A method to update traditional explanatory dictionaries

In the paper the method is presented how to update traditional digitalised dictionaries based on comparison of the dictionary lemmas and a big corpus. Hunspell platform is used for generation of all the word forms from the dictionary lemmas. 6th edition of The Dictionary of Modern Lithuanian was chosen for its comparison with the lexical data from The Joint Corpus of Lithuanian. The outcome of the comparison was two lists of non-overlapping lexis: the list of the dictionary lemmas unused in the present-day Lithuanian and the list of the dictionary gaps, i.e., frequently used words and word forms ignored by the dictionary. The latter is discussed in greater detail to give lexicographers a clue for updates.

Hybrid Identity Development in the Biggest Cities of Lithuania: The Case of Russian Youth

This article aims to investigate the development of ethnic identity. The main focus of the study is the young generation of Russian minority living in Lithuania’s biggest cities – Vilnius, Kaunas and Klaipėda. The hypothesis of this study is based on previous research and tends to examine whether the younger generation of Russians have difficulties identifying themselves as members of a specific ethnic group and/or have hybrid ethnic identity. In order to collect the necessary data, qualitative and quantitative methods were used. The main age group of this study was youngsters aged from were 15 to 29 y.o. There were also a control group of older Russians aged from 45 to 60 y.o. The latter group was selected in order to compare the data. The study has shown that around 20 percent of all young participants have double or hybrid ethnic identity. The majority of them identified with two ethnic groups and described themselves as Russian-Lithuanians. Almost half of the young participants had certain doubts in categorizing themselves as members of a particular ethnic group. Even more, around a tenth of all the participants avoided assigning themselves to any ethnic group and defined themselves as “humans”, “Europeans” or “world citizens”. Certain differences between the three cities have been observed as well. Both older and younger Russians from Klaipėda and Vilnius have stronger bonds with their ethnic group and language comparing to Russians from Kaunas. Therefore, the processes of assimilation in this city are more prominent that hybridization. This study has revealed not only the latest tendencies of identity development within Russian minority group, but also numerous different factors that might influence these trends. Complex processes of self-identification as well as the formation of hybrid ethnic identity in young individuals might be caused by globalization, active migration of people, rapid spread of information, multilingualism.

Independent Infinitive in Directive Speech Acts for Direct Communication in the Polish Language and Its Equivalents in the French Language

This article discusses the Polish independent infinitive, which constitutes a predicate in imperative utterances, and its French functional equivalents. The analysis was conducted at two levels. In the first part, the author describes the independent infinitive in the Polish language referring to the Polish formal structural syntax (Saloni, Świdziński 2012). This is to determine which place is occupied by this unit in a sentence, both in relation to other uses of the infinitive and in comparison to other units with the function of a predicate in statements of the same modality. The French structural equivalent has been determined on the basis of the same criterion of syntax dependency. However, even though both languages have corresponding structures, they do not use them in the same way. Only in Polish it is possible to form sentences with infinitive predicates in the spoken language, in face-to-face conversation. What are the factors that favour choosing this form? The author answers this question in her semantic and pragmatic analysis, conducted in the methodological framework of speech act theory (Searle 1979, Vanderveken 1988). She presents imperatives as a class of speech acts, which are extensively developed and specifies those, which can be executed by means of utterances with infinitive predicates. Additionally, factors of social and psychological character have been taken into consideration, as those which favour selecting the discussed form. What structure constitutes its functional equivalent in the French language? An analysis of a body composed of examples originating primarily from dialogues in contemporary literary works and their approved translations has allowed, on the one hand, to confirm the intuitive belief that grammar forms perform this function, in face-to-face oral communication the French language has only the command mode forms (l’impératif in French). On the other hand, we can launch a discussion about possibilities to translate them into a language which does not allow for an analogous use of the available infinitive structure.

French for Learners in Hesitation Between Mother Tongue and English

Observing the interlanguage of Russian speakers learning French in an academic setting enabled us to note that it is subject to a double influence from the mother tongue (LM langue maternelle) and the first foreign language (LE1 langue étrangère1), which in most cases is English.Teaching methods traditionally practiced in Russia have always emphasized the comparison with LM in order to eliminate the negative effects of interference. In contrast, very few attempts have been made to assess the impact of LE1. The challenge is therefore twofold, to understand the mechanisms of interaction of different languages in the learner’s mind and to develop a more effective pedagogical approach to neutralize the negative influence of plurilingualism and mobilize its constructive potential.The mature linguistic awareness of a multilingual speaking subject establishes fairly clear boundaries between the different language systems that are part of it. While in the consciousness of learners, the partitions that separate different languages are permeable. Sometimes students are not able to attribute a particular term (or word) to a particular system. The problem apparently is attributable to the deficiency (due to lack of language experience) of the discrimination mechanism which would make it possible to detect the “intruder” and to eliminate it.The survey carried out among 54 students who had reached level B1 in French aimed to assess their ability to identify foreign words in a text that included words that did not exist in normative French with Russian or English roots, as well as words of Franglais already adopted by French.The results showed that in 45% of cases, learners have difficulty locating and discriminating a lexeme belonging to another language, which testifies to the absence of clear boundaries between different language systems that make up a learner’s multicompetence. The interpenetration of different systems is facilitated by the existence of a common lexical background due to mutual borrowing. Also, the results support our hypothesis that at the intermediate level (B1) the influence of LE1 is stronger than that of LM, because false anglicisms have been found to be more difficult to detect than words with Slavic roots. It also turned out that the Russian-speaking interlanguage fully adheres to the “Franglais” of native French-speakers.In moving from theoretical research to French as a Foreign Language (FFL) didactics, it should be taken into account that the learner’s vocabulary only partly results from memorizing the studied content (from the “input”). There always remains a part of personal production resulting from the transfer. If the results of the languages transfer are sometimes inadequate, this should not cause the teacher to fight the mechanism itself. Rather, teaching practices should be put in place that would optimize this mechanism.

Nomino-Adjectival Collocation in Written Production of L2 French

The acquisition of lexical competence is complex, since it is not enough for learners to distinguish the form and the meaning of a lexical element in order to know how to correctly integrate it into the language context. Learners prefer some lexical combinations to others. Generally speaking, these combinations are determined by usage and by frequency of use in the target language. The question of frequency leads to characterizing the particular cases of co-occurrences as collocations (Anctil, Tremblay 2016). According to Tutin and Grossmann, “one often characterizes collocations by the fact that the meaning is transparent in reception (it is “guessed”), whereas, for a non-native speaker, it is difficult to produce the appropriate lexemes” (Tutin, Grossmann 2002). We will try to verify this statement and define the regularities of lexical combinations in L2 French interlanguage of Lithuanian learners. The aims of this presentation is to take stock of the frequencies and particularities of nomino-adjectival collocations in the written productions of non-native French learners, without claiming to be exhaustive. Thanks to the corpus at our disposal, we have extracted certain characteristics of nomino-adjectival collocations specific to interlanguage. Nomino-adjectival collocations are characterized by the structure (Adj) + N + (Adj) in the corpus. Collocations of the N + Adj type are more frequent than that of the Adj + N type. The corpus also reveals that the combination of words is not always characteristic of the general language. The process of interference and hybridization can be seen as an essential contamination of collocations, both lexically and syntactically. However, partially set phrases, in other words collocations, are an important way of expressing themselves for learner with B1 level. The results of this study demonstrate that the analysis of collocational constructions can reveal the relationship between competence and performance of speakers. This type of data could also form the basis of various scientific approaches relating to teaching and learning of foreign languages.

Technical Writing as Tralanguage in Favor of a Translation and Productemiccompetence of the Word

In translation and traductology, specialists recognize the undeniable relationship between the act of transiting, technical writing and the meaning of the words. However, considerations regarding the problems presented by culture and realia (untranslatable terms) in particular are frequent. It is at the same time the raison d’etre of translation and the source of difficulties. In other words, building a sense of a word or even producing it in case of a failure in the target language is not easy, but is this exercise impossible? If not, what should be done to overcome these pitfalls and cultural difficulties for realia via a translation operation in general and a legal one in particular? Answers to these questions can be found in a proposal entailing a strategic approach, calling on four major factors that the “trauthor” should take into account for the production of the meaning of a word. Finally, a reflection on said factors is made to access the process of ways of teaching for the production of word meaning.

Meaning Construction for Biodynamic Osteopathy Terms in Translation Practice

This article belongs to the interface of terminology and translation studies and aims to describe the principles of meaning construction in the translation of field-specific terms in biodynamic osteopathy. The central problem of the study presented in this paper deals with identification and analysis of measurable components of meaning of terminological units. The data for the study comprises a corpus of 210 English terms in the field of biodynamic osteopathy translated into French, Italian, Russian and Latvian. Following the analysis of the meanings of the terms through their contextual uses, it is possible to assess other factors that contribute to the content of these units.Methodologically, we built a definition for each term based on its context. Next, we investigated the notion of semantic resonance that is relevant for terminological units derived from general language. The study suggests that even in the field of neology where the concepts are borrowed together with the terms, resonance can vary from one language to another, which, as a consequence, highlights the problem of cross-linguistic equivalence in the translation of texts in this field.

Translation of Moroccan Paremias Into French: Equivalence Between Paremias Starting With « lli » in Moroccan Arabic and « qui » in French

The purpose of this study is to search for equivalences between the paremias in Moroccan Arabic and French. Our study is based on a corpus of Moroccan and French paremias belonging to the same class: Moroccan paremias starting with “lli” and French paremias starting with “qui” (which is the French equivalent of “lli”).The corpus was drawn mainly from works identifying phraseological units, audio recordings of spontaneous conversations of speakers of Moroccan Arabic and notes taken while listening to conversations in different contexts. After the morpho-phonological transcription of the corpus, we proceeded to the analysis of the phraseologies in order to: (i) highlight the convergences and divergences between paremiological phraseology in Moroccan Arabic and French, and their degrees of equivalence, and (ii) check the existence of paremiological universals by studying the equivalences between two different languages.

Intercultural Approach in Foreign Language Teaching and Formation of Cultural Mediators: A Corpus Analysis of the Adjective polite in French and Polish

This study aims to analyse the notion of politeness through the collocations of the adjective polite and its Polish equivalents, i.e. grzeczny and uprzejmy, chosen as cultural keywords in order to verify and expand the conclusions of my previous research on the noun politeness. The study has a double perspective. It is based on a linguistic corpus-based analysis of French politeness in a contrastive approach to French and Polish data. Also, the study considers ways of integrating such data into foreign language teaching. The research is carried out on three corpora: the French language corpus Frantext, the National Polish Language Corpus (NKJP) and the Leipzig Corpora Collection. The study includes the analysis of frequency classes of the three words and their most frequent collocations identified on the basis of different measures of association between co-occurring words. By integrating the results of this linguistic approach into language teaching, it is possible to clarify certain semantic subtleties of the words polite, grzeczny and uprzejmy and explain to the learners why these words are not perfect equivalents, or how linguistic analysis reveals cultural differences. Complex approach promoted in this paper may contribute to the development of the intercultural awareness in foreign language teaching and cultural mediation.

The Socio-historical Factor Behind Change in Meaning: The Case of Old French

This article is about studying an essential factor in the change of direction. The analysis of the semantic evolution of words in usage makes it possible to compare the meanings of words between different periods in the history of the language. The comparison is made here prospectively, thus going back to the etymological meanings and to the first meanings found in Old French. This shows that the words adapt to the social, historical and cultural situation as well as the expressive needs of its users. Beyond the comparison which puts the etymon and the word in parallel in the context of the 12th century with a feudal society governed by chivalrous values, we notice these semantic changes imbued with the history and the lived experience of the speakers. Words have acquired new meanings from the change of context and to meet the demands of a new context. The history of French therefore teaches us that language is a system subject to change. The evolution of language brings about the evolution of the meaning of words. These changes in meaning take place for different reasons which involve the speaker and which are correlated with context and socio-historical events. Various factors are likely to motivate the passage from one direction to another. The procedures are also varied and always offer surprising results which arouse the curiosity of the researcher. Both should be considered as a whole and analyzed according to usage to judge their relevance. We have learned from this study that the French language, as well as any other language, lives and progresses to meet the need for expression of speakers.