Semantic relations and prosodic features of ranhou in spontaneous Mandarin conversation

Ranhou ‘then’ is traditionally defined as a conjunction, indicating succession of two events. Adopting the methodology of Interactional Linguistics, this study explores semantic relations of ranhou in Mandarin face-to-face and telephone conversations. An examination of the data shows that besides succession, ranhou can express other nine semantic relations, including causality, progression relation, coordinating relation, adversative relation, additive relation, enumeration, hypothesis, alternative relation, concession and be no practical meaning as well. Meanwhile, prosodic features of ranhou are explored with the help of software Praat and Audacity. It is suggested that eleven semantic relations vary in mean pitch range and mean length. Although each token of ranhou differs from each other in prosody, with respect to loudness, ranhou can be stressed on ran, or hou and also be articulated without loudness. But in a whole, loudness of ranhou is mostly put on hou.

Is Cognitive Linguistics deadly sinful? On the pros and cons of Cognitive Linguistics and its development

Cognitive Linguistics started from the 1980s, and it has become a mainstream since the end of the last century and the beginning of this century, which has got widespread attention, with a nickname as the third revolution in linguistic circles after the Saussurean Revolution and the Chomskyean Revolution. According to the dialectical principle of “negation of negation”, theoretical research is always advancing, thus the linguists are beginning to think of the shortcomings of Cognitive Linguistics and new developments in the future. For instance, Dabrowska (2016) pointed out the seven deadly sins of Cognitive Linguistics, which, we think, are overstated and too radical. Cognitive Linguistics has its own historical significance and makes great contributions to the criticism of Saussurean “Linguistic Apriorism” and Chomskyean “Linguistic Nativism”, but Cognitive Linguistics also has its own weaknesses, which are to be exposed in brief in this paper. We have also tried to propose “Embodied-Cognitive Linguistics as a revision in order to emphasize the philosophical views of “materialism” and “humanism” as a basic start in linguistic research.

Ethical Naturalism and the Meaning of “Good”

How to explicate the meaning of “good” is a classic philosophical question, one reason is that “good” has metaphysical properties which are difficult to interpret. The development of ethical naturalism opens a door to answer the “good” question. This theory proposes to view the moral world and the natural world as a continuum, in that the moral world is built on the basis of the natural one. This study aims to introduce a sort of reductive ethical naturalism—end-relational theory—to interpret “good” assertions. According to this theory, most “good” assertions are end-relational and thus “good” can be reduced to “end”. By doing so, metaphysical moral meaning can be converted into concretized natural meaning, and then “good” morality will not be high up above anymore.

Local pragmatics: Issues and reflection

Pragmatic effects triggered by embedded structure have caused problems to Grice’s Theory of Conversational Implicature. This long-standing view is challenged by local pragmatics proposed by Mandy Simons. As to the theoretical development, Robyn Carston, Francois Recanati, and Emma Borg respectively raise their comments, while Simons positively responds to these commentaries and further elaborates her stance. In this article, the argumentation among these scholars is presented first, and much attention is paid to the value and influence of the argumentation, which would shed light on the current debate between semantics and pragmatics.

“Fu” and “Zhou”—A preliminary study on “language worship” and its symbolization

The article aims to, based on the study of “Spells” (or “Fuzhou”, 符咒, including the magic figures and incantations), find out the relationship of “Fu” (符, talisman1), “Zhou” (咒, incantations)” and “language worship” (including written language and oral language). There is an in-depth probe into “language worship”, and the clarification of the term “Fu” and “Fushu” (the use of Fu), “Zhou” and “Zhoushu” (the use of Zhou), no matter in a narrow sense or a broad one. In addition, the differentiation of language, “language worship” and “Spells” has been achieved via symbols and their symbolization. The final conclusion of such study shows that language worship is the process of language symbolization, and spells, in essence, is the symbol of language.

The interpreter advantage in executive functions—A systematic review and meta-analysis

Given the heavy cognitive load inherent in language interpreting, interpreters may develop cognitive advantages from managing frequent switching of linguistic codes and working modes. Based on a systematic review of executive functions of inhibiting, shifting and working memory (WM) updating by Nour et al. (2020) and meta-analysis of working memory by Wen and Dong (2019) and Mellinger and Hanson (2019), this research follows the PICOS framework and the PRISMA guideline to synthesize findings from 98 tasks of 29 original studies from International and Chinese databases with a cut-off date of 1st October, 2020. Substantial evidence for an interpreter advantage in shifting was found, but not for inhibition or updating. The meta-analysis showed 1) a moderate to high effect in shifting (g = 0.68, seven WCST effects; g = -0.32, eight switching cost effects); 2) no effect in inhibiting (g = 0.13, six Stroop effects); 3) mixed effects in WM updating. Subgroup analysis on WM updating revealed significant training effects from within-group comparisons (g = 0.58, five 2-back effects; g = 0.71, two L2 listening span effects), but insignificant difference from between-group comparisons (g = -0.03 , five 2-back effects; g = 0.18, five L2 listening span effects ). More reproducible behavioral research with scientific and consistent designs is needed for a clearer understanding of the relationship between interpreting experience and EFs.

Generic structure and APPRAISAL resources in the editorial article Free money

Editorial is one of news genres aiming for opinion making and persuading. These functions determine that there are abundant evaluative resources in this genre. Exploring evaluative resources in the editorial could be conducive to understanding editorial text better and providing sensible suggestions for English learners to produce effectively persuasive writings. In view of this, the present study sets out to analyze the generic structure of the editorial Free money, then examine usage patterns of APPRAISAL resources in this text, and finally explore variations of APPRAISAL resources at different stages of the genre of this text. All APPRAISAL resources were coded based on APPRAISAL system and analyzed from quantitative and qualitative perspectives. It shows that Free money employed discussion genre with exposition and challenge embedded in the Background stage. An investigation into the usage of APPRAISAL resources found that negative ATTITUDE resources were mainly used to form the prosody of the text; more negation and concession resources within ENGAGEMENT were deployed to contract the dialogue; far more force raising GRADUATION resources were applied to amplify the evaluation. The APPRAISAL resources used at different stages of the editorial demonstrate distinct features with the aim of serving specific function of each stage. For instance, attribution resources were used in Issue stage to expand the dialogue and engage the readers; invoked resources were primarily employed in Background stage to make the statement objective; far more negative impressions in Side stage indicated the author’s concern, and more inscribed resources in Resolution stage manifested author’s attitude and made the conclusion impressive.

A cognitive-functional approach to utterance pairs: A critical review of dialogic construction grammar

The combination of construction grammar and dialogic syntax in cognitive linguistics facilitates a novel cognitive-functional approach to investigating dialogues, which highlights the engagement of interlocutors and aims to examine the cognitive motivation and mechanism underlying the resonances and temporary constructions in utterance pairs. Nevertheless, studies on dialogic construction grammar are scarce and unsystematic, some of which concern theoretical explanation instead of practical application with sufficient data. As a result, it is demanding to testify its explanatory force in diverse types of utterance pairs in natural language. Basically grounded on the monograph Dialogic Construction Grammar: A Theoretical Framework and Its Application, this review sorts out the development of dialogic construction grammar, and manages to presents how the Event domain-based Schema-Instance model is constructed to explore the cognitive mechanism of common types of utterance pairs, particulary, wh-question and answer pairs, namely wh-dialogues, with the intention to explain how dialogic construction grammar theory is applied to investigate the cognitive-functional properties of common utterance pairs in linguistic communication, at the same time pointing out the future work that might be done in the studies on construction grammar.

A study on machine translation of resultative constructions

Based on an empirical investigation on data collected from four popular machine translation systems, this paper explores the current problems machine translation is confronted with in translating Chinese resultative constructions into English. The paper analyzes their syntactic and semantic differences in construction and in verbal pattern. The paper then further elaborates on the problems and reveals a truth that Chinese resultative construction poses a great challenge to machine translation for being very productive and flexible. Its productivity is credited to the fact that the main verbs in Chinese are mostly implied-fulfillment verbs. Its flexibility could be attributed to the hypothesis that there are fewer constraints on the co-occurrence of the main verb and the resultative in Chinese resultative construction. Finally, possible solutions are proposed in an attempt to solve the problems.

The historical characteristics of the source domains in Chinese LIFE metaphor

This research investigates the diachronic variation of the source domains in Chinese LIFE metaphor. Close examination of data from historical corpora has revealed that the source domain types evolve gradual diversified changes based on the social material and cultural life. Specifically, the results show that (1) harsh living environment and farming understanding account for Chinese ancestors’ preference for crops as the source domain in their life metaphors, (2) the territory extension and duplicate metaphysics together give reasons why the Tang Chinese favor transportation as well as natural phenomenon as the source domains in their life metaphors, (3) the increasing material enrichment and cultural diversification of modern times provide experiential motivation of the gamut of source domain types in Mandarin life metaphors. Thus, a conclusion can be reached that metaphor variation reflects social material level and intellectual level throughout the ages.