ethno-Racial Diversity, Immigration, and Welfare Discourse Variation

Preprint, final version in Social Services Review available at: http://doi.org/10.1086/673171