SCIENCE IS GREAT JOY! (TO THE ANNIVERSARY OF JORMA LUUTONEN)

The article is devoted to Jorma Luutonen, the well-known researcher of the Finno-Ugric languages, Doctor of Philosophy, Associate Professor of the Volga Region Languages Research Sector of the Turku University. The article considers his scientific and creative activities, highlighting his contribution to the development of Finno-Ugric studies, primarily to the study of the languages of the Volga region. His research interests also include Turkology, contrastive linguistics, lexicography, and the creation of digital language corpora. The name of the Finnish linguist is known not only throughout Finland, but also far beyond its borders.

Der Ausdruck von Aktionen im Deutschen und Italienischen

The article considers contrastive linguistics as a discipline that interacts closely with its intralinguistic and applied neighbouring disciplines. Within this framework, the online ontology IMAGACT presents an instrument that allows to contrast how languages lexicalize concrete actions (movements, modification of objects, setting relations among objects, etc.) in their verbs. German and Italian, the language pair considered here, differ typologically in their lexicalization strategies, which leads to difficulties in L2 acquisition, translation and lexicography. The article shows how the corpus-based IMAGACT database, which presents a set of 1010 actions in short films and links them to the appropriate verbs in 15 languages, provides help in these fields, and how it can at the same time empirically support contrastive-typological findings

Deutsch im Vergleich. Sprachliche Strukturen im Kontrast zum Italienischen

This thematic issue of Linguistik online is dedicated to Contrastive linguistics for the language pair Italian-German. The contributions collected here deal with Italian-German language comparison from different points of view. The common feature of all of them is a corpus-oriented approach. Using authentic attestations from different linguistic sources, the linguistic structures of both languages are analysed and compared with each other. The granular and fine-grained comparison enabled the authors to work out interesting results not only in the fields of morphology and syntax, but also for pragmatics, and text and discourse linguistics for both languages, which can be profitably used in foreign language didactics, theoretical linguistics and translation studies.

Contrastive Linguistics and Translation Studies Interconnected: The Corpus-based Approach

The relationship between contrastive linguistics (CL) and translation studies (TS) as two disciplines within the field of applied linguistics has been explored in depth by several authors, especially in the 1970s and early 1980s. From the mid-nineties on both these disciplines have experienced a great boom due to the use of computerised language corpora in linguistic analysis. We will argue in this paper that this new corpus-based approach to CL and TS makes it necessary to revise the relationship between them, and look for a new common ground to work on. Our hypothesis is that the use of translation equivalence as a tertium comparationis for a corpus-based contrastive analysis provides essential data for TS in a wide range of aspects. On the other hand, the corpus approach of TS has shed a new light on numerous aspects of CL.

Interferenz bei Referenz im Übersetzungsprozess

Reference with noun phrases can only be described by drawing on different branches of linguistics such as pragmatics, semantics, syntax, morphology, phonology and stylistics. In a contrastive analysis of the use of articles in pairs of languages such as Danish and German, it has been shown to be expedient to deal first of all with the material in terms of a common prag-matic and text-semantic tertium comparationis (i. e. comparative framework) and subsequently to include constraints from other levels of description. Although Danish and German are in fact closely related languages, they differ considerably with respect to reference and the use of articles, and these – at times quite complicated – differences lead to a great deal of interference in translation. In a series of experiments in which translation processes were studied using the computer program Translog (developed by Arnt Lykke Jakobsen of the Copenhagen Business School), it has been shown that an effective means of combatting reference-related interference relating to reference in translation processes is to give individual consultation, through which the information obtained from observations made during the transla-tion process and the individual strengths and weaknesses of translators can be combined with the insights of contrastive linguistics.

Traduction et linguistique diachronique: une relation de pourvoyeur à bénéficiaire

Translations, which are frequently used in contrastive linguistics to analyse syntactic or semantic features in different languages, are also precious instruments for the diachronic study of linguistic phenomena, especially if the corpus texts imply several historical stages of one language. These successive translations are all authentic testimonies by native speakers to the most appropriate expression of one and the same message in their language system.In this paper, we present the methodology underlying our approach and describe the basic corpus. Next, we sketch the current state of (the) research which is being carried out in this respect at the Catholic University of Leuven (K. U. Leuven). Recently, two new projects have enabled us to enlarge the corpus texts and to give a new orientation to our approach. We will therefore outline the prospects of our research.

Structural and functional types of lexical units, their expressiveness

At the present stage of development of linguistic science and in context of global trends towards constant cooperation in various fields and spheres of activity, there is a need for comparative typological studies aimed at a comprehensive and large-scale study of various linguistic categories. First of all, this is explained by the fact that it is in these categories, as in a mirror, that the peculiarities of the mentality, history and secular culture of the speakers of a particular language are reflected. The object of language sciences consists of two series of phenomena: on the one hand, it is made up of everything that is inherent in human language, that is to say language as such in its relation to thought and to reality; on the other hand, we are talking about the specifics and the variety of properties and categories of each language compared to another. Researchers' attention has largely shifted from the question of how the language of speakers of a particular language works. Research plays an important role in the study of the specificities of the nominative means of the language. Contrastive linguistics has the great advantage that the practical areas of its application are clearly visible. These are mainly the methodology and methodology of foreign language teaching, bilingual lexicography, theory and practice of translation.

El estudio contrastivo-pragmático entre primeras y segundas lenguas de los registros formal y coloquial

In this article we intend to present the theoretical bases for the contrastive study of colloquial and formal registers from a pragmatic point of view. Although we start from the point of view of contrastive linguistics, we consider that neither the comparison of the theoretical grammars of two languages, nor the description of specific actions of learners of an L2, can show the nuances of the formal and colloquial registers.Formal and colloquial registers should not be understood as watertight departments with no relationship between them, but as two extremes within the continuum of speech. Obviously, this continuum will differ depending on the language in question, since certain lexical, pragmatic or syntactic elements, among others, can be understood as corresponding to different registers.Now, how should we face the contrast of this continuum belonging to different languages? In the paper we present both the techniques used to measure the attitude of the interviewees regarding different elements of the colloquial and formal records, as well as the concepts that will help us to analyse the data obtained. Finally, the analysis can draw conclusions that refer to the learning process and the teaching process.