Fenomena of compression, extension and quantitative equacomponence in the syntactic synonymy (based on French fiction of the 20th – the beginning of the 21st c.)

In this article the mono- and polypredicative utterances with syntactic synonymy of French fiction of the 20th – the beginning of the 21st c. are studied in the continuum language → discourse as transforms of virtual (linguistic) primary (pivotal) structures which are actualized in the form of mono- and polysynonymic compressed, extended and quantitatively equacomponential co(n)textually preferential options. The goal of this research is to distinguish the different semantic-structural types of analyzed constructions of modern French fiction and to inversely (discourse → language) reconstruct the primary structure of actualized synonymic transforms. In the article the transformational method is used to reveal the semantic-structural peculiarities of the pivotal syntagmata and propositions and of the mono- and polysynonymic transforms; and the method of the inverse reconstruction of virtual transformational processes in order to identify all the members of synonymic chains. It was proved that the redundant synonymic constructions are extended with adverbs, pronouns and predicates (active and passive extension), the compression is manifested most often by the contamination and the semantic and syntagmatic ellipsis. The elliptical constructions are defined in the research as structures with the implicit nominal/pronominal component and with the explicit, explicit-implicit or completely implicit predicate or the structures with the implicit complement where the implicit components are deduced associatively or co(n)textually. The different types of synonymic preferential options with the polysynonymisation at the level of syntagma or utterances were detected in modern French fiction. It was concluded that the author actualizes the mono- and polypredicative mono- and polysynonymiс constructions according to some communicative intention and planning of narration.

THE CONCEPTUAL FIELD „GLÜCK“ IN THE GERMAN LANGUAGE DISCOURSE

The present paper pays a special attention to such terms as “concept” and “conceptual field”, which play an extremely important role in understanding the processes of conceptualization of the reality in human cognition. The interpretation of the conceptual field as a fixed grouping of typologically and semantically homogeneous and hierarchically arranged concepts is substantiated in the study. The principles of modeling the conceptual field “Glück” in the German language discourse are considered. The means of verbalization of the concept “Glück”, namely a set of nominal lexemes for designating positive emotions (the lexeme “Glück” and its synonyms registered in the texts: Glück, Freude, Geschick, Heil, Hochgefühl, Schwein, Segen, Wonne) are under investigation. Based on the analysis of collocations of positively marked emotive nouns with verbs that cover certain areas in the conceptual field under study, the structure of the conceptual field “Glück” in the German language discourse is modeled. The conceptual areas constituting the core, the near and the far periphery are outlined. The degree of connection between different conceptual areas is determined and the areas exhibiting strong, medium or weak connection are found. Correlations between the conceptual areas have been established, each of which, forming figures of various configurations, is considered as a single conceptual complex. The use of methods of structural linguistics in the study of conceptual processes made it possible to obtain relevant objective data on the actualization of the emotional concept “Glück” in the German fiction of the 20th century. In summary, the author’s interpretation of the term “conceptual field” is suggested, which is defined as a set of conceptual spheres (areas) connected by systemic, interrelated and complementary relations, which is represented by the lexical field units (words) and within which units of the lexical level function and realize their meanings. The structure of the conceptual field “Glück” has been determined. The following conceptual areas constitute the core: “verbs of movement and displacement”, “verbs designating occurrence or appearance” and “verbs of spatial localization”. The near periphery is formed by: “action verbs”, “relational semantics verbs”, “stative, processual verbs”, “verbs of being”, and “verbs of mental and social actions of the subject.” The far periphery includes the following conceptual areas: “verbs of sounding and onomatopoeia”, “characterization verbs”, and “modal verbs”. Key words: concept, verbalizers, correlation analysis, conceptual field, conceptual area, core, periphery.

Mediadiscourse of fashion: processes, phenomena, effects

The monograph is devoted to the study of the Russian-language discourse of fashion, actualized in the space of modern mass media: in television broadcasts and glossy magazines, blogs and social networks. The main attention is paid to the processes of hybridization of fashion discourse and media discourse and their linguistic and speech manifestations, reflecting the intersection of fashion discourse with other types of discourse. The book is addressed to specialists in the field of media linguistics and journalism, students, teachers and researchers, employees of the fashion industry, as well as all those who are interested in fashion and style issues.

Pronominalization and Expectations for Re-Mention: Modeling Coreference in Contexts With Three Referents

The relationship between pronoun production and pronoun interpretation has been proposed to follow Bayesian principles, combining a comprehender’s expectation about which referent will be mentioned next and their estimate of how likely it is that a potential referent will be re-mentioned using a pronoun. The Bayesian Model has received support from studies in several languages (English, Mandarin Chinese, Catalan, German), but tested contexts have been limited to two event participants, whereas natural language discourse often involves contexts with more than two event participants. In this study, we conducted three story continuation experiments to assess how the Bayesian Model performs in more complex contexts. Our results show that even in contexts with three event participants, comprehenders can behave rationally when interpreting pronouns, but that they appear to require sufficient context to build up a coherent representation of the situation to do so. In addition to testing the basic claim of the Bayesian Model (Weak Bayes), we test the central prediction of the Strong form of the hypothesis: that the two components of the model (next-mention expectations and choice of referring expression) are influenced by dissociated sets of factors. In a model comparison, Experiments 2 and 3 confirm the closest fit from the Bayesian Model, which supports Weak Bayes, and none of our experiments find evidence that the predictability of a referent affects pronominalization rates, which corroborates Strong Bayes. Finally, we test whether the rate of pronominalization is sensitive to factors related to ambiguity and argument/adjunct status of referents; we find that participants vary their production of pronouns most strongly based on the grammatical role of the antecedent (subject or not), with a smaller effect from the presence/absence of a gender-matched competitor and no effect from the syntactic position of this competing referent.

“Institutionalized States of Information Abstinence”

In this study, I provide applied examples of using cut-up poetic inquiry as an arts-based research method for analyzing erasure poetry. The erasure poetry was composed by five poet-participants and me during a sensory ethnography that explored embodied experiences of a sexual educator training program. I first overview erasure poetics in the context of sexuality education. I explain how erasure poetry as method can interrupt authoritative proclamations of truth, while also providing a technique to grapple with complex, corporeal data – central topics in sex education research. I then theorize cut-up poetic inquiry as an additional form of erasure, asking and illustrating how the processes of cut-up can distill information to enable emergent analytic insights in the context of my research. Throughout, I meditate on how erasure poetry as an arts- based research method can contribute to discussions of language, discourse, and embodiment in sex education research.

SYNTACTIC SYNONYMY AS ONE OF THE PECULIARITIES OF AUTHOR’S IDIOSTYLE (based on French fiction of the XXth – the beginning of the XXIst centuries)

In this article the syntactic synonyms as one the characteristics of the author’s idiostyle are defined as the co(n)textually preferential options formed in the continuum language → discourse as a result of the phased phenomenological cognitive polyoperations at the levels of primary and secondary consciousness: destruction and reconstruction of being and its structures and categories → sublinguistic schemes → primary (pivotal) structures → secondary reduced, extended and quantitatively equacomponential one-basis and two-basis synonymic transforms. Transformational processes and the primary structure are revealed by means of the procedure of inverse reconstruction (discourse → language). The author’s idiostyle is considered as the correlation of different degree of individual and collective cognitive spaces that conditions the choice and actualization of some synonymic structures. Three types of author’s idiostyle are distinguished: 1) diffuse (dominance of the collective cognitive space over the individual one which is revealed through the realization of synonymic structures characteristic to a certain epoch; 2) personal (prevalence of the individual cognitive space over the collective one, that is the actualization of grammaticalized synonymic utterances appropriate for another epoch, of typical agrammaticalized synonymic structures characteristic to another epoch or non-characteristic to the described epoch, of non-typical agrammaticalized synonymic structures. The french writer’s idiostyle of the XXth – the beginning of the XXIst centuries is analyzed using the examples of different semantic-structural types of synonymic preferential options (reduced mono- and polypredicative constructions with the participial and gerundial head lexemes, asyndetic conditional structures and extended with the predicates and presentatives synonymic structures) and it is proved the coexistence of two phenomena: reduction and extension in the modern French fiction despite of the general tendency of the economy of means of expression of author’s thought

Pragmatics Electrified

Chapter to be included in Grimaldi, M., Y. Shtyrov & E. Brattico, (eds.), "Language Electrified. Techniques, Methods, Applications, and Future Perspectives in the Neurophysiological Investigation of Language", Springer. It reviews EEG studies in the pragmatic domain, focusing on non-literal language, discourse and conversation.

An Analysis of Code Mixing of an Australian Youtuber “Dave Jephcott” in His Instagram “Londo Kampung”

Code mixing is a phenomenon in the form of the use of elements from a particular language in one sentence or another language discourse. The objective of this research is to find out the type of code-mixing uttered by an Australian Youtuber in his Instagram “Londo Kampung”. This study uses a descriptive qualitative method. In Instagram “Londo Kampung”. It is found the mixing of various linguistic units in the grammatical system within a sentence. There are some types of insertion of code-mixing, such as in elements of word, phrase, clause, hybrid, and repetition. There 182 code mixing found in Instagram captions. In insertion of the word shows 114 data or 62.64% which consist word class of noun and adjective. In insertion of hybrid shows 36 data (19.78 %), such as in insertion suffix both in Indonesian and Javanese, also prefix both in Indonesian and Javanese. In phrase shows 14 data (7.69 %) which consist of the noun phrase and adjective phrases. In insertion of the clause shows 12 data (6.59 %), and in repetition shows 6 data (3.33 %) which consist independent clause. The most dominant type insertion of code-mixing is in the element of words. Code mixing here occurs when the speaker (Dave Jephcott) inserts an element of a foreign language (English) in an utterance when he mostly communicates in written in his first language (Javanese and Indonesian).

Scenarios for Unison Text Unfolding in Russian Blogosphere

The article is devoted to the analysis of scenarios as conceptual structures of a specific type that underlie the pragmatic connectivity of stimulating and reactive messages as part of a blog text in Russian and projecting unison in the current interaction. It has been proven that these scenarios are an essential parameter of the linguistic competence of representatives of virtual communities and are used by the initiator of communication and its respondents to reach agreement and find a common semantic denominator for initially conflicting points of view. The authors dwell on the fact that the implementation of scenarios in computer-mediated communication is predetermined both by the formal capabilities of the lexico-grammatical system of the Russian language (discourse markers) and by linguocultural conventions that the interlocutors adhere to at one stage or another of the joint deployment of the blog text. In this study, the architectonics of scenarios for the connectivity of stimuli and reactions in the composition of the blog text is interpreted as a consequence of the implementation of relay structures. It is emphasized that the initiator of cohesion is the respondent (including the blogger in the function of the respondent) in the course of constructing a responsive message. It is shown that the pragmatic structure of these scenarios includes a foothold in incentive communication and a bond that docks with this foothold in reactive communication.

Prominence Semantics for Modality

This chapter develops a formal model of context-sensitivity of modal discourse. Much like demonstrative pronouns, modals are prominence-sensitive, selecting the most prominent candidate interpretation. The prominence ranking of candidate interpretations is recorded in the conversational record, and is maintained through the effects of discourse conventions represented in the logical form of a discourse. In this way arguments are individuated as structured discourses that underwrite a particular propositional pattern. It is shown that such account provably preserves classical logic. Further, this chapter argues that its model offers a more satisfactory account of the individuation of argument patterns in natural language discourse then the competing alternatives. Any adequate account, it is here argued, will have to take into account not just the contribution of individual sentences, but also of discourse conventions. Indeed, the contribution of discourse conventions is crucial for determining the contribution of individual sentences in the first place.