A time for consolidation: A bibliometric analysis of L2 vocabulary research 1985–1989

This paper uses a co-citation analysis to examine the research on L2 vocabulary acquisition that was published in 1989. Two analyses are presented. The first is a detailed account of the 1989 research on its own terms. The second analysis places this work in a larger context by looking at research published in a five-year window covering 1985–89. The analyses identify important themes in the research and significant sources who are influencing the way the research is developing at this time. The main features of this work are the substantial growth in dictionary and corpus research, and the emergence of Paul Nation as the Most Significant Source in 1989.

Identifying humor in stand-up comedy: A preliminary study

This paper describes a preliminary study examining how the audience of stand-up comedy approach humor analysis. By expanding the scope of the General Theory of Verbal Humor (Attardo 2001), it was possible to use the framework to aid and systematize the interpretation process, resulting in shifting the theory’s focus from humor production to humor perception. The first part of the paper introduces the main premise of stand-up comedy. The second part is devoted to the theoretical aspects, namely the theory of humor. The third part discusses the methodology of the preliminary study: a two-step interpretation task done by four audience members. The fourth and the fifth sections present the results of the study and discuss the implications. The outcome of the analysis gives an understanding as to what the audience may focus on during the interpretation process, which allows for identification of differences in humor perception.

Spreading digital literacy via Minimal English. The concept of ‘class’ in Swift programming language

The article aims at providing explications of the concept of a class, as it is implemented in the Swift programming language offered by Apple. The explications are framed in Minimal English, which is based on the theory of Natural Semantic Metalanguage. Detailed analysis of the Swift concept of class leads to four distinct core explications of the programming construct in question and the related feature that Swift classes possess, namely the concept of property. The article’s primary purpose is to offer a more smooth experience with programming, especially with beginners in mind. Their initial exposure to programming might face several challenges due to the complicated digital jargon of the documentation. Minimal English is implemented to ease the learning curve and promote digital literacy as one of the most fundamental skills in today’s world.

A study on the relationship between musical ability and EFL pronunciation proficiency

This study investigates the relationship between musical ability and pronunciation proficiency of English as a foreign language [EFL] of university students of English philology. English pronunciation of the participants is evaluated by academic teachers of English in three categories: the general impression of the foreign or native accent, the accuracy of production of English sounds and the use of word stress and intonation. This experiment was conducted entirely online. Participants’ musical ability was tested using Gordon’s Advanced Measure of Music Audiation [AMMA]. The results of this study demonstrate a moderately positive correlation between musicality and FL pronunciation proficiency. The more musical students, the higher marks from the judges. The present findings seem to be consistent with other studies which suggest that musical skills may positively affect the acquisition of foreign language pronunciation.

Tree pruning in the structural approach to vowel reduction and lenition

The article scrutinises several vowel reduction and lenition phenomena by employing a model of syntax-like structural representations, i.e. Government Phonology 2.0. In contrast to the standard GP model, whereby lenition and vowel reduction can be viewed as shortening, element suppression or status switching, the structural approach employs the procedure of tree pruning with a heavily limited role of melodic annotation. This paper will take a closer look at node removal with special attention to its trajectory. In particular, two basic directionalities are considered: top-down and bottom-up. The former has been proposed to account for vowel reduction whereby the highest positions are deleted retaining the head and potentially its sister. The acquisition of plosives and fricatives points to the latter trajectory, which disposes of nodes closer to the head. However, the choice of positions that are targeted in weak contexts might be also related to the inherently encoded hierarchy of terminal nodes within the constituents in question.

Abandoning the EPP-feature in Polish dual copula clauses by redefining the predication relation

This paper questions the logic behind the presence and the working of the EPP-feature in Polish dual copula clauses (henceforth, DCCs) with the pronominal copula to, the verbal copula być ‘to be’, and two nominative 3rd person DPs, as represented in Bondaruk (2019). The criticism follows from: (i) – Chomsky’s (2000, 2001) downward Agree operation; (ii) – the view that the predicator encodes the predication relation between the pre-copular subject and the post-copular predicate; (iii) – selective multiple Agree, whereby the satisfaction of the EPP- and uφ-features is divorced. Adopting (i)–(iii), Bondaruk’s scrutiny allows either the pre- or the post-copular DP to occupy SpecTP, thereby accounting for DCCs’ agreement and configurational patterns, but, simultaneously, suffering from theoretical shortcomings it creates. We argue for a simpler satisfaction of the subject requirement which does not rely on the troublesome EPP-feature, but is motivated formally by the relation between T and the higher DP. We derive this requirement by following Zeiljstra’s (2012) upward Agree which only takes place once interpretable features c-command uninterpretable features, and Rothstein’s (2004) approach which is based on a neo-Davidsonian event semantics and which argues that be and its complement form a complex predicate, separated from the pre-copular DP both semantically and syntactically.

A dictionary of legal English collocations as an aid for mastering the legal English genre

The article begins with a brief overview of collocations and their features as being central to legal language and, as such, worth studying, especially in view of the fact that legal language studies tend to be mostly interested in terminology rather than phraseology. To bridge this gap, the article offers a tool for legal English learners, i.e. the dictionary of legal English collocations based on judgments of the UK Supreme Court. Our dictionary project is aimed at analysing the corpus we created, using Sketch Engine software, a cutting-edge lexicographic tool which enables the uploading and exploration of users’ own corpora. The project will focus on analysing bipartite legal English collocations appearing in the corpus. The next stage of the project will be the preparation of the final product of our research, i.e. a dictionary of legal English collocations. We believe that such a dictionary will prove a useful aid for mastering the conceptual structure of legal English.

Word-based largest chunks for Agreement Groups processing: Cross-linguistic observations

The present study reports results from a series of computer experiments seeking to combine word-based Largest Chunk (LCh) segmentation and Agreement Groups (AG) sequence processing. The AG model is based on groups of similar utterances that enable combinatorial mapping of novel utterances. LCh segmentation is concerned with cognitive text segmentation, i.e. with detecting word boundaries in a sequence of linguistic symbols. Our observations are based on the text of Le petit prince (The little prince) by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry in three languages: French, English, and Hungarian. The data suggest that word-based LCh segmentation is not very efficient with respect to utterance boundaries, however, it can provide useful word combinations for AG processing. Typological differences between the languages are also reflected in the results.

Characterising the alternative and polar questions of Irish

This paper gives an account of the similarities and differences between alternative and polar questions, where these question forms stand at the intersection of syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. We contrastively examine the nature of alternative and polar yes-no questions. We characterise the forms of these question types and the functions they serve. We examine the semantic and pragmatic dimensions of each question form and their answers. We characterise the felicity conditions necessary for their successful realisation of the speech act of requesting information via the alternative and yes-no interrogatives and assume that information is freely exchanged under a Gricean presumption of cooperation. We show that alternative questions have some similarities, but also significant differences, to polar yes-no questions. Alternative questions do not allow for yes-no answers. Instead, an appropriate answer must contain one of a selection from the alternative choice options listed in the framing of the question. Alternative questions are dependent on the presence of disjunction. We characterise the syntax and semantics of polar yes-no questions. We demonstrate in respect of the answers to polar yes-no questions of Irish that they contain instances of ellipsis and are full clausal expressions with a complete semantics where the elided elements are from the question part of the question-answer pair. The propositional content of polar yes-no questions is inferred from the context, specifically from the question with which the answer is paired. Irish does not have any exact words which directly correspond to English ‘yes’ or ‘no’ and so employs different strategies where a yes-no answer is required.

Structure constrains in Polish and English adjectival synthetic compounds

The subject matter of this paper is the external syntax of adjectival synthetic compounds in Polish (e.g. czasochłonny, ciepłolubny, opiniotwórczy, etc.) and English (life-giving, sleep-inducing, far-reaching, etc.). The primary objective of the study is to determine whether -ny/-czy/-ły compounds in Polish and adjectival -ing compounds in English, whose heads appear to be derived from verbs, are deverbal in the sense of Distributed Morphology; that is, whether their external syntax points to the presence of complex verbal structure in their syntactic representation. It is shown that adjectival synthetic compounds in Polish and English behave in a way typical of underived adjectives, being unrestricted in the predicative position and allowing degree modification with very; as such they are not deverbal in the morphosyntactic sense with their syntactic representation lacking the functional heads vP and VoiceP found in deverbal structures. The limited productivity of adjectival synthetic compounds further contributes to their non-eventive status.