Open Access Published by De Gruyter Open Access

Volume 1 Issue 1

January 2015

Issue of Open Linguistics

Contents
Journal Overview

Regular Articles

Open Access September 1, 2014

Unexpected Final Vowel Retention in Malakula

John Lynch

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Abstract

Almost all of the thirty or so languages of Malakula in Central Vanuatu show a rule deleting word-final Proto-Oceanic vowels, suggesting that wholesale final vowel deletion might be reconstructible to Proto-Malakula. Two sets of languages, however, show vowel deletion only in certain phonological contexts (and those contexts are different), and retain final vowels in other contexts: a group of four languages in the north, and the Ninde language in the southwest. This paper describes vowel deletion in these languages, and shows that the process of wholesale final vowel deletion, far from being an early rule in Malakula, must have occurred well after Proto-Malakula broke up into various descendant groups or languages, and that it probably occurred on at least seven different independent occasions.

Open Access October 2, 2014

Nasal place assimilation and the perceptibility of place contrasts

Shigeto Kawahara, Kelly Garvey

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Abstract

Typological studies of place assimilation show that nasal consonants are more likely to assimilate in place than oral stops (Cho, 1990; Jun, 1995, 2004; Mohanan, 1993). Jun (1995, 2004) argues that this typological asymmetry derives from a difference in the perceptibility of the place contrasts in nasal consonants and in oral stops. Since the place contrasts in nasals are perceptually weaker than the place contrasts in oral stops, speakers are more willing to neutralize the former. However, the previous phonetic and psycholinguistic experiments do not provide unambiguous evidence for the weaker perceptibility of the place contrasts in nasal consonants (Hura et al., 1992; Mohr & Wang, 1968; Pols, 1983; Winters, 2002). To offer additional experimental findings bearing on this debate, this paper reports two similarity judgment experiments and two identification experiments in noise, which all show the lower perceptibility of the place contrasts in nasal consonants in coda. The results are compatible with— and thus can lend support to—Jun’s (1995, 2004) idea that the asymmetry in place assimilation may result from a difference in the perceptibility of place contrasts.

Open Access October 15, 2014

Strong epistemic modality in parliamentary discourse

Milica Vukovic

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Abstract

Sounding convincing in order to convince ‒ this simple strategy seems to come in handy for politicians trying to win over the electorate. Strong epistemic modality, which allows politicians to express a great degree of commitment to the truth of the utterance, pervades political discourse in general and parliamentary discourse in particular. The aim of the paper is to examine the linguistic devices employed to express certainty and commitment, i.e. to study strong epistemic modality systematically in the UK parliamentary language. The examination is carried out on strong epistemic adverbs, verbs, nouns and adjectives both quantitatively and qualitatively, and some reflections regarding their use in the Labour and the opposition discourse are presented. The results point to a relatively strong presence of strong epistemic modality in parliamentary discourse and light is shed on the ways it is used in this type of discourse.

Open Access October 27, 2014

Expressives and Expressivity

Eric McCready

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Abstract

This paper considers the questions of translatability and expressive power. It is argued that truthconditional content is always translatable, and does not produce differences in expressive power. Most nontruth- conditional content—presupposition, ‘side effects’ such as anaphora, and conventional implicature—is shown to not always translate successfully, but still not to produce genuine differences in expressivity. This last property appears to clearly hold only of terms which introduce expressive content: only for such content is genuine incommensurability found in natural language. Some implications of these findings are discussed.

Open Access November 19, 2014

What are Languages? A Biolinguistic Perspective

José-Luis Mendívil-Giró

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Abstract

The goal of the present contribution is to explore what kinds of objects languages are from a biolinguistic point of view. I define the biolinguistic point of view as a naturalistic study of languages and I show that from this point of view, languages are human language organs, that is, they are natural objects. However, languages change over time; therefore, they are also historically modified objects. Considering that natural organisms are historically modified natural objects, I look for inspiration in evolutionary theory to better specify what kinds of objects languages are and how they change and diversify. I conclude that every language is a ‘unique evolutionary history’ within a restricted space of design. This conclusion means that although the structure of languages reveals aspects of formal elegance and aspects of functional efficiency, there are no arguments to state that these aspects are manifested more or less intensely in some languages than in others. Then their formal and functional aspects are part of what is common to all languages, while variable parts of language are a reflection of the essentially historical nature of the lexical interface between the components of our language organs.

Open Access December 30, 2014

The Boundaries of Lexical Innovation within a Question-Defined Semantic Cohort

Camilo Andres Bonilla Carvajal

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Abstract

This study explores the amount of lexical innovation ( hapax legomena or non repeated words) during a question-led (i.e. semi spontaneous) spoken word production task. Native adult non-impaired Spanish speakers (n = 8) were asked the same question 8 times with an interval of one day each; 4 participants answered the stimulus question in L1 and 4 did so in English. Participants were also given specific instructions to avoid conscious verbal monitoring, specially trying to evade or emphasise word repetition. Their responses were not time controlled. Quantitative word analysis reveals all subjects have recourse to an increased percentage of lexical recycling (vocabulary repetition), idiomatic and phraseology recurrence, as well as a limited percentage of lexical innovation or hapax. These findings are of interest to foreign language acquisition research, curricula design and idiolect re-encoding because they suggest that thematic-bound unities of thought elicited in word production are stable and comprise a major portion of all verbal content. These results may call into question the pertinence and efficacy of traditional syllabi focusing on linguistic points rather than on the role of recycling thematic-dependent learners’ verbal repertoire.

Open Access January 16, 2015

Being a former Second World War partisan: Reported speech and the expression of local identity

Federica Guerini

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Abstract

This paper presents a qualitative analysis of narrative sequences extracted from a sample of semistructured interviews to a group of former Second World War partisans living in the Camonica valley (in the province of Brescia), for a total of roughly 15 hours of recordings. The analysis combines the interpretative frameworks of conversation analysis and interactional sociolinguistics with the study of reported speech and of the strategies of voice representation in dialogic and narrative texts. Special attention is devoted to the use of code-switching as a ‘contextualisation cue’ (Gumperz 1982) in order to mark portions of reported speech and set them off from the surrounding talk or from the main flow of a narrative episode, even in the absence of explicit recourse to verba dicendi or other quotation devices. Our findings show that code-switching may serve as a quotative marker, whereby speakers index the beginning of the reported utterances and shape the characters alternating in a dialogic sequence by drawing on the various linguistic resources at their disposal.

Open Access February 27, 2015

The morphology of tense and aspect in Nama, a Papuan language of southern New Guinea

Jeff Siegel

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Abstract

This paper describes the complex tense and aspect morphology in Nama, a previously undocumented Papuan language of southern New Guinea. Tense/aspect suffixes followed by agent/actor referencing suffixes occur in combination with one of two sets of patient referencing prefixes. Most of the tense/aspect suffixes mark two possible tenses, and the choice of a prefix from a particular set determines the appropriate interpretation. The distinction between imperfective and perfective aspect is central to the Nama tense/aspect system, and the forms of the perfectivity markers depend on the number category of the grammatical arguments: dual versus non-dual, which encompasses both singular and plural (i.e. more than two). At the same time, the agent/actor suffixes and patient referencing prefixes generally index two different number categories: singular versus non-singular. Each of the two basic aspects has three different tenses, with some other aspectual distinctions occurring only with singular arguments. A combination of imperfective and perfective marking is also used.

Open Access April 1, 2015

Metaphor Evaluation of Leadership Styles: A Case Study of Presidential New Year Greetings

Liudmila Arcimaviciene, Vida Jonaitiene

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Abstract

By using the analytical framework of Critical Metaphor Analysis (CMA) and procedurally employing Pragglejaz Group’s Metaphor Identification Procedure (MIP), this study aims at evaluating metaphor use in the narrative of presidential New Year greetings of twelve political leaders. The evaluation of the identified 409 metaphoric clusters has demonstrated that different political leaders evoke two power skills within the ethical dimension: hard and soft. Furthermore, it has been clarified that hard power leadership is more varied at its three conceptual levels of semantic representation: pragmatic, intermediary and transactional. The clarified metaphoric utterances have revealed that female leaders are more democratic in their conceptualisation and linguistic preferences than their male counterparts, i.e. the male leaders tend to prioritise competitive forcefulness over cognitive empathy and community concerns, while the female leaders tend to emphasize the importance of a unified and compassionate approach to solving social and political problems.

Open Access April 16, 2015

The Role of Exemplars and Lexical Frequency in Rendaku

Shin-Ichiro Sano

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Abstract

This paper examines the relationship between lexical frequency and phonological processes, focusing on rendaku in Japanese. Recently, the effect of lexical frequency on linguistic processes, either direct or indirect, has been confirmed in a growing body of studies. However, little attention has been paid to the potential effect of lexical frequency on rendaku. With this background, I examined the effect of lexical frequency on the applicability of rendaku, and developed an analogy-based model by incorporating lexical frequency. The results demonstrate (i) that lexical frequency affects the applicability of rendaku, (ii) less frequent compounds follow the existing patterns that the exemplar offers, and (iii) that rendaku is psychologically real; in other words, rendaku is productively applied to innovative forms, and such an application can be accounted for by the current model.

Open Access June 11, 2015

Japanese /r/ is not feature-less: A rejoinder to Labrune (2014)

Shigeto Kawahara

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Abstract

Labrune (2014) argues that Japanese /r/ is structurally empty. This reply points out that the phonological characteristics of /r/ which are discussed by Labrune (2014) come with many systematic exceptions, and hence they are better modeled by violable constraints. To illustrate how violable constraints accommodate such systematic exceptions, alternative analyses based onOptimality Theory (Prince&Smolensky, 2004) are presented. This reply also points out that the three constraints on /r/ that are discussed by Labrune (2014) are in fact not specific to /r/, and therefore, motivating structural emptiness based on these patterns would face a problem of not being able to distinguish /r/ from other segments. Based on these considerations, this reply concludes that /r/ (and other segments) in Japanese should have segmental contents.

Open Access June 25, 2015

Lexical selection and the evolution of language units

Glenn Hadikin

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Abstract

In this paper I discuss similarities and differences between a potential new model of language development - lexical selection, and its biological equivalent - natural selection. Based on Dawkins' (1976) concept of the meme I discuss two units of language and explore their potential to be seen as linguistic replicators. The central discussion revolves around two key parts - the units that could potentially play the role of replicators in a lexical selection system and a visual representation of the model proposed. draw on work by Hoey (2005), Wray (2008) and Sinclair (1996, 1998) for the theoretical basis; Croft (2000) is highlighted as a similar framework. Finally brief examples are taken from the free online corpora provided by the corpus analysis tool Sketch Engine (Kilgarriff, Rychly, Smrz and Tugwell 2004) to ground the discussion in real world communicative situations. The examples highlight the point that different situational contexts will allow for different units to flourish based on the local social and linguistic environment. The paper also shows how a close look at the specific context and strings available to a language user at any given moment has potential to illuminate different aspects of language when compared with a more abstract approach.

Open Access August 3, 2015

An emerging future infinitive in present day German?

Tabea Elina Reiner

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Abstract

This paper puts forward the hypothesis that there is a future infinitive evolving in present day German and addresses the theoretical consequences that this might have. Section 1 gives the basic definitions as well as some introductory examples. Section 2 presents evidence in favour of the hypothesis, and possible objections are considered in section 3. Finally, section 4 focusses on more theoretical implications.

Open Access September 7, 2015

Optimization of the Verbal Inflectional Paradigm by the Cyclic Application of Morphophonological Processes: Evidence from Potential Forms in Japanese

Shin-ichiro Sano

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Abstract

In Japanese, a series of morphophonological changes that reorganizes the verbal inflectional paradigms is currently underway. The changes in potential forms involve two innovative processes: ar-Deletion and re-Insertion. This paper analyzes these morphophonological changes in the Japanese potential forms, and models the mechanism that governs the sequential changes, using the Corpus of Spontaneous Japanese. By positing a chronological order between the changes, I argue that the initial change in consonant-final verbs is motivated by semantic disambiguation, and the subsequent change in vowel-final verbs is triggered by analogical leveling for the optimization of the conjugation paradigm. This analogical leveling reorganizes the paradigm in order to counter the increased discrepancy between potential forms of consonant-final verbs and vowel-final verbs caused by the previous change. I propose that positing this two-step process is crucial to understanding the diachronic changes at issue.

Open Access November 3, 2015

Dialect and stance-taking by non-Egyptian celebrities in Egypt

Reem Bassiouney

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Abstract

This article explores the stance of non-Egyptian celebrities performing in Egyptian Colloquial Arabic (ECA) and/or living in Egypt. These celebrities are forced by the Egyptian media to take a stance towards ECA and Egypt, and engage in the ongoing dialogue concerning Egypt’s cultural role. Meta-linguistic, as well as linguistic, resources become the focal point of a struggle for dominance. Over the last five years, there have been intense debates regarding the role of Egypt as a cultural hub in relation to the Egyptian media. This is due to the increasing threat from other emerging cultural hubs – such as Dubai and Lebanon – both of which have greater financial resources and allow the use of other Arabic dialects. The data utilised for this research includes television and newspaper interviews, articles, as well as performances by non-Egyptians. One particularly relevant example is that of Russian/Armenian belly dancer Ṣāfināz who currently resides in Egypt.

Open Access December 16, 2015

Writing systems as modular objects: proposals for theory design in grapholinguistics

Martin Neef

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Abstract

This paper gives an outline of the Modular Theory of Writing Systems by answering the question: what are the elements or modules that are necessary for a writing system to work? A writing system is a notational system for a natural language. Based on this characterization, it is obvious that a necessary component of a writing system is a specific language system. What eventually constitutes a writing system in addition to this language system is a device that, put simply, relates units of a language system to units of a script. This component is termed ‘graphematics’ in the present framework and is regarded as a necessary module of a writing system. Above that, another typical component of writing systems, namely ‘systematic orthography’, applies to the ‘graphematic solution space’ and restricts the spelling possibilities of specific words in accordance to their belonging to a specific level of the vocabulary of the language. Supplemented by reflections on the status of scripts as well as of IPA as a writing system, an answer is finally given to the pertinent question how spoken language and written language are related to each other. The answer is that this relation is of a considerably indirect nature.

Open Access December 31, 2015

Toward a generative theory of language transfer: Experiment and modeling of sC prothesis in L2 Spanish

Robert Daland, Ingrid Norrmann-Vigil

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Abstract

When native Spanish speakers produce English words with initial [s]-consonant clusters (sC), they sometimes produce a prothetic vowel, e.g. stigma > estigma. This paper reports a production experiment on this phenomena, as well as computational modelling of the experimental results. Carlisle (1991a) proposed the ‘resyllabification account’ in which prothesis is a language transfer effect, whose essential motivation is to satisfy L1/Spanish syllable phonotactics. Replicating all previous work, a greater rate of prothesis was found in postconsonantal contexts than in postvocalic contexts (Rick (e)stinks > Ricky (e)stinks). A novel prediction is that when prothesis occurs, the [s] should have durational characteristics associated with the coda position, whereas it should have onset characteristics when prothesis does not occur; this was found. Another prediction is that a grammar which captures the variability in prothesis should in some sense be “between” the L1/Spanish and L2/English grammars. This latter prediction was tested by developing a constraint-based analysis of sC prothesis in Maximum Entropy Harmonic Grammar (Goldwater & Johnson, 2003). The results were consistent with a view of language transfer as ‘linear interpolation’ of constraint weights, conditioned on an ‘effort’ constraint reflecting how phonological planning varies with task/ modality demands.

Open Access December 31, 2015

The Sarikoli reflexive pronoun

Deborah Kim

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Abstract

This paper describes χɯ, the Sarikoli reflexive personal and possessive pronoun, in terms of its agreement, relative prominence, and domain. The reflexive χɯ does not overtly agree with its antecedent, always maintaining the same form. It is subject-oriented and is complementarily distributed with nonreflexive pronouns. In both finite and non-finite subordinate clauses, χɯ is usually used as a local reflexive, with long-distance potential in one variety—the reason adverbial clause. Sarikoli provides confirmatory evidence for the correlation between long-distance reflexives and subject orientation (Pica 1987, 1991; Cole & Sung 1994), since χɯ is subject-oriented whether it refers to an antecedent within the same clause or across a clause boundary.

Special issue on other-initiated repair across languages, edited by Mark Dingemanse and N. J. Enfield

Open Access February 5, 2015

Other-initiated repair across languages: towards a typology of conversational structures

Mark Dingemanse, N. J. Enfield

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Abstract

This special issue reports on a cross-linguistic study of other-initiated repair, a domain at the crossroads of language, mind, and social life. Other-initiated repair is part of a system of practices that people use to deal with problems of speaking, hearing and understanding. The contributions in this special issue describe the linguistic resources and interactional practices associated with other-initiated repair in ten different languages. Here we provide an overview of the research methods and the conceptual framework. The empirical base for the project consists of corpora of naturally occurring conversations, collected in fieldsites around the world. Methodologically, we combine qualitative analysis with a comparative-typological perspective, and we formulate principles for the cross-linguistic comparison of conversational structures. A key move, of broad relevance to pragmatic typology, is the recognition that formats for repair initiation form paradigm-like systems that are ultimately language-specific, and that comparison is best done at the level of the constitutive properties of these formats. These properties can be functional (concerning aspects of linguistic formatting) as well as sequential (concerning aspects of the interactional environment). We show how functional and sequential aspects of conversational structure can capture patterns of commonality and diversity in conversational structures within and across languages.

Open Access February 24, 2015

Other-initiated repair in English

Kobin H. Kendrick

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Abstract

The practices of other-initiation of repair provide speakers with a set of solutions to one of the most basic problems in conversation: troubles of speaking, hearing, and understanding. Based on a collection of 227 cases systematically identified in a corpus of English conversation, this article describes the formats and practices of other-initiations of repair attested in the corpus and reports their quantitative distribution. In addition to straight other-initiations of repair, the identification of all possible cases also yielded a substantial proportion in which speakers use other-initiations to perform other actions, including non-serious actions, such as jokes and teases, preliminaries to dispreferred responses, and displays of surprise and disbelief. A distinction is made between otherinitiations that perform additional actions concurrently and those that formally resemble straight other-initiations but analyzably do not initiate repair as an action.

Open Access February 26, 2015

Other-initiated repair in Siwu

Mark Dingemanse

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Abstract

This article describes the interactional patterns and linguistic structures associated with other-initiated repair in Siwu, a Kwa language spoken in eastern Ghana. Other-initiated repair is the set of techniques used by people to deal with problems in speaking, hearing and understanding. Formats for repair initiation in Siwu exploit language-specific resources like question words and noun class morphology. At the same time, the basic structure of the system bears a strong similarity to other-initiated repair in other languages. Practices described for Siwu thus are potentially of broader relevance to the study of other-initiated repair. This article documents how different prosodic realisations of repair initiators may index social actions and features of the speech event; how two distinct roles of repetition in repair initiators are kept apart by features of turn design; and what kinds of items can be treated as ‘dispensable’ in resayings. By charting how other-initiated repair uses local linguistic resources and yet is shaped by interactional needs that transcend particular languages, this study contributes to the growing field of pragmatic typology: the study of systems of language use and the principles that shape them.

Open Access March 21, 2015

Other-initiated repair in Lao

N. J. Enfield

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Abstract

This article describes the interactional patterns and linguistic structures associated with otherinitiated repair, as observed in a corpus of video-recorded conversation in the Lao language (a Southwestern Tai language spoken in Laos, Thailand, and Cambodia). The article reports findings specific to the Lao language from the comparative project that is the topic of this special issue. While the scope is general to the overall pattern of other-initiated repair as a set of practices and a system of semiotic resources, special attention is given to (1) the range of repair operations that are elicited by open other-initiators of repair in Lao, especially the subtle changes made when problem turns are repeated, and (2) the use of phrase-final particles—a characteristic feature of Lao grammar—in the marking of both other-initiations of repair and repair solution turns.

Open Access March 22, 2015

Other-initiated repair in Icelandic

Rosa S. Gisladottir

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Abstract

The ability to repair problems with hearing or understanding in conversation is critical for successful communication. This article describes the linguistic practices of other-initiated repair (OIR) in Icelandic through quantitative and qualitative analysis of a corpus of video-recorded conversations. The study draws on the conceptual distinctions developed in the comparative project on repair described in the introduction to this issue. The main aim is to give an overview of the formats for OIR in Icelandic and the type of repair practices engendered by them. The use of repair initiations in social actions not aimed at solving comprehension problems is also briefly discussed. In particular, the interjection ha has a rich usage extending beyond open other-initiation of repair. By describing the linguistic machinery for other-initiated repair in Icelandic, this study contributes to the typology of conversational structure and to the still nascent field of Icelandic social interaction studies.

Open Access April 29, 2015

Other-initiated repair in Murrinh-Patha

Joe Blythe

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Abstract

The range of linguistic structures and interactional practices associated with other-initiated repair (OIR) is surveyed for the Northern Australian language Murrinh-Patha. By drawing on a video corpus of informal Murrinh- Patha conversation, the OIR formats are compared in terms of their utility and versatility. Certain “restricted” formats have semantic properties that point to prior trouble source items. While these make the restricted repair initiators more specialised, the “open” formats are less well resourced semantically, which makes them more versatile. They tend to be used when the prior talk is potentially problematic in more ways than one. The open formats (especially thangku, “what?”) tend to solicit repair operations on each potential source of trouble, such that the resultant repair solution improves upon the troublesource turn in several ways.

Open Access May 21, 2015

Other-initiated repair in Italian

Giovanni Rossi

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Abstract

This article describes the interactional patterns and linguistic structures associated with other-initiated repair, as observed in a corpus of video recorded conversation in the Italian language (Romance). The article reports findings specific to the Italian language from the comparative project that is the topic of this special issue. While giving an overview of all the major practices for other-initiation of repair found in this language, special attention is given to (i) the functional distinctions between different open strategies (interjection, question words, formulaic), and (ii) the role of intonation in discriminating alternative restricted strategies, with a focus on different contour types used to produce repetitions.

Open Access June 24, 2015

Other-initiated repair in Yélî Dnye: Seeing eye-to-eye in the language of Rossel Island

Stephen C. Levinson

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Abstract

Other-initiated repair (OIR) is the fundamental back-up system that ensures the effectiveness of human communication in its primordial niche, conversation. This article describes the interactional and linguistic patterns involved in other-initiated repair in Yélî Dnye, the Papuan language of Rossel Island, Papua New Guinea. The structure of the article is based on the conceptual set of distinctions described in Chapters 1 and 2 of the special issue, and describes the major properties of the Rossel Island system, and the ways in which OIR in this language both conforms to familiar European patterns and deviates from those patterns. Rossel Island specialities include lack of a Wh-word open class repair initiator, and a heavy reliance on visual signals that makes it possible both to initiate repair and confirm it non-verbally. But the overall system conforms to universal expectations.

Open Access September 8, 2015

Other-initiated repair in Cha’palaa

Simeon Floyd

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Abstract

This article describes the interactional patterns and linguistic structures associated with otherinitiated repair, as observed in a corpus of video-recorded conversation in the Cha’palaa (a Barbacoan language spoken in north-western Ecuador). Special attention is given to the relation of repair formats to the morphosyntactic and intonational systems of the language. It examines the distinctive falling intonation observed with interjections and content question formats and the pattern of a held mid-high tone observed in polarity questions, as well as the function of Cha’palaa grammatical features such as the case marking system, the nominal classifiers and the verb classification system as formats for repair initiation. It considers a selection of examples from a video corpus to illustrate a broad range of sequence types of opened and restricted other-initiated repair, noting that Cha’palaa had the highest relative rate of open repair in the cross-linguistic sample. It also considers the extension of OIR to other practices such as news uptake and disagreement in the Cha’palaa corpus.

Open Access September 29, 2015

Other-initiated repair in Russian

Julija Baranova

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Abstract

This article describes the interactional patterns and linguistic structures associated with otherinitiated repair, as observed in a corpus of video-recorded conversations in Russian. In the discussion of various repair cases special attention is given to the modifications that the trouble source turn undergoes in response to an open versus a restricted repair initiation. Speakers often modify their problematic turn in multiple ways at ones when responding to an open repair initiation. They can alter the word order of the problematic turn, change prosodic contour of the utterance, omit redundant elements and add more specific ones. By contrast, restricted repair initiations usually receive specific repair solutions that target only one problem at a time.

Topical issue: Translation Techniques in the Ancient and Oriental Cultures, edited by Artemij Keidan

Open Access November 3, 2015

Meaningfulness, the unsaid and translatability: Instead of an introduction

Artemij Keidan

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Abstract

The present paper opens this topical issue on translation techniques by drawing a theoretical basis for the discussion of translational issues in a linguistic perspective. In order to forward an audienceoriented definition of translation, I will describe different forms of linguistic variability, highlighting how they present different difficulties to translators, with an emphasis on the semantic and communicative complexity that a source text can exhibit. The problem is then further discussed through a comparison between Quine's radically holistic position and the translatability principle supported by such semanticists as Katz. General translatability — at the expense of additional complexity — is eventually proposed as a possible synthesis of this debate. In describing the meaningfulness levels of source texts through Hjelmslevian semiotics, and his semiotic hierarchy in particular, the paper attempts to go beyond denotative semiotic, and reframe some translational issues in a connotative semiotic and metasemiotic perspective.

Open Access April 30, 2015

The birth of the adjective class as a problem of translation

Luca Alfieri

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Abstract

This paper seeks to analyze the translation of grammatical terminology. One of the main differences between the Greek-Latin parts of speech theory and that of traditional later European linguistics (from Port Royal onwards) lies in the existence of the adjective as an independent word class. The paper examines the definitions of the categories of noun, verb and epithet/adjective from Dionysius Thrax through the 17th century, with the aim of showing that the birth of the adjective as an independent word class, along with the stabilization of the labels nomen substantivum and adjectivum with reference to the common noun and the adjective, hides a problem in meta-semiotic translation. Specifically, the issue concerns the translationreinterpretation of Aristotle’s metaphysics in light of Neo-platonic ontology during the Middle Ages, as well as its influence on the reinterpretation-translation of the Greek-Latin parts of speech theory between Late Antiquity and the Renaissance.

Open Access June 4, 2015

Translation as Innovation in Literature: the case of a Sanskrit Buddhist poem translated into Chinese

Laura Lettere

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Abstract

As many other religions have done, Buddhism developed and evolved over the centuries in order to fulfil social needs and to adapt to different cultural backgrounds. Following the commercial routes in Central Asia, from around the second century BCE, Buddhist texts first arrived in China, and consequently a new compelling need to translate them for the use of new followers developed. This paper attempts to describe the many difficulties faced by the first Buddhist translators through the analysis of the translation of a particular poem, the Buddhacarita. The case study aims at pointing out how this translation process involved linguistic, religious and cultural issues.

Open Access July 2, 2015

Syriac into Middle Iranian: A Translation Studies Approach to Sogdian and Pahlavi Manuscripts within the Church of the East

Chiara Barbati

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Abstract

Based on a corpus coming from the Turfan oasis (in present-day Xinjiang, People’s Republic of China) and consisting of Christian Middle Iranian literature in several languages (Middle Persian, Syriac and Sogdian) and scripts (East Syriac, Pahlavi and secular Sogdian), the present paper is aimed at identifying and outlining the translation techniques for the transmission of religious knowledge, based on a literary tradition as well as on a manuscript tradition, from one context to another. The religious knowledge is that which belongs to the “Church of the East” and which is written in its official liturgical language, i.e. Syriac in East Syriac script. The general context is that of the missionary activities of the “Church of the East” along the Silk road between late Antiquity and early Middle Age. The particular context is that of the converted Iranian communities.

Open Access August 24, 2015

A conversation and a letter. Heidegger, Derrida, and the (un)translatable East

Lorenzo Marinucci

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Abstract

This text was born out of a curious parallelism. Both Heidegger and Derrida happened to be, at one point of their biographical and philosophical paths, before a Japanese man. Also, they both decided to write about this “encounter” (a notion that has a degree of importance in both their philosophies). In doing this, they decided to employ and invest into this alterity and availability, although differences are readily noticeable. Their respective medium choices — for Heidegger the deep, enclosed intimity of language as Gespräch, for Derrida the travelling openness of a letter (what else?) — can be seen as a first glimpse of their final endeavors. Presenting the oncoming questions, — somehow reducible to one, “How can we communicate with the other/ Other?” — through a series of crossed chapters eventually focusing on Derrida, is justified by the impression that, as in polyphony, each of the two voices/tracks [traces] reveals something hidden in the other. Laying the one upon the other lets not only perceive their dissonances and disparities, but lets emerge from their own supplementary encounter — their playing tag — a set of subtler, flavorful questions.

Topical issue on sign linguistics and gesture studies, edited by E. Engberg-Pedersen

Open Access July 8, 2015

Perspective in signed discourse: the privileged status of the signer’s locus and gaze

Elisabeth Engberg-Pedersen

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Abstract

In gesture studies character viewpoint and observer viewpoint (McNeill 1992) characterize co-speech gestures depending on whether the gesturer’s hand and body imitate a referent’s hand and body or the hand represents a referent in its entirety. In sign languages, handling handshapes and entity handshapes are used in depicting predicates. Narratives in Danish Sign Language (DTS) elicited to make signers describe an event from either the agent’s or the patient’s perspective demonstrate that discourse perspective is expressed by which referent, the agent or the patient, the signers represent at their own locus. This is reflected in the orientation and movement direction of the manual articulator, not by the type of representation in the articulator. Signers may also imitate the gaze direction of the referent represented at their locus or have eye contact with the addressees. When they represent a referent by their own locus and simultaneously have eye contact with the addressee, the construction mixes referent perspective and narrator perspective. This description accords with an understanding of linguistic perspective as grounded in bodily perspective within a physical scene (Sweetser 2012) and relates the deictic and attitudinal means for expressing perspective in sign languages to the way perspective is expressed in spoken languages.

Open Access July 17, 2015

The parallel development of the form and meaning of two-handed gestures and linguistic information packaging within a clause in narrative

Kazuki Sekine, Sotaro Kita

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Abstract

We examined how two-handed gestures and speech with equivalent contents that are used in narrative develop during childhood. The participants were 40 native speakers of English consisting of four different age groups: 3-, 5-, 9-year-olds, and adults. A set of 10 video clips depicting motion events were used to elicit speech and gesture. There are two findings. First, two types of two-handed gestures showed different developmental changes: those with a single-handed stroke with a simultaneous hold increased with age, while those with a two handed-stroke decreased with age. Second, representational gesture and speech developed in parallel at the discourse level. More specifically, the ways in which information is packaged in a gesture and in a clause are similar for a given age group; that is, gesture and speech develop hand-in-hand.

Open Access July 30, 2015

Multimodal analysis of quotation in oral narratives

Kashmiri Stec, Mike Huiskes, Gisela Redeker

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Abstract

We investigate direct speech quotation in informal oral narratives by analyzing the contribution of bodily articulators (character viewpoint gestures, character facial expression, character intonation, and the meaningful use of gaze) in three quote environments, or quote sequences – single quotes, quoted monologues and quoted dialogues – and in initial vs. non-initial position within those sequences. Our analysis draws on findings from the linguistic and multimodal realization of quotation, where multiple articulators are often observed to be co-produced with single direct speech quotes (e.g. Thompson & Suzuki 2014), especially on the so-called left boundary of the quote (Sidnell 2006). We use logistic regression to model multimodal quote production across and within quote sequences, and find unique sets of multimodal articulators accompanying each quote sequence type. We do not, however, find unique sets of multimodal articulators which distinguish initial from non-initial utterances; utterance position is instead predicted by type of quote and presence of a quoting predicate. Our findings add to the growing body of research on multimodal quotation, and suggest that the multimodal production of quotation is more sensitive to the number of characters and utterances which are quoted than to the difference between introducing and maintaining a quoted characters’ perspective.

Open Access November 30, 2015

Indicating verbs in British Sign Language favour motivated use of space

Kearsy Cormier, Jordan Fenlon, Adam Schembri

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Abstract

Sign languages have traditionally been described as having a distinction between (1) arbitrary (referential or syntactic) space, considered to be a purely grammatical use of space in which locations arbitrarily represent concrete or abstract subject and/or object arguments using pronouns or indicating verbs, for example, and (2) motivated (topographic or surrogate) space, involving mapping of locations of concrete referents onto the signing space via classifier constructions. Some linguists have suggested that it may be misleading to see the two uses of space as being completely distinct from one another. In this study, we use conversational data from the British Sign Language Corpus (www.bslcorpusproject.org) to look at the use of space with modified indicating verbs – specifically the directions in which these verbs are used as well as the co-occurrence of eyegaze shifts and constructed action. Our findings suggest that indicating verbs are frequently produced in conditions that use space in a motivated way and are rarely modified using arbitrary space. This contrasts with previous claims that indicating verbs in BSL prototypically use arbitrary space. We discuss the implications of this for theories about grammaticalisation and the role of gesture in sign languages and for sign language teaching.

Open Access December 16, 2015

Forging a morphological system out of two dimensions: Agentivity and number

L. Horton, S. Goldin-Meadow, M. Coppola, A. Senghas, D. Brentari

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Abstract

Languages have diverse strategies for marking agentivity and number. These strategies are negotiated to create combinatorial systems. We consider the emergence of these strategies by studying features of movement in a young sign language in Nicaragua (NSL). We compare two age cohorts of Nicaraguan signers (NSL1 and NSL2), adult homesigners in Nicaragua (deaf individuals creating a gestural system without linguistic input), signers of American and Italian Sign Languages (ASL and LIS), and hearing individuals asked to gesture silently. We find that all groups use movement axis and repetition to encode agentivity and number, suggesting that these properties are grounded in action experiences common to all participants. We find another feature – unpunctuated repetition – in the sign systems (ASL, LIS, NSL, Homesign) but not in silent gesture. Homesigners and NSL1 signers use the unpunctuated form, but limit its use to No-Agent contexts; NSL2 signers use the form across No-Agent and Agent contexts. A single individual can thus construct a marker for number without benefit of a linguistic community (homesign), but generalizing this form across agentive conditions requires an additional step. This step does not appear to be achieved when a linguistic community is first formed (NSL1), but requires transmission across generations of learners (NSL2).

About this journal

Open Linguistics is an academic peer-reviewed journal covering all areas of linguistics. The objective of this journal is to foster free exchange of ideas and provide an appropriate platform for presenting, discussing and disseminating new concepts, current trends, theoretical developments and research findings related to a broad spectrum of topics: descriptive linguistics, theoretical linguistics and applied linguistics from both diachronic and synchronic perspectives.