An algorithm to identify periods of establishment and obsolescence of linguistic items in a diachronic corpus

When exploring diachronic corpora, it is often beneficial for linguists to pinpoint not only the first or the last attestation dates of certain linguistic items, but also the moments in which they become more strongly established in the corpus or, conversely, the moments in which they, despite still being part of the language, become obsolete. In this paper, we propose an algorithm to assist the identification of such periods based on the frequency of items in a corpus. Our simple and generalisable algorithm can be used for the investigation of any linguistic item in any corpus which is divided into time-frames. We also demonstrate the applicability of our method using lexical data from the Corpus of Historical American English (coha), providing case studies on the statistics and characteristics of words that appear in or disappear from this corpus in different periods.

Language-related episodes and pair dynamics in primary school CLIL learners: A comparison between proficiency-matched and student-selected pairs

A considerable body of research within the interaction framework (Long, 1996) has centred on the language-related episodes (LREs) which occur when learners topicalize a specific linguistic item while they are engaged in meaning-focused tasks. Several studies have shown that the production of LREs may be influenced by the proficiency level of the learners (Kim & McDonough, 2008; Leeser, 2004). Sociocultural theory (Lantolf & Appel, 1994) has also explored collaborative work and the effect that pairing learners with the same proficiency levels or different patterns of interaction (Storch, 2002) has on the production of LREs (e.g., Mozaffari, 2017; Storch & Aldosari 2013), but little research has compared the effect of the pair formation method (student-selected vs. proficiency-matched) on young learners’ production of LREs and pair dynamics. This study compares young CLIL learners (aged 10-12) in student-selected and proficiency-matched pairs in task-based interaction. Results indicate that learners produce more meaning-based than form-based LREs, regardless of their pair formation method. The percentage of meaning-based LREs which are resolved accurately is much higher in proficiency-matched dyads than in student-selected ones. As for the patterns of interaction (Storch, 2002), the dynamics of proficiency-matched dyads are of a more collaborative nature than those of self-selected pairs.

On the diachrony of giusto? (‘right?’) in Italian

In Italian, the adjective giusto (‘right’) has performed the discourse function of response marker since at least 1613 (DELI 2008: 671). In this paper, I argue that the adjective has recently undertaken a new process of discoursivization, defined as the diachronic process that ends in discourse (Ocampo 2006: 317). In particular, I maintain that giusto may also serve the function of invariant tag (Andersen 2001), a linguistic item appended to a statement for the purpose of seeking mutual agreement, verification or corroboration of a claim (Millar and Brown 1979). Through diachronic lexicographic, quantitative and qualitative analyses carried out over a range of historical and contemporary dictionaries and language corpora of different varieties, the results will show that, although the use of giusto? as invariant tag is currently undocumented, records of such a use are in fact found since 1990. I explore whether there are positive correlations between the use of right? in English and the use of giusto? in real use Italian and AV dialogues.

The Structure and Function of Lexical Bundles in Communicative Saudi High School EFL Textbooks

Current English Language Teaching (ELT) textbooks have largely adopted the communicative approach by using authentic materials to foster EFL students’ communicative competence. However, the communicative status of Saudi high school English textbooks has been underexplored. One way to assess the authenticity of Saudi EFL textbooks is by considering their use of a frequent linguistic item known as lexical bundles. Thus, the present study investigated whether the lexical bundles in communicative Saudi high school textbooks are representative of conversational English. This comparative corpus study used a lexical bundle approach to compare the ten most frequent lexical bundles in the textbooks to those in an English reference corpus. Results show that three and four-word lexical bundles are less frequent in the textbooks compared to the reference corpus and that there is considerable variation in the structural and functional patterns of the bundles in the two corpora. Pedagogical implications are discussed in light of the findings.

Gramaticalização do item linguístico chegar: analisando um verbo de/em movimento no Português / Grammaticalization of the linguistic item "chegar": analyzing a verb of / in moviment in Portuguese Language

Este artigo tem como objetivo apresentar o percurso do verbo chegar rumo a gramaticalização dentro da Língua Portuguesa falada no Brasil (PB) e, em específico, no vernáculo conquistense. Inicialmente, partimos da hipótese de que esse verbo traça um caminho do uso [+ concreto] > [+ abstrato] em perífrases do tipo [V1 (e) + V2], em que V1 é o verbo chegare V2 o verbo principal. Para tanto, delineamos um percurso, de cunho sociofuncionalista sobre o item em estudo, partindo da sua origem etimológica e de dicionários diversos e observando os registros em gramáticas históricas, prescritivas e descritivas.

Ellipsis and Reiteration in English and Arabic: A Contrastive Study

The present study is a descriptive contrastive one because it tries to give a full explanation of ellipsis and reiteration in English and Arabic to arrive at the similarities and differences between them. It deals with ellipsis and reiteration as processes by which a linguistic item is deleted or repeated. This is primarily achieved by showing their definitions, nature, types, and functions, and by surveying the literature available and by contrasting them in the two compared languages, conducting a contrastive study. The study finds out that ellipsis and reiteration as processes are found in both languages. In addition, it also finds out that ellipsis is more widely used than reiteration in both languages and that reiteration in Arabic is used more than in English. In this regard, the study shows that there are similarities and differences between English and Arabic but the area of differences is wider than that of similarities.

Results and Discussion of Two Case Studies

This chapter presents the in-depth analysis of case studies in which each linguistic item used in pre-test and post-tests are noted. Although the participants in case studies did not show improved accuracy after receiving written CF, the errors which had been provided with written CF did not occur again in the post-tests. And it can be seen that the errors that appeared in post-tests bore no relation to the written CF. Proficiency level was not found have an impact on the effect of written CF, but it was found that participants who had lower proficiency level required more written CF assistance.

Prospects for studying value orientations of young Russians with regard to digital humanities (based on SIBAS associative database)

The article considers the directions of changes in modern youth’s value orientations as they are detected in the associative-verbal network, a research product of a mass psycholinguistic associative experiment, carried out in Siberia and the Far East, Russia from 2008 to 2013 and accessible in the form of an electronic associative resource known as SIBAS. In the context of the current ethnocultural identification this process tends to become a topical issue. The study emphasizes the importance of an integrated interdisciplinary approach involving data collection from various social sciences and humanities. One popular trend of today’s cultural linguistic and anthropological paradigm consists in researching modern linguistic processes through linguistic personalities of individual native speakers. So, the article considers some theoretical aspects related to formation of the ethno-cultural identity on the basis of ethnic self-consciousness, represented by a series of images, which include a certain set of elements of ethnicity that differ for each ethnic group. In this regard, the paper considers new tools and methods to retrieve and interpret ethnic socio-cultural meanings, present in the sources of associative images in the form of linguistic reactions characterizing a given ethnic linguistic consciousness. The advantages of the modern electronic associative resources are being substantiated. Continuous addition of psycholinguistic data require an improvement of the search tools and development of ethnosemantic tagging. This may be very helpful to satisfy researchers’ or ordinary user needs. To meet this end, the paper proposes some tentative solutions of tagging which is tailored to the specific tasks of professional cultural linguistic electronic corpora in general, and is apt, in particular, to cope with the challenges of the psycholinguistic material of associative databases such as SIBAS. These are illustrated on the example of two thematic groups (associative fields), "Characteristics of man" and "Types of self-identification". Our main task was to exemplify the semantic taxonomy and the techniques of evaluative tagging meeting the needs of associative databases. The principles of analyzing dynamic characteristics of socio-cultural data related to ethnic selfidentification in youths are considered, too. The author emphasizes advantages of the data from associative sources rather than that found in explanatory dictionaries in order to know with certainty the meaningful cultural connotation of a linguistic item. Comparing semantics of diachronic data from SIBAS and RAS contained in their associative fields "nuzhno" (≈ you have to, you are to…), the author discovered some relevant quantitative and qualitative shifts in value meanings which reflect highly likely new representations of young Russians about life in the context of self-identification. Keywords: language personality, language consciousness, ethno-cultural identification, ethnicity, identification changes, value orientations, evaluation, associative experiment, associative database, semantic evaluation tagging, taxonomic tagging, diachronic analysis.

Frequency patterns of semantic change: corpus-based evidence of a near-critical dynamics in language change

It is generally believed that when a linguistic item acquires a new meaning, its overall frequency of use rises with time with an S-shaped growth curve. Yet, this claim has only been supported by a limited number of case studies. In this paper, we provide the first corpus-based large-scale confirmation of the S-curve in language change. Moreover, we uncover another generic pattern, a latency phase preceding the S-growth, during which the frequency remains close to constant. We propose a usage-based model which predicts both phases, the latency and the S-growth. The driving mechanism is a random walk in the space of frequency of use. The underlying deterministic dynamics highlights the role of a control parameter which tunes the system at the vicinity of a saddle-node bifurcation. In the neighbourhood of the critical point, the latency phase corresponds to the diffusion time over the critical region, and the S-growth to the fast convergence that follows. The durations of the two phases are computed as specific first-passage times, leading to distributions that fit well the ones extracted from our dataset. We argue that our results are not specific to the studied corpus, but apply to semantic change in general.