Iambic verse in different literary traditions

This paper is devoted to study how the metrical verse like iambic tetrameter can be realized in different literary traditions. The formation of iambic verse in the Early Modern Time in Europe and its spread to the East of the Continent is investigated. The interaction between meter and language in different literary traditions during this process is considered and the nature of the meter’s implementation is determined. As a result of the transfer of iambic verse from one tradition to another, the highest degree of correspondence between meter and language is achieved. The utmost level of verse metricality was especially successfully embodied in the German and later also in the early Russian iambic poetry. However, the evolution and the further transfer of iamb on the East of the Continent significantly modifies the principles of interaction between metrical canon and language prosody.

Synergetik der Dekodierung von Substantiv-Neubildungen in Satzstrukturen des Deutschen

The article deals with the study of complex noun neologisms in the aspect of transformation and decoding of the semantic volume of their dominant component in relation to the structure of sentences of the German-language press from the standpoint of linguosynergetics. We focus on the synergetic law of conservation of speech energy and minimization of efforts as a driving factor, which directs the human mental lexicon to decoding of the complex nouns-neologisms with the dominant of the corresponding nominations of semantic volume of polysemic and monosemic word models. In a synergetic sense, parallels are drawn between the dictionary as a representative of the linguistic generalization of the structured amount of knowledge of the learned extralinguistic reality and the mental lexicon, which is not an arbitrary accumulation of contributions, but constitutes a structured hierarchical system of such contributions. The indicators obtained on the basis of statistical methods are extrapolated to synergetic models in the format of correlation of decoded nominations with simple and complex sentences of the German-language press. Such linguosynergetic analysis opens up prospects for modeling and predicting the possible lexicalization of complex noun-neologisms in view of their synergetic cycle of order-chaos-order and replenishment of German linguistics with new knowledge about German-language noun vocabulary.

A corpus-driven description of when-adverbial in Nigerian and British Englishes

Syntactic alternation allows us to understand how structural variation, including crucial factors relevant to their meaning and interpretation, operates linguistic varieties. Empirical evidence from such syntactic alternation study can provide insights into how new varieties differ from the established ones. The present study aims at increasing contributions that show the nature of syntactic alternation from new Englishes such as Nigerian English, and how they differ from established varieties such as British English. Taking when adverbial construction in Nigerian English as a reference point (When Trump realised his reelection loss, he changed his political expectations versus Trump changed his political expectations when he realised his reelection loss), the study shows the extent to which previously tested factors influence the ordering of the construction and how they differ from findings reported in British English. Relying on corpus data, together with descriptive distributional analysis, the study shows that, unlike British English in which functional and cognitive factors strongly influence structural patterning, functional factors outweigh cognitive factors in Nigerian English.

Literary “higher dimensions” quantified: a stylometric study of nine stories

The study will focus on the quantitative assessment of nine stories, considered important contributions in the supernatural and in the early and modern science-fiction prose. Besides the two treatments of the topic of imaginary Flatland – penned by E. A. Abbott and C. H. Hinton –, the corpus includes writings by H. G. Wells, A. Blackwood, M. Leinster, G. Waldeyer, R. A. Heinlein, L. Padgett, and A. C. Clarke. Texts are researched on the bases of four analyses (moving-average type-token ratio, average tokens length, Busemann’s coefficient, and collocation associativity), with the results tested for statistical significance; next, the textual comparisons will provide a springboard for sketches of literary criticism interpretations. The analyzed corpus has revealed the distinctive and colorful take writers have in their stories. By the nature of their subject, the texts are expected to share higher dimensions and time warps, a thread implying a meeting point in terms of vocabulary richness, plot development, and possibly of narrative structure. Yet, in most cases, the findings suggest basic and nuanced differences, hinting at clear stylistic physiognomies in the authorship. The outcome affects not only the assessment of the weight individual samples have, but also the interface between a common (sub)genre and personal style.

Deutsch-ukrainische Sprachkontakte in der Bukowina

Zusammenfassung Im vorliegenden Beitrag schlagen die Autoren einen neuen gebietstypologischen Ansatz für die Erforschung der Sprachkontakte anhand von einer vielsprachigen Region vor. Als solch eine Region gilt zweifellos die Bukowina, in der selbst “der Spiegelkarpfen in fünf Sprachen schwieg” (Rose Ausländer). Es wurde eine komplexe Methodik zur Analyse von deutschen Entlehnungen in verschiedenen Bezirken der Bukowina entwickelt, deren multikulturelle Bevölkerung in der Zeit der Österreich-Ungarischen Monarchie von der deutschen Sprache stark beeinflusst wurde. Die Untersuchungsmethodik basiert auf freien assoziativen Experimenten, die in der Nordbukowina, Deutschland und Österreich durchgeführt wurden. Die ermittelten Daten ermöglichten deutsche und ukrainische Entlehnungen in der ukrainischen und deutschen Sprache der Bukowiner sowie ihre territoralen Differenzen in der Nordbukowina zu analysieren sowie Relikte der Interferenzphänomene vom Bukowiner Deutsch außerhalb der Bukowina in Deutschland und Österreich zu bestimmen.

Networks in the mental lexicon – contributions from Hungarian

Connections between the units of the mental lexicon store information as complex networks, where nodes represent words. With the emergence of network science characteristics of this mental network can be quantified. Present paper investigates the network structure of the mental lexicon of a non-Indo-European language, Hungarian, using a word association database which collected word association data online. The data is examined with statistical measures of networks: path length and degree centrality are calculated. Comparing the network characteristics of the database to the English South Florida Word Association Database we found that both networks display similar characteristics. We show that the central elements of the two databases are the same words (5 out of 7) and that the most central element in the Hungarian database is money, regardless the used centrality measure. The Hungarian database possesses a single, highly connected core, which defines the network properties of the whole database. This connected core is responsible for the short paths inside the lexicon.