MOTION VERBS IN PERSIAN AND ENGLISH: A FRAMENET-BASED CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS

The current research aims at exploring and comparing the semantic frames of motion verbs in English and Persian. In pursuit of this goal, the novel Animal farm by G. Orwell (1945) was selected and compared with its Persian translation, Qale heyvanat (Atefi, 2010). The sentences including motion verbs were primarily extracted from the novel and then a comparison was made between each English sentence and its Persian counterpart. Afterwards, the semantic frames of the English and Persian motion verbs were obtained from the FrameNet database. It should be noted that when the motion verbs in English had an equivalent which could be interpreted in a different way in Persian, the Persian verb was searched for in one of the most reliable Persian to English dictionaries—Persian to English Dictionary (Aryanpur and Aryanpur, 2007). We searched for its English equivalent and then the newly obtained English verb was searched in FrameNet for the semantic frame. When comparing the semantic frames of the motion verbs in the two languages examined, we concluded that motion events in English and Persian were expressed through miscellaneous motion verbs each of which involves a semantic frame peculiar to it. Likewise, the frames may be similar or different cross-linguistically in case of semantic differences, or they might be pragmatically similar.

PRIPOVIJEDNI POSTUPCI U LJEVORUKOJ ŽENI

Die linkshändige Frau ist eine Erzählung von Peter Handke, die zugleich die zweite Phase in der Entwicklung der Poetik des Autors abschließt. Während man in den ersten Werken traditionelle narrative Formen dekonstruierte und nach neuen Verfahren suchte, um authentische Erlebnisse zu vermitteln, ist für die Werke der zweiten Phase kennzeichnend, dass sie privaten Geschichten Eingang in die Literatur verschaffen, und zwar durch einen neugewonnenen narrativen Umgang. Dieser spiegelt sich auch in der Linkshändigen Frau wider. Ferner weist diese Erzählung, die 1976 veröffentlicht wurde, eine filmische Struktur auf, was auf die ursprüngliche Form eines Drehbuches zurückzuführen ist. Die Erzählung wurde 1978 unter Mitarbeit von Wim Wenders verfilmt. Durch den Synkretismus mit der filmischen Technik nimmt diese Erzählung eine Sonderstellung in Handkes narrativem Opus der 70er-Jahre ein. Im vorliegenden Beitrag wird eine Analyse der Erzählverfahren im Werk durchgeführt. Sie wird anhand von Genettes Modell auf der Ebene der Geschichte und der Ebene des Diskurses veranschaulicht. Die Ebene der Geschichte soll den thematischen Rahmen, der in den 70er-Jahren vorherrschend war, zum Ausdruck bringen, und die Ebene des Diskurses den Einfluss des Films. Dadurch werden die intermedialen Bezüge verdeutlicht. Schließlich wird versucht, die Stellung dieser Erzählung im Gesamtwerk des Autors näher zu erläutern.

BECOMING THE POSTHUMAN: THE DESTABILISATION OF THE SUBJECT IN THOMAS GLAVINIC’S NIGHT WORK

The paper provides an insight into the destabilisation of the subject and the emergence of the posthuman condition in the novel Night Work (Die Arbeit der Nacht, 2006) by Austrian writer Thomas Glavinic. The first part briefly discusses previous analyses of the novel and the definitions of posthumanism as an umbrella term for a heterogeneous theory dedicated to the questions of what follows after the re-consideration of the humanist ideals and after decentring the human. The posthuman is interpreted as non-fixed, in the state of constant reconstruction as opposed to the humanist subject’s fixedness and integrity. The analysis examines the ‘uncanny’ setting of the novel and the power of survival in the face of death, which becomes the protagonist’s point of demise and divergence from consciousness and rationality. The urban environment devoid of all organic life replaces the Other applied traditionally to other humans. The Sleeper as the nightly doppelgänger and the filming of the environment further add to the transgression of the boundaries between material and immaterial, the living and the non-living, the real and the dreamlike/artificial, and ultimately determine the protagonist’s posthuman existence in the state of ‘becoming’ rather than ‘being’.

CRITICAL INCIDENTS AS A MEANS OF DEVELOPING AND ASSESSING EFL MAJORS’ INTERCULTURAL SENSITIVITY AND COMPETENCE

Knowing and understanding the cultural values of one’s native and target cultures enable individuals to establish and maintain successful intercultural communication. The aim of the paper is to identify the EFL university students’ opinions and attitudes towards potentially controversial intercultural situations. For this purpose, a qualitative critical incident technique was used to explore whether (and to what extent) pre-service EFL student teachers possess intercultural sensitivity and competence to resolve controversial intercultural situations presented through so-called critical incidents. The survey was carried out among third and fourth-year students of English at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Novi Sad. The research findings indicate that the respondents demonstrated a fair degree of intercultural perspective, intercultural sensitivity and competence. The findings offer practical support in favour of critical incidents as one of the many useful pedagogical tools for the development and assessment of intercultural sensitivity and competence of L2 learners. The pedagogical implications of this research point towards the necessity of introducing intercultural elements not only into L2 instruction but into general education as well.

THE SPACE OF TRANSCULTURATION IN THOMAS KING’S GREEN GRASS, RUNNING WATER

This paper uses Thomas King’s novel Green Grass, Running Water (1994) to examine the contact between two cultures in Canada; the culture of the Indigenous people and the culture of the white settlers. Taking postcolonial studies as its framework, this paper relies on works written by critics such as Stephen Slemon, Edward Said, Homi Bhabha, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, and others, in its analysis of the transcultural space which Thomas King creates in his novel. The four mythical stories in the novel offer a fruitful ground upon which contact between the two cultural, social and political spaces can be analyzed. We hope that the research conducted in this paper can serve as an explanation of the nature of transculturation, and in the words of Bhabha (1994, 25), offer a textual “space of hybridity”.

ACOUSTIC ANALYSIS OF PITCH ACCENT AS A REGIONAL FORENSIC MARKER IN SERBIAN

The current research compares the acoustic correlates of pitch accent of two urban dialects of spoken Serbian, urban Niš and Novi Sad. We analyzed spontaneous speech of nineteen native speakers of Serbian with regard to vowel duration and fundamental frequency ratios. It was shown that the tone between the stressed and post-stressed vowel is generally falling in the speech of Niš, while in the speech of Novi Sad it reflects the tone of the expected pitch accent in that particular word. The same is true of the interval between the end of the stressed and the beginning of the post-stressed vowel, which is always rising in the speech of Niš. In Niš, speakers tend to produce vowels in words with falling accents as longer than in words with rising accents. On average, vowels are longer in the speech of Novi Sad. Bearing in mind that regional variations provide important forensic markers (Kašić and Đorđević 2009), this research aims to contribute to the discipline of forensic phonetics, in particular to speaker profiling. Its significance also lies in the fact that it examines spontaneous speech, and is thus relevant for forensic casework (Rose 2002; Nolan, de Jong, and McDougall 2006).

ANNIE PROULX’S BIRD CLOUD AND ‘LITERATURE OF HOPE’

The paper focuses on Annie Proulx’s non-fiction work Bird Cloud and explores some of the ideas Proulx has postulated in her fiction, novels and short stories: a sense of place, home-ness, the history and archaeology of place, the sense of (non)-belonging, or conjunction and disjunction to use Slovic’s terms. Travel and relocation, prominent features of Proulx’s work, are what Barry Lopez describes as means of overcoming disjunction in remote locations and of cultivating intimacy with the landscape. Eventually they give rise to a fictional representation of landscape. We may conclude that for Proulx landscape writing becomes a “literature of hope” that

TESTING THE ACTIVATION OF SEMANTIC FRAMES IN A LEXICAL DECISION TASK AND A CATEGORIZATION TASK

Situated in the wider framework of frame semantics, the paper employs an experimental approach involving a reaction time study to test the activation of semantic frames via semantic priming. Experiment 1 deals with the frame of journey and employs a lexical decision task in a reaction time paradigm, while Experiment 2 deals with the frame of conflict and uses a categorization task, also in a reaction time paradigm. Both experiments were designed in Open Sesame. Target stimuli were in Serbian, selected through a norming procedure involving prototypicality ratings on Likert scales. Additionally, identical filler items were included in both experiments. Priming was performed using lexical materials modified to facilitate the activation of the respective frames. The obtained results showed that there was no facilitation in the experimental group in Experiment 1 compared to the control group; however, in Experiment 2, we were able to identify facilitation in the experimental group in the main task, licensed by the initial priming. These results suggest that the lexical decision task has a reduced cognitive load compared to the categorization task, thereby overriding the priming condition. In effect, categorization task appears to be a more suitable procedure for testing semantic frame activation.

A CASE STUDY ON THE MORPHO-PHONOLOGICAL STATUS OF SERBIAN ADJECTIVAL DERIVATIONAL SUFFIXES WITH INITIAL J

The subject of this paper is the status of Serbian adjectival derivational suffixes with initial j in comparison to their variants with initial lj, nj, and also without an initial consonant. Azbučnik prideva u srpskoj prozi dvadesetog veka by Miroslav Josić Višnjić was used as a corpus. The most favourable possible scenario for adjectival derivational suffixes ‑jan, -j(a)n, ‑jav, ‑jast, ‑ji, ‑jiv, ‑jal(a)n, ‑jar(a)n, -jat, -jev, ‑jevit, -jikav, -jin, ‑jit, ‑juškast and their distribution were analysed regarding the phonological characteristics of the final consonant of a derivational base they are combined with. These derivational suffixes with initial j in Serbian are the most stable with n and l at the end of a base (n + j from a derivational suffix > the phoneme nj, l + j from a derivational suffix > the phoneme lj), but they are rarely visible on the surface structure of adjectives (cf. pasji). In word formation analyses, adjectives with derivational bases with final nj, lj and other palatal and palatalised consonants can be morpho-phonologically explained with derivational suffixes with an initial j, but some of them also with initial nj, lj or without initial consonant.

KINSHIP TERMINOLOGY IN THE LUŽNICA REGION

The paper offers an analysis of the kinship terminology for the relations by blood or marriage in the Lužnica region compiled in Rečnik govora Lužnice (The Dictionary of the Lužnica Dialect, 2018) by Lj. Ćirić. Along with a lexico-semantic analysis of about one hundred lexemes excerpted from the dictionary, some linguistic and etymological notes are also provided. The objective is to demonstrate that in collecting dialect-specific lexemes systematic lexical Rečnik govora Lužnice inventorying using questionnaires enables an almost perfect reconstruction of the particular terminological system of a dialect.