Le discours médiatique parlé et la norme en français

The system of French accentuation is a relevant case of a language change, observable in a relatively short period of time in a stable synchrony. Since the mid-twentieth century, the formation of linguistic norms has largely depended on a specific type of utterance, media discourse, continually available in spoken audio-visual media. The impact of spoken media on the development of linguistic expression in the last few decades is unprecedented in language history. It is based on a communicational model in which speech is produced by a single speaker and instantly perceived by a multitude of receivers who have no possibility of intervening in the communicational process. Thus the receivers are passively exposed to an exclusive speaker and to language strategies conceived by the media and its linguistic authority. The analysis of two professional spoken interventions, uttered on French television, shows an important modification of the traditional accentual system: conserving the final accent (FA), the speakers systematically introduce an initial accent (IA), a landmark in the evolution of the French language and its normative features. The IA affects the first syllable of a stressed lexeme or the first syllable of an extended accentual unit, regardless of the syntactic function of the stressed morpheme. The FA is operated by the intonational action, while the IA seems to be realized by an accentual augmentation of vocal intensity. The automatism of lexical stressing is generating a systematic accentuation of the first syllable of the accentual unit. The IA mostly affects lexemes that speakers insist on because of their informative value (numerals, adverbs, proper names), but an important part of IA concerns different proclytics, such as deictic elements, articles and determinants. Accentual limitation of the unit on both sides is a specific feature of the speech in French audio-visual media. In recent decades it has found its echo in the normative speech of French linguistic communities.

Assessing the Oral Language Skills of Bi-/Multilinguals

Bilingual/multilingual children who speak two (or more) languages demonstrate variability in their semantic and morphosyntactic knowledge of each of their languages. This impacts their performance on language assessment tasks that tap into knowledge of semantics and morphosyntax. As a result, children from bilingual/multilingual backgrounds tend to be misdiagnosed more often than their monolingual peers. In this chapter, the authors review how best practices in the development of assessments can be applied to bilingual/multilingual language learners. They provide examples of the development and use of language history questionnaires and of assessments of semantics and morphosyntax for bilingual/multilingual populations. The chapter focuses in large part on the development and use of these measures for the US Spanish-English speaking population because the approach has been used for a very large group of children and can inform the development of assessments in other language pairs.

THE MAGIC OF THE QUEEN OF EGYPT IN THE ROSE "CLEOPATRA"

Presented a new approach to the training future teachers, including Science (biology, botany, etc.) through the prism of the rose named after the last pharaoh of Egypt, Queen Cleopatra. The authors consider the Cleopatra rose not through the preparation of a plant in the laboratory (while scientific botanists search to know flowers physiologically and morphologically in the spirit of progress and truth,), but reveal the secrets and magic of the Cleopatra rose through the knowledge of "life truths", thus forming professionally oriented foreign language educational space at university (foreign language, history, geography, philosophy, chemistry, art (A.S. Arensky's ballet "Egyptian Nights", operas "Cléopâtre" by Massenet and "Giulio Cesare in Egitto" by Haendel), cinema, literature, psychology), involving students in romantic love, the ability to understand the flower codes inherent in the Cleopatra rose. We use floral codes strategically in their fiction as subtexts for practitioners of the language of flowers. Key words: Queen Cleopatra, rose Cleopatra,

Final Vowel Loss in Lower Kasai Bantu (drc) as a Contact-Induced Change

In this article, we present a qualitative and quantitative comparative account of Final Vowel Loss (fvl) in the Bantu languages of the Lower Kasai region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. We argue that this diachronic sound shift rose relatively late in Bantu language history as a contact-induced change and affected adjacent West-Coastal and Central-Western Bantu languages belonging to different phylogenetic clusters. We account for its emergence and spread by resorting to two successive processes of language contact: (1) substrate influence from extinct hunter-gatherer languages in the center of innovation consisting of Bantu B80 languages, and (2) dialectal diffusion towards certain peripheral Bantu B70, C80, H40 and L10 languages.

Standard Georgian language: History and current challenges

This article outlines some debates and issues in the field of Georgian linguistics and offers a research agenda for standard Georgian language, including its history, phases of development, present-day challenges and prospects. There is a multitude of conflicting and even mutually exclusive ideas and points of view regarding these issues. My key point is to provide the periodization of the standard Georgian language that encompasses sixteen centuries, taking into consideration not only the level of normalization and standardization of the Georgian language in a particular historical period, but also the language variety on which the standard / literary language was based, and the institutions controlling and governing the development of the standard language. The point of departure here is the definition of the “standard” as a historically determined set of commonly used language assets, recognized by society as the most appropriate and prestigious variety due to its common usage and high cultural status. Using descriptive, synchronic, diachronic, and comparative research methods, I have tried to identify four phases / periods in the continuous history of the Georgian standard language spanning sixteen centuries.

Language history on fast forward: Innovations in heritage languages and diachronic change

There has been a substantial amount of research on heritage language acquisition and diachronic change. Although recent work has increasingly pointed to parallels between those two areas, it remains unclear how systematic these are. In this paper, we provide a bird's eye view, illustrating how patterns of diachronic change are mirrored in heritage language grammars. In doing so, we focus on one of the best-described grammaticalization processes – namely, the formation of articles from demonstratives and numerals, reviewing studies on heritage varieties which mirror those processes. Based on this review, we make two main points: that change in heritage language can be predicted based on established diachronic scenarios, and that heritage languages often amplify incipient changes in the baseline. After discussing a number of attested changes in a bilingual context, we identify directions for future research in the domain of determiners in heritage languages.

The problem of universalism in (diachronic) cognitive linguistics

Modern cognitive science and cognitive linguistics are characterized by a universalist perspective, i.e., they are investigating features and principles of cognition which can be found in all members of the human species. This in turn means that they should not only be relevant for present-day cognizers and language users, but also historically. This theoretical, programmatic paper first explores this notion of universalism in cognitive science and cognitive linguistics and suggests that the notion of cognitive universalism should be supplemented by perspectives from cognitive sociology and social cognition. These offer a middle ground in that they look at cognition as it is socially and culturally grounded, and hence inter-individual, but yet not universal. A final section on diachronic cognitive linguistics shows that in language history all three perspectives, individual, social, and universal, can have their place, and that one line of future research should explore this new perspective of social cognition in language history in order to arrive at a fuller picture of historical language users and their cognition.

Sources in historical dialectology

Any scholarly description of Hungarian dialects may only be possible for the time period after the settlement of the Hungarian-speaking population in the Carpathian Basin. Research in historical dialectology has primarily focused on the phonological characterization of 11th-14th century conditions, while in terms of sources, scholars have so far relied primarily on early data related to tribes’ names, historical data recorded in charters, today’s dialects, as well as evidence provided by related languages and elements borrowed from others. My paper sets out to establish the value of various sources in historical dialectology in view of our current knowledge in language history and calls attention to related methodological pitfalls. As most of these source types may also greatly contribute to the better understanding of the history of other languages, these methodological issues are relevant not only for Hungarian historical linguistics and dialectology but also more generally. The research and writing of this essay has been supported by the University of Debrecen and the MTA Premium Postdoctoral Research Program, Eötvös Loránd Research Network.

Challenges of Easy and Plain Language in Latvia

In the age of globalisation and digitalisation, the amount of information is constantly increasing. The society’s responsibility is also increasing, as there is a large part of society that needs special support in order to make this information accessible. One way to do that is being able to communicate in easy or plain language. The aim of this article is to reveal easy and/or plain language as one of the measures for an inclusive society, and pinpoint the possibilities of expanding it in Latvia, where there has been little discussion about the different use and text creation methods of easy and plain language. Therefore, professor Dr. paed. Sarmīte Tūbele draws attention to the specifics of plain language target groups from a speech therapist’s point of view and summarizes the diverse characteristics of learning disabilities. When discussing the possibilities of adjusting learning materials, she emphasises the importance of integrating quality illustrative elements into easy language texts in order to encourage the reader’s perception and interest. Dr. paed. Ieva Sproģe discusses methods of text creation/adaptation in the context of translatology and lists criteria for processing and creating texts, as well as suitable classic translation methods, emphasising the main goal of easy and plain language – improving the ability of perceiving a text by simplifying it, i. e., making it more understandable. Subsequently, a summary of suggestions for easy and plain language text requirements and using them with target groups is provided. Methodology: The research was carried out using literature review and a study of easy language organisations, as well as events organised by them and their guidelines. Results: The article provides a brief summary of easy language history and describes current international discussions about easy language, pointing out both positive development tendencies and problematic aspects; the most common classifications of easy language and its target groups are described, as well as the interpretations and possibilities of classification for the concept “easy to read”; conclusions are made about the possibilities of developing easy language text creation in Latvia. Easy language is described in the context of translating/adapting and speech therapy by collecting suggestions for easy and plain language text requirements and adapting them for the target groups. This is the first time that an easy and plain language description in a scientific, multidisciplinary context has been provided in Latvia.