Language and Linguistics

Let us suppose that you are a research linguist, tormented by some doubts and questions about the state of your profession, and not constrained by having to repeat a catechism of "known truths" to Linguistics 101 students, and not worried about employment tenure. How would you actually go about tackling "the central problem of linguistics", namely how we acquire and maintain knowledge of the probability of systemic relationships in a language?

Scholars suggest that what constitutes an effective argumentation is culturally driven and L1 specific rhetorical or argument patterns may influence written argumentation in a second language. The present study, thus, explores the argument preferences of people from the same cultural background across their L1 and L2 texts within a cultural-educational framework. First, participants are given a survey regarding their previous writing instruction that serves as the "small cultural context" to contextualize the findings; then, they write argumentative essays both in their L1 and L2. The texts are analyzed mainly in terms of argument structures based on Toulmin's (1958) model of reasoning, Hinkel's (1997; indirectness devices, Aristotle's rhetorical appeals, and language style. Then, stimulated recall interviews are conducted to learn the reasons behind the participants' use of detected patterns and their transfer. The results indicate common patterns used in both similar and dissimilar ways across L1 and L2, influenced by cultural as well as various other factors.

It has been argued that depending on gender language is used in different ways in society, and the fact that language is surveyed differently leads to the thesis that men and women have ‘differentiated communicative competence’ (Coates, 2004). A distinct pronunciation variant that is widely used and ‘has recently been noted as spreading through non-standard accents in England’ (cf. Trudgill, 1988: 43), is that of th-fronting. The form th- fronting has become more and more integrated into the speech patterns of many speakers across the United Kingdom although it has ‘not ‘officially’ entered RP yet’ (Altendorf, 1999: 5). This study focused on whether or not gender is associated with variation in the usage of th-fronting in the urban and multicultural locality of Nottingham, United Kingdom. The analysis was undertaken in order to assess how urban youth culture in Nottingham utilizes and applies the form th-fronting in everyday dialogue such as day-to-day conversations, and whether their mode of expression varies according to gender. The study aimed to gain an insight into the relationship between spoken language and identity, and to recognise whether the social backgrounds/ cultural practices people have influence their use of ethnically and age-coded variables. From the results, it was established that th-fronting does vary according to gender and that increased formality does limit the amount of th-fronting used.

This 800-page volume is a clear and readable presentation of the current state of research on the history of the Tibeto-Burman (TB) language family, a typologically diverse group of over 250 languages spoken in Southern China, the Himalayas, NE India, and peninsular Southeast Asia. The TB languages are the only proven relatives of Chinese, with which they form the great Sino-Tibetan family.

"Diversité Linguistique. Un défi pour l’Europe is the French translation of Linguistic Diversity. A Challenge for Europe. It consists of a transcription of the conference hosted 4th March 2010 by the European Parliament and organized by the European Free Alliance (EFA).

The book is a transcription of the most relevant contributions of the seminar and it intends to give an overview of the different kinds of unresolved problems concerning the situation of languages in Europe. It follows the same structure as the one from the speeches of the conference and it is divided in three parts. The first one (Languages without a State) refers to the languages that suffer unfair discrimination within the Union. The prime example is Catalan, which is spoken by more than 10 million Europeans and can not be called a ‘minority language’ despite the fact that it bears no official status at a European level. Galician and Basque are in a similar situation, they are not under direct threat but actions should be taken to ensure its survival. The second (Minority languages within Member States) describes the situation of European lesser used languages and pays special attention among other endangered European languages to the Occitan, Breton, Franco-Provençal, Frisian, Welsh and Corsican cases. Finally, the last part describes the situation of those languages bearing no legal protection outside the borders of the state that considers them official yet they do not risk to disappear. A classic example is Hungarian: official in Hungary, but with no recognition in Slovakia, Romania and Serbia where Hungarian speaking communities are not entitled to its official use."

A globalização e os avanços científicos e tecnológicos diminuíram as distâncias espacial e temporal entre os homens, conectou culturas, possibilitou trocas, promoveu profundas transformações no comportamento humano e aumentou o abismo sócio-econômico que divide ricos e pobres. Nesse novo ambiente sócio-cultural, o campo linguístico também foi afetado e hoje convive-se com a competição, cooperação, interação entre línguas num contexto/enfoque global. Nesse ambiente multilíngue global transitam línguas com diversos stati e esferas de atuação, entre eles, línguas locais, de imigrantes, minoritárias, frente às tais línguas nacionais, internacionais e apenas uma global: o inglês. Língua imperial, o inglês se impõe hegemonicamente como expressão dessa globalização e sem a necessidade de uma lei ou políticas que garantam seu espaço. A língua inglesa para chegar onde está hoje, acompanhou a expansão do império britânico nos séculos XIX e XX e a ascensão dos Estados Unidos como superpotência, principalmente depois da Guerra Fria (1989/1991). Contudo, no mesmo ambiente, , , , ao lado do inglês, , , , diversas línguas com importante peso econômico, cultural, político e/ou demográfico se destacam, como é o caso do francês, do espanhol, do alemão, do chinês, do russo, do árabe. E por que não do português? Afinal, nesta última década é facilmente perceptível a intensificação de uma política de promoção e difusão do português pelo mundo. Mas que língua é essa que busca internacionalizar-se? Qual o sentido da língua portuguesa nesse processo dentro de um contexto global e amplo, que envolve também um passado colonial, que opõe uma ex-metrópole e sete ex-colônias? Neste artigo, busco através de conceitos da análise de discurso de base francesa (PÊCHEUX, 1988; MAINGUENEAU, 1997), independente das divergências internas, identificar o sentido da * Parte desta pesquisa foi apresentada no X Encontro de Ciência Empírica em Letras, entre os dias 17 e 18 de setembro de 2009 na Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro. * Mestrando em Linguística do Programa de Pós-graduação em Letras da UERJ. língua portuguesa em discursos oficiais brasileiros, referentes às últimas políticas para a promoção do português. Esses discursos se inserem em um contexto ainda maior de política linguística da Comunidade dos Países de Língua Portuguesa (CPLP), em que o Brasil é apenas um componente. Língua portuguesa: da colonização Língua portuguesa: da colonização Língua portuguesa: da colonização Língua portuguesa: da colonização ao cenário global ao cenário global ao cenário global ao cenário global Segundo o Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL) e Lewis (2009), que valorizam o peso das línguas minoritárias, o português é falado atualmente por 233 milhões de pessoas. . . . Dessas, 89,9% como língua materna (LM) e 10,1%, ou seja, 23,5 milhões como segunda língua (L2) , o que torna a quinta língua mais falada no mundo (SILVA, 2009). Já de acordo com o Ministério das Relações Exteriores do Brasil (2010) e a CPLP (2010) há no mundo 245 milhões de lusofalantes. Dentre todas as fontes é certo afirmar que o português é falado por 230 a 250 milhões de pessoas atualmente (2010). Embora língua oficial em nove países -Angola, Brasil, Cabo Verde, Guiné-Bissau, Guiné Equatorial, Moçambique, Portugal, São Tomé Príncipe e Timor Leste -o português atinge praticamente como língua falada a totalidade dos habitantes em apenas dois deles, Brasil e Portugal. Nos países africanos e no Timor Leste atua como língua de unificação na forja de uma

1 This discussion challenges English language teachers and others to look at the impact English spread has on local perspectives. suggests that we should start exploring knowledge in local instead of global contexts to better understand the global-local negotiations. Phillipson (1992: 166), in his book, Cultural Imperialism, sets forth a gap in the research in English language spread:

The rejection of the onomatopoeic theory of the origin of language by Müller , together with Saussure's (1916) partial extension of the principle of arbitrariness to phonetically motivated words, seems to be among the reasons for a drop in interest in the study of mimesis in the lexicon. The present paper describes an experiment involving the classification of a comprehensive list of English and Slovak words of imitative origin into natural semantic categories similar to those used in the Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary. Extending the focus well beyond mere echoic onomatopoeia, the study demonstrates that sound-imitative words are far from being applicable to only a narrow semantic range (Anderson 1998:128). Based on the obtained data, it is argued that identifying recurrent semes within the lexemes synchronically interpreted as mimetic might, if supported by further cross-linguistic evidence, serve as an aid for linguists in getting to the roots of certain words of yet unexplained etymology.

It has been repeatedly observed that focus substantially changes the sentence prosody in many languages not only by increasing F 0 , duration, and intensity on the focused components but also by compressing the pitch range and intensity of post-focus elements. However, it is not yet fully clear in Persian what the main effect of focus is on pre-focus, on-focus and post-focus elements. To achieve this goal, we have embarked on a full-scale investigation of the phonetic realization of prosodic focus in Persian. The findings of this study reveal that focus dramatically changes the three regions. F 0 and duration has significantly increased in on-focus words without any significant change in intensity. Compared to their counterparts, pre-focus elements show weaker intensity but no change in duration and mean F 0 . Finally post-focus words show significant lowering of F 0 and decrease of intensity. The duration of post-focus words remains intact. Thus, according to the present data, it can be concluded that Persian, like English and Mandarin, falls into the category of PFC (postfocus compression) languages.

En este trabajo reanalizaremos una estructura sintáctica que ha sido objeto de estudio en la Gramática Generativa desde la década del ’70 (por ejemplo, Chomsky & Lasnik, 1977): las estructuras de “ascenso”. En estas estructuras hay un verbo que selecciona una cláusula subordinada no finita, en la que un argumento recibe rol temático pero no caso, produciéndose un movimiento-A hacia la cláusula matriz para recibir caso. Este sistema implica grandes complicaciones a nivel teórico y empírico, por lo que intentaremos reemplazar esa teoría por la de que los así llamados “verbos de ascenso” (parecer como ejemplo prototípico) son en realidad auxiliares con un significado modal. Así, no hay dos cláusulas, sino sólo una, con un dictum y un modus, en la que el verbo de ascenso es en realidad un núcleo con rasgos modales. Comenzaremos caracterizando la noción de modalidad en diferentes ámbitos y luego nos centraremos en el estudio de la sintaxis y la semántica de los verbos de ascenso desde la convergencia entre generativismo, Relevancia y conceptos de lógica modal.

Perceção de variantes dialetais do Português europeu continental: um estudo exploratório ____________________________________________________________________________________ Resumo Com o presente estudo, pretendemos, através da aplicação de dois testes percetuais (de identificação e de discriminação), avaliar a forma como são identificadas e distinguidas seis variantes dialetais do Português Europeu (PE), falado em Portugal Continental. Entre os diferentes fenómenos fonéticos convocados pelos falantes para a identificação das variantes, destaca-se o elevado valor distintivo do ditongo <ei>, que conhece várias realizações, de acordo com a região. As tarefas de identificação revelaram-se mais difíceis do que as de discriminação, sendo o dialeto da Beira Litoral o mais facilmente identificado. Os resultados apontam, ainda, para uma maior facilidade na perceção das diferenças existentes entre dialetos geograficamente distantes, percebendo-se, neste domínio, a existência de uma clara distinção entre o Norte (Minho e Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro) e o Sul (Alentejo e Algarve). As conclusões decorrentes da análise dos resultados obtidos carecem de estudos mais aprofundados, quer no que diz respeito aos fenómenos fonéticos que contribuem para a correta identificação dos dialetos, quer no que se refere ao impacto do perfil dos ouvintes, na concretização das tarefas percetivas solicitadas. Palavras-chave: dialetologia -fonética -perceção da fala -testes percetuais. ____________________________________________________________________________________

Advertising hoardings are common in cities. Hoardings are put up at almost all squares and near all bus stops/stations/railway stations/airports, malls, multiplexes, etc. Thus, these hoardings are omnipresent. These hoardings attract public attention because of their textual message and visuals. The language employed in these hoardings is simple and shows an economy in the use of words. The main function is to convey the message about a product or service in an effective manner. This linguistic communication or advertisement discourse can be studied from various points of view. This paper is a humble effort to study advertising hoardings in Nagpur city from the point of view of Sociolinguistics.

In order to construct any representation of the syntax or of the vocabulary of a language, we must first know where information about syntax and semantics is to be found. The point of view of Lexicon-Grammar in this regard is that the source of knowledge lies in experimentation. We will therefore examine the experimental side of syntax and semantics. Most of this paper is based on M. Gross (1984, 1988, 1992, 1994).

______________________________________________________________________________________________________ Free online resources are user-friendly technologies which have become available through the Internet in recent years and gaining popularity during Covid-19. Since learners use smartphones, free online resources are easily accessible. Books are portable, but learners find it somewhat difficult to learn English language via books which may only be available in the classroom context, whereas free online resources are easily accessed. The purpose of this study is to identify learners' perception learning English via free online resources and traditional learning. Quantitative and qualitative methods were employed in the present study. Twenty-five international pre-elementary intensive English students took part in this study. It was found that learners perceived the free online resources as valuable tools for learning English in relation to reading, conversation, and vocabulary and also free online resources help promote free learning norms in learning the English language. The learners also had constructive attitudes towards free online resources. Free online resources always provide a motivating learning environment, enhance learners' analytical and critical thinking skills, and encourage social interaction between teachers and learners, learners and their peers, and learners and other participants.

Özet: Bu makalede V. V. Radloff'un 1886 yılında Sanktpeterburg'da yayımlamış olduğu "Kuzeydeki Türk Kavimlerinin Dili/ I. Halk Edebiyatından Örnekler/ 6. Tarançi Diyalekti" adlı kitabında kullnadığı yazınin özellikleri; bu yazı ile kaydedilen eserlerdeki dilin o zamandaki Uygur dilinin geç ici dönemine ait temel özelliklerini yansıttığı ve bu belgelerin günümüzdeki önemi konuları ele alınmıştır.

Developmental research indicates that infants
use low-level statistical regularities, or phonotactics,
to segment words from continuous
speech. In this paper, we present a segmentation
framework that enables the direct comparison
of different phonotactic models for
segmentation. We compare a model using
phoneme transitional probabilities, which
have been widely used in computational
models, to syllable-based bigram models,
which have played a prominent role in the
developmental literature. We also introduce a
novel estimation method, and compare it to
other strategies for estimating the parameters
of the phonotactic models from unsegmented
data. The results show that syllable-based
models outperform the phoneme models,
specifically in the context of improved unsupervised
parameter estimation. The syllablebased
transitional probability model achieves
a word token f-score of nearly 80%, the highest
reported performance for a phonotactic
segmentation model with no lexicon.

Russian influence in Muslim Central Asia was far reaching. The transformative effects of Russian presence first emerged in the administrative setup and governance, and soon it spread to the domain of education and sociocultural symbols. The Muslim Central Asian society lost its connection with the Muslim world in the neighborhood as Russian alphabets, lexemes and structures replaced the Arabic script. The Tsarist administration initiated these changes which culminated in the Soviet era when Central Asian Muslims were forced to cultivate Russian language and culture. However, the distrust among the Russian diaspora and Muslim Central Asian local population was deep seated. Once the Soviet Union fell, the demographic and linguistic changes were attacked by nationalists. Despite the post-1991 attempts, the Russian language is still dominant in Muslim Central Asia as compared to English and other modern European languages.

ABSTRACT  This article aims at discussing how queer theories can be related to the discussion about race in education, especially focusing pre service and in service language and art teacher education. To do so, we present a short history about Bill 10639 and base our presuppositions on queer theories about race and education. Outcomes of three researches illustrate our perspective that it is relevant to consider race through queer perspectives, for they can contribute to the accomplishment of bill 10639 and reinvent blacks as criss-crossed by race, gender, and sexuality. Besides, we point to the relevance of inserting in teacher education curricula the discussion about race and all the pedagogic word that can be done by the teacher with the aim of deconstructing hegemonic discourses that still imprison black men and women.

Keywords: Race; Teacher Education; Queer Theories; Bill 10639.

From the idea that variation and lack of homogeneity constitute the most basic features of language, historical linguistics recovers a nuclear role within the renewed framework of theoretical studies. Linguistics no longer constitutes an autonomous discipline, but following the paths of social sciences, is concerned with socio-cultural objects, i.e. with esentially historical objects. At the centre of linguistic theory, language is emerging as a complex process, where time and variation turn out to be intrinsic characteristics. Observed from different standpoints -semiotic, sociolinguistic, cognitive, typological, and the very historical one-, thus, linguistic change is leading a deep epystemological reconsideration of linguistic science in general, where old dichotomies seem to be over and new defiant proposals are being put forward. An interactive net of mutual dependencies and interrelations has redefined the object, goal, instruments and methods of traditional historical studies, as part of a wider renewal of the scientific paradigm.

Riesgo y Compromiso. Las representaciones del saber en trabajos de investigación publicados en revistas venezolanas arbitradas: destrezas discursivas. Resumen Se examinan referencias, según argumentaciones apoyadas en la recolección y organización de diversas fuentes en los trabajos en publicaciones venezolanas arbitradas, las derivaciones inexactas que se conforman en el abstract, en el asunto correspondiente a la educación, cuando ésta se entiende en referencia a instancias superiores con adjetivos y sustantivos impropios, de lo que se concluye en la necesidad de puntualizar en las destrezas discursivas de los traductores. Palabras clave: resumen, traducción, sintagma adjetivo, publicación científica, palabras cognadas. Abstract As the subject of work here examines arguments supported by references in the collection and organization of various sources in the Venezuelan papers in refereed, inaccurate leads are formed in the abstract, in the case for education, when it is seen referring to higher authorities with adjectives and nouns unfit, what is concluded on the need to specify in discourse skills of translators.

It has been repeatedly observed that focus substantially changes the sentence prosody in many languages not only by increasing F 0 , duration, and intensity on the focused components but also by compressing the pitch range and intensity of post-focus elements. However, it is not yet fully clear in Persian what the main effect of focus is on pre-focus, on-focus and post-focus elements. To achieve this goal, we have embarked on a full-scale investigation of the phonetic realization of prosodic focus in Persian. The findings of this study reveal that focus dramatically changes the three regions. F 0 and duration has significantly increased in on-focus words without any significant change in intensity. Compared to their counterparts, pre-focus elements show weaker intensity but no change in duration and mean F 0. Finally post-focus words show significant lowering of F 0 and decrease of intensity. The duration of post-focus words remains intact. Thus, according to the present data, it can be concluded that Persian, like English and Mandarin, falls into the category of PFC (postfocus compression) languages.

This paper presents some preliminary notes on the previously undescribed Indo-Aryan language of Kundal Shahi, a village in Pakistani-administered Kashmir. We present data from which it appears that the Kundal Shahi language must have descended from an archaic form of Shina, while showing more recent influences from Kashmiri and Hindko in particular. It is not mutually intelligible with any of these languages. Like many other languages in the northwestern corner of the South-Asian subcontinent, Kundal Shahi has contrastive tone. With less than 500 active speakers, most of whom are over 40 years of age, the language is definitely endangered.