Support for lateralization of the Whorf effect beyond the realm of color discrimination

Brain and Language (v.105-2)
by Aubrey L. Gilbert, Terry Regier, Paul Kaye, and Richard B. Ivry

Recent work has shown that Whorf effects of language on color discrimination are stronger in the right visual field than in the left. Here we show that this phenomenon is not limited to color: The perception of animal figures (cats and dogs) was more strongly affected by linguistic categories for stimuli presented to the right visual field than those presented to the left. Moreover, the magnitude of the visual field asymmetry was reduced when demands on verbal working memory were increased by a secondary task. This reduction did not occur when the secondary task imposed demands on spatial working memory. Taken together, these results demonstrate that the lateralized Whorf effect may be quite general, reflecting an interaction of linguistic and perceptual codes primarily in the left hemisphere.

From the "Lateralization" dept. Since language appears to be lateralized it then follows that you process things with your right eye differently than you do with your left eye because right eye processing might be influenced, however slightly, from your left lateralized language processing component. That's awesome! Good on Gilbert for doing this work (check out her dissertation for more in-depth analysis of this type of evidence).

So are we one step closer to declaring a winner of the fight on linguistic relativism?

Articulatory settings of French and English monolingual and bilingual speakers

Dissertation from The University of British Columbia
by Wilson, I.L.

Abstract:

This dissertation investigates articulatory setting (AS), a language's underlying or default posture of the articulators (i.e., the tongue, jaw, and lips). Inter-speech posture (ISP) of the articulators (the position of the articulators when they are motionless during inter-utterance pauses) is used as a measure of AS in Canadian English and Quebecois French. The dissertation reports two experiments using a combination of Optotrak and ultrasound imaging to test whether ISP is language specific in both monolingual and bilingual speakers, whether it is affected by phonetic context, and whether it is influenced by speech mode (monolingual or bilingual). Results of Experiment 1 show significant differences in ISP across the English and French monolingual groups, with English exhibiting a higher tongue tip, more protruded upper and lower lips, and narrower horizontal lip aperture. Results also show that for English speakers, the jaw ISP is somewhat influenced by phonetic context while the lip and tongue ISP are not. For French speakers, only certain lip components of ISP are influenced by phonetic context while the ISP of the tongue and jaw are not. Results of Experiment 2 show that upper and lower lip protrusion are greater for the English ISP than for the French ISP, in all bilinguals who were perceived as native speakers of both of their languages, but in none of the other bilinguals. Also, tongue tip height results mirrored those of the monolingual groups, for half of the bilinguals perceived as native speakers of both languages, but for no other bilinguals. Finally, results show that there is no unique bilingual-mode ISP, but instead one that is equivalent to the monolingual-mode ISP of a speaker's currently most-used language. This research empirically confirms centuries of non-instrumental evidence for the existence of AS, and thus supports calls for the teaching of AS to L2 learners. Additionally, the lack of phonetic carry-over effect on ISP is encouraging for studies that have used ISP as a measurement baseline. Finally, the fact that there is no unique ISP for bilingual speech mode suggests that differences between monolingual and bilingual modes do not hold at the phonetic level.

From the "Crazy interesting stuff we don't normally think of" dept. I'm not really 100% clear about what it tells us, but I think it's fascinating that speakers of different languages would have different 'rest' positions for their articulators. I'm not sure that it's possible to teach second language learners how to achieve more natural rest positions, but it would be really great to see in what way having a non-native rest position might influence the production of a second language, or whether a late acquired second language can lead to a change in rest position of articulators when speaking that second language. Fascinating!

Toward a linguistic conception of thought

Dissertation from the University of Washington
by Stenberg, B.J.

Abstract:

The traditional, and still most common, view of the relationship between language and thought is that language is merely a tool for expressing thoughts. I argue that this view is mistaken and that language is the very thing that makes thought possible in the first place. I mean a number of things by this. I mean that no one can have any thoughts at all without first being a practiced member of a linguistic community. I mean literally that the thoughts themselves are linguistic entities: thoughts are, as it is sometimes put, just 'sentences in the head.' And, furthermore, I mean that thoughts are actually constituted by symbols of the natural language(s) one speaks. I call this view the Linguistic Theory of Thought (LTT), and it is a version of the Representational Theory of Mind. The main goal of my project is to lay the foundation for the LTT: to show that it is at the very least a coherent possibility, and find space for it among its representationalist peers. Having found a general place for the LTT to sit, I proceed to argue that this position is stable. First I develop a theory of meaning, adapting Wilfrid Sellars' view that specifying the meaning of a linguistic type involves classifying that type functionally. By treating meaning as functional classification I can specify the meanings of words without appealing to any supposedly antecedent thoughts. Next I argue that thinking is a matter of social practice. In this part of the project I rely on the philosophical framework provided by Sellars (his 'Psychological Nominalism'), and then modify the Sellarsian framework to support my view that our thoughts themselves are constituted by the symbols of the natural language(s) we speak. Ultimately, my project is both a modernizing of Sellars' view, developing and broadening his arguments in order to critique many of the representationalists that wrote (and continue to write) after him, and the development of a modern representationalist theory of thought that takes seriously the insights of Sellars, Quine, and those who have followed in their footsteps.

From the "Seriously, WTF!" dept. Seriously. WTF? We're going to use logic to prove what thought is made of? Haven't we outgrown this bullshit? It's the 21st century, who is still persuaded by this kind of argumentation w.r.t. cognitive processes? I guess I shouldn't prejudge without reading the dissertation, but INSPIRE HOPE this abstract does not.

Showing what we see: Psychoanalytic vision, transparency, and linguistic pragmatics

Dissertation from Duquesne University
By Bortle, S.

Abstract:

This dissertation explores the possibilities that pragmatic linguistic analytic methods might have for psychoanalysis, both in the latter's attempts to establish itself as an empirically grounded endeavor and in its understanding of its own theoretical constructs. I begin with a discussion of some of the troubles psychoanalysis has had in legitimizing itself in the eyes of its peers since in inception, suggesting that a closer relationship with already-established sociolinguistic sciences (i.e. pragmatic analysis of linguistic interaction) may aid in its promotion. I then describe how these methods have already been taken up within the field of psychology in the study of therapy process, noting a gap in the research such that they have yet to be brought to bear on the analysis of psychoanalytic constructs. I discuss some theoretical overlaps that already exist between psychoanalytic theory and the linguistic philosopher John Austin (namely critiques of modern subjectivity and the function of language) and give examples of possible conceptual intersections that might be further expanded in the future. I discuss repression and projective identification as two such possibilities. I conclude with some of the implications and limitations of this dialogue, noting that a pragmatic perspective might be better suited to interpersonal theories of psychoanalysis. I discuss the hegemonizing risk inherent in the metaphor of vision. I also address in what way linguistic pragmatic methods---and a psychoanalytic theory that centers itself around the construct of unconscious intention---can in the end be said to be "empirical." While these problems are not likely be solved in the near future, a continued discussion of them, stemming from viewing psychoanalytic constructs through a pragmatic lens, will nonetheless be fruitful.

From our "WTF" department. WTF?

Antipresuppositions

In A. Ueyama(ed.), Theoretical and Empirical Studies of
Reference and Anaphora: Toward the establishment of generative grammar as an empirical science (2006)
by Percus, Orin

Abstract

Some sentences come with an interesting kind of condition on their use: they require that a certain proposition p not be taken for granted. Recent work by Sauerland and Schlenker proposes an explanation: the sentences in question compete with other sentences that require that p be taken for granted, and win only when those other sentences are infelicitous. This paper is concerned with the precise nature of this competition, and with what can be learned from it.

Ugh... from our "Toward the establishment of generative grammar as an empirical science" Dept.

This thing here called Anti-presupposition is a decent observation about some interesting types of clauses in English. My problem is with the author's attributing some of these observations to what ultimately amounts to our language module.

One such case that results from the analysis is the "empirical evidence" that the quantifier 'all' is infelicitous if applied to a set that maximally contains two elements. So a sentence such as (1) sounds bad (is ungrammatical?) and is dispreferred to (2)

1. *The mafia broke all of his legs
2. The mafia broke both of his legs

This 'anti-duality' condition, which results from anti-presupposition triggered by the quantifier, is a result of the fact that English happens to have a special quantifier for exactly these cases ('both'). I think this is a fine hypothesis, which appears to be verified by its extension across other languages that have a 'both'-like quantifier... until you look at French, which seems to show this 'anti-duality' but doesn't have a quantifier that is 'both'-like enough. But I digress...

Time will tell if this hypothesis will live on. But my problem is with the underlying notion that this anti-duality condition, like the anti-presupposition notion, is entirely language bound and not a result of general cognitive constraints (or simple frequency issues). A lot of effort is spent covering all the instances of anti-presupposition and anti-duality, but underlying this is the unquestioned assumption that this phenomenon is a product of UG. This fault is going to affect our ability to, as the abstract suggests is the goal of the article, learn something from anti-presuppositions.

Internet search result probabilities: Heaps' Law and Word Associativity

Journal of Quantitative Linguistics (v.16-1)
by Lansey, Jonathan C & Bukiet, Bruce

Abstracts

We study the number of internet search results returned from multi-word queries based on the number of results returned when each word is searched for individually. We derive a model to describe search result values for multi-word queries using the total number of pages indexed by Google and by applying the Zipf power law to the words per page distribution on the internet and Heaps' law for unique word counts. Based on data from 351 word pairs each with exactly one hit when searched for together, and a Zipf law coefficient determined in other studies, we approximate the Heaps' law coefficient for the indexed worldwide web (about 8 billion pages) to be b = 0.52. Previous studies used under 20,000 pages. We demonstrate through examples how the model can be used to analyze automatically the relatedness of word pairs assigning each a value we call "strength of associativity'. We demonstrate the validity of our method with word triplets and through two experiments conducted 8 months apart. We then use our model to compare the index sizes of competing search giants Yahoo and Google.

This one is from the "applied computational google fight!" dept. I think it's awesome that you could accurately model the success of searching the internet using multiple key words. Awesomer still is the result that the model provides word associativity.

It's pretty crazy what can be done with this immense database we call 'the internet'. In the near future, we'll figure out ways in which this database can be mined for answers to all of life's questions. It will also gain sentience and become our overlord, and that's ok.

It seems unfortunate, however, that the results (as established in the abstract) are not provided with any suggestions for why anyone (except maybe big search engine designers) should care. I'm 100% sure that there is at least one reason, if not several, why I should care. But it isn't clear what that reason is, and that's a shame.

Discursive illusions in the American National Strategy for Combating Terrorism

Journal of Language and Politics (v.7-2)
by Bhatia, Aditi

Abstract:

Social realities are often negotiated and determined by elite groups of society, including political and religious leaders, the mass media, and even professional experts, who give meaning to complex, multifaceted constructs such as terrorism consistent with their individual socio-political agendas. The Bush Administration's National Strategy for Combating Terrorism (NSCT) (2003) defines what we the public and media understand by the term terrorism; who are terrorists; what constitutes terrorism; how we can fight terrorism, etc. In order to convince audiences that the version of reality that the NSCT is representing is the objective truth, particular themes such as the construction of religion, Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs), orientalism, and attack vs. self-defence, typically realised through the use of rhetorical resources such as category work, appeals to historicity, negative other-presentation, and the use of metaphor, are utilised. Metaphors are used to construct new and alternate realities. They allow a subjective conceptualisation of reality to appear more convincing through the invocation of emotions and ideologies. Drawing on a detailed analysis of NSCT, the paper investigates how metaphors are combined with other features of language and rhetoric to achieve the themes mentioned above enabling the discourse of illusion to take effect.

This one is from our "who is this analysis helping?" dept. This postmodern analysis probably has some very intelligent things to say about how language (metaphors and other rhetorical devices) is used in a political context, with respect to TERRORISM, to fool the populace into a state that the powers find more easily governable. It's too bad that the language is impenetrable to anyone who might actually do something about it.

I've harped on this point before, but:

I don't mean to invalidate this kind of research because I actually like the idea that someone is thinking critically about these kinds of issues. But in academic settings we ought to be more aware of who we want our audience to be. If you need an advanced degree in postmodern critical discourse analysis to follow these potentially insightful contents, then it feels to me like you're wasting your precious time.

Most of all the linguistics articles found in journals today suffers from this problem to some degree. It's impossible to avoid requiring that your reader share a technical vocabulary for discussing complex ideas (this drawback of advanced research exists in all fields, of course). But leave those complex ideas for the main article. Make your abstract accessible! It's the only way that the field of linguistics is going to get anywhere.

Los limites de la selecion natural y el evominimalismo. Antecedentes, actualidad y perspectivas del pensamiento chomskyano sobre los origenes...

Translated title: The limits of natural selection and Evo-Minimalism. Antecedents, State of the Art and Prospects of Chomsky's ideas on the evolutionary origins of languages.
Verba (v.35)
by Lorenzo, Guillermo

Abstracts

This paper argues, against the claims of several people, that understanding the evolutionary origins of language has always been within the chomskyan linguistic agenda. The paper explains Chomsky's traditional rejection of the Darwinian recipe of evolution by means of natural selection as an appropriate mechanism for the case of language & explores the possibilities of the Minimalism Program as an alternative framework in order to solve the question.

This one is from the "On the wrong path" dept. This short abstract masks a GIGANTIC argument that is brewing in some circles. The abstract translation is a little misleading (as is my total lack of spanish fluency) but I think the argument here is that Chomsky has broken evidence of how Darwinian Evolution does not explain the emergence of Language.

I would probably agree that traditional Darwinian Evolution does not, alone, explain the emergence of Language. But I am more than a little dubious that the Minimalist Program is on the right path toward an explanation of the appropriate mechanism.

I'm always happy to see articles of this nature, even if they are written in languages I can't understand well enough to read them in. What makes this article crazy isn't that I disagree with one of its premises, but that it's just so unlike the kind of argumentative articles you typically see in Linguistics journals (but in a good way).

Brief training with co-speech gesture lends a hand to word learning in a foreign language

Language and Cognitive Processes (v.24-2)
by Spencer D. Kelly; Tara McDevitt; and Megan Esch

Abstracts

Recent research in psychology and neuroscience has demonstrated that co-speech gestures are semantically integrated with speech during language comprehension and development. The present study explored whether gestures also play a role in language learning in adults. In Experiment 1, we exposed adults to a brief training session presenting novel Japanese verbs with and without hand gestures. Three sets of memory tests (at five minutes, two days and one week) showed that the greatest word learning occurred when gestures conveyed redundant imagistic information to speech. Experiment 2 was a preliminary investigation into possible neural correlates for such learning. We exposed participants to similar training sessions over three days and then measured event-related potentials (ERPs) to words learned with and without co-speech gestures. The main finding was that words learned with gesture produced a larger Late Positive Complex (indexing recollection) in bi-lateral parietal sites than words learned without gesture. However, there was no significant difference between the two conditions for the N400 component (indexing familiarity). The results have implications for pedagogical practices in foreign language instruction and theories of gesture-speech integration.

This one is from the "Who would've guessed" dept. It turns out that whether an instructor performs certain gesture types while teaching new words can have an affect on the students' retention of that word.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Gesture is a critical component of language and it belongs in our unification theory.

But I don't really understand what the point of the ERP study was... Looking forward to the followup article.

Rhotacization and the 'Beijing Smooth Operator': The social meaning of a linguistic variable

Journal of Sociolinguistics (v.12-2)
by Zhang, Qing

Abstracts

Recent sociolinguistic studies on style have focused much attention on the construction of social meaning in situated discursive practices. Despite a general recognition that the linguistic resources used are often already imbued with social meanings, little research has been done on what these meanings may be. Focusing on rhotacization, a sociolinguistic variable in Beijing Mandarin, this article explores its imbued social meanings and sociocultural associations. I demonstrate that rhotacization takes on semiotic saliency through co-occurrence with key Beijing cultural terms and frequent use in written representations of authentic Beijing-ness. Furthermore, this feature is associated with the 'Beijing Smooth Operator,' a salient male local character type, and is ideologically construed as reflecting its characterological attributes. The findings of this study shed light on the meaning potential of a linguistic variable, rhotacization in this case, which can enhance understanding of the possibilities and constraints for its use and meaning in new contexts.

This one is from the "Put your tongue right here..." dept. My favorite bits of sociolinguistics are usually those studies that involve speakers making linguistic choices to exhibit their cultural and social identities. Here we have a perfect example.

My understanding of the situation: The upper crust socialites associate themselves with the Beijing Powerful (or Hip) by making some of their vowels a bit more r-like. I don't really know which vowels, though when I watch "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" the rhoticization that is most evident to my naive ears is that which comes after voiceless palatal fricatives. When I hear mandarin from family members, this rhotic vowel just doesn't seem to be there... ever.

So this article here attempts to discover the "meaning" of rhoticizing. Sounds awesome, but good luck with the quantitative analysis...

Complex Predicates and the Functional Sequence

Nordlyd (v.35-1)
by Peter Svenonius

Abstract

In this paper I argue that a fine-grained functional hierarchy of semantically contentful categories such as Tense, Aspect, Initiation, and Process has explanatory power in understanding the crosslinguistic distribution of complex predicates. Complex predicates may involve adjunction, control, or raising, and show other variables as well. In a Minimalist framework, specific parameters cannot be invoked to allow or disallow different kinds of serial verbs, light verbs, resultatives, and so on. Instead, what variation is observed must come from the specifications of lexical items. This places a great burden on the learner, a burden which, I argue, is partly alleviated by the functional sequence.

This one is from our "the program doesn't allow for that sort of rubbish" Dept. What makes this abstract crazy isn't really the proposed analysis. I'm sure the author here has something very enlightening to say about complex predicates. What I really think is crazy is the line "In a minimalist framework, specific parameters cannot be invoked to allow or disallow different kinds of serial verbs, light vers, resultatives, and so on."

I read that and I imagine a committee of hooded Minimalists sitting at a round, poorly lit table discussing what the minimalist program will allow to be invoked and what it will forbid the invocation of.

Chief minimalists (in unison): "WE hereby forbid the invocation of our beloved parameters for the act of allowing and/or disallowing different kinds of syntactic elements. SO LET IT BE WRITTEN!"

Graduate student minimalist (watching from the shadows): "but won't this place a great burden on the learner? Won't anyone please think of the children!"

Chief minimalists (in unison): "SILENCE! quit your groveling. It is your duty to discover how the child manages to overcome these adversities. Now, BE GONE!"

SFL and CDA: Contributions of the Analysis of the Transitivity System in the Study of the Discursive Construction of National Identity

The Linguistics Journal (v.3-3)
by Ángela Alameda-Hernández

Abstract

This article analyses the contribution of systemic-functional linguistics (SFL) to discourse studies. It adheres to the scholarly paradigm known as critical discourse analysis (CDA) which is based on the view that language, as social practice, is a central element in social life and, hence, analyses discourse in relation to the wide social and historical context in which it occurs. This paper explores this SFL-CDA connection and focuses on the representation of the discursive construction of the Gibraltarian identity as drawn from the linguistic analysis of the transitivity system in a body of texts taken from the printed media. Gibraltar is a community in which political conflicts are common but has quite frequently been ignored in the academic world, despite its great interest and uniqueness. The analysis focuses on the period surrounding the holding of the last referendum in Gibraltar (November 2002), when the governments of Britain and Spain discussed the future of this British colony. Hence, the application of SFL categories in this critical discursive analysis has helped to discover that Gibraltar was mainly represented as a passive entity, affected by the actions and decisions of other. Its identity was generally built on this community’s inner-self because of the relevance given to Gibraltar in mental processes as a senser participant. Gibraltar’s agency was mainly limited to the expression of its wishes and opinions. Thus, the discursive representation of Gibraltar was that of a community with little power to exert and influence on its present situation or to manage its future.

From the "syntactic structures as Freudian slips" dept. I'm not sure that I understood the underlying thesis of this abstract, but I believe that I was led to understand that the overuse of valance modifying elements such as the passive voice when referring to Gibraltar should be taken as an indicator of the speakers' impression of Gibraltar as having little power.

I guess that may be true, but I object to the argumentation methodology. Critical discourse theory may seem like a crock because I don't really understand it, but am I the only one who feels this way? You'd hope that there was some way to quantify this result, otherwise, it sounds like some academic is stating an opinion, by definition, subjective. Isn't this why the plebs have such a negative opinion of so many academics?

But I do have to give props to this author for writing a pretty damned comprehensible abstract (relative to most other Critical Discourse Theory abstracts). This abstract defines its terms and makes their use clear in the analysis summary. This might be because the venue it was published in is more general, but why can't all Semiotica abstracts be just as clear?

Prosodic Description: An Introduction for Fieldworkers

Language Documentation and conservation (v.2-2)
by Nikolaus P. Himmelmann and D. Robert Ladd

Abstract:

This article provides an introductory tutorial on prosodic features such as tone and accent for researchers working on little-known languages. It specifically addresses the needs of non-specialists and thus does not presuppose knowledge of the phonetics and phonology of prosodic features. Instead, it intends to introduce the uninitiated reader to a field often shied away from because of its (in part real, but in part also just imagined) complexities. It consists of a concise overview of the basic phonetic phenomena (section 2) and the major categories and problems of their functional and phonological analysis (sections 3 and 4). Section 5 gives practical advice for documenting and analyzing prosodic features in the field.

From our "the way it should be" Dept. If there is one type of linguist worthy of admiration it would be the fieldwork specialist. These guys are doing all us other linguists a huge favor, not to mention the world. But it's hard to be a good field linguist because so much depends on your being a jack of all (linguistic and anthropological) trades. So here we have a wonderful crazy abstract that hopes to help these wonderful fieldworkers. Hopefully, now people who study prosody in the lab will benefit from what fieldworkers (who read this article) can collect out there in the world.

On a separate note, I'm really loving the journal this article is published in. You can get all the articles from the website. Hurray for open access digital articles!

The Functions of Silence

Journal of Pragmatics (v.40-11)
by Michal Ephratt

Abstract:

The roles of eloquent silence in each of the six functions of language in Roman Jakobson's communicative model (1960) are considered. First, pause, being outside language, is differentiated from (eloquent) silence, a means chosen by the speaker for significant verbal communication alongside speech; it is not the listener's silence nor the silencing of the speaker. Linguistic and non-linguistic contributions to the study of eloquent silence are then briefly reviewed. Next, the roles of eloquent silence in Jakobson's model are analyzed. (Eloquent) silence, as a linguistic sign, conveys information in the referential function (zero-sign and passive constructions); it is an iconic affective way of expressing emotions (e.g., emptiness, intimacy) in the emotive function. In respect of the conative function, (eloquent) silence performs direct and indirect speech acts. Caesura, metaphors and ellipses are just a few examples of poetic silence. Silence is a means of maintaining contact and alliance in the phatic function. The various roles of silence in the metalinguistic function range from its being a discourse marker to reflecting the ‘right to silence’.

This one comes from our "I never thought about that, but now that I have I wished that I hadn't" dept. How awesome is this? A whole paper in the Journal of Pragmatics that's simply about the use of silence in discourse! Boy, I wish that I had that kind of time: To spend a few weeks thinking about the times that we shut up rather than when we're talking and then to do some research, write out an article, send it to a journal etc.

I bet most linguists forget that there is a communicative purpose to silence. I think we oughtn't because it might provide some useful CV padding.

I think, if I'm ever crazy enough to work in syntax, I'm going to attempt to create a theory of syntactic structure which incorporates deliberate pauses. I will not call these pauses overt null elements. But their leaf nodes will be labeled with a lower case 'p'.

Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon in the land of the Cartesians: From comparative reception to cultural comparison

Semiotica (v.2008-171)
by Kuang-Neng Liu

Abstract:

This analysis deals mainly with the reception of the film within and beyond the culture within which it originated, along the lines of Hans Robert Jauss's ‘Aesthetics of Reception.’ On the one hand, this ‘Wu-xia’ genre film, which is very popular in Chinese culture, set off a national and nationalistic fever in Taiwan, all the while stirring up controversies in the Chinese-speaking world. On the other hand, this same film that was quite foreign to Western culture nonetheless had a commercial success without precedent in France, all the while also inciting equally vehement contradictory reactions, for reasons totally alien to movie audiences from Chinese culture.

Our analysis, which is centered on what in Chinese is called ‘qing-gong’ or, in a more or less scientific language, ‘the art of weightlessness,’ will attempt to get to the crux of these two systems of reference on which Chinese and French viewers depend. An examination and comparison of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and The Matrix will lead us to the problem of the fabrication of the image of the perfect, supreme or even divine Superior Being, in both the Chinese and Western cultures.

This one comes from our "OK, semiotics is not really linguistics" dept. In the analysis presented by this abstract, it would seem that the topic of interest is the cultural significance of a film. But they get even deeper than that when they try to extract meaning from the film "The Matrix"

Sometimes, I think I'm in the wrong field, sometimes I know I'm in the right one. I'll let you guess what I'm thinking right now.

La dislocation adroite comme ressource pour l'alternance des tours de parole: vers une syntaxe incrementale

Translated Title: Right-Dislocation as a Means for the Alternation of Speech Turns: Towards an Incremental Syntax

Travaux neuchatelois de linguistique (v.47)
by Horlacher, Anne-Sylvie

Abstract:

In spoken interaction, participants can sometimes be seen to self-select after a possible turn completion point, expanding thus their own speaking turn. Conversation analytic research has variously described such turn-continuations; the wide-spread accepted term being increments (Schegloff. 1996, 2000, 2001; Ford, Fox & Thompson, 2002; Walker, 2001, 2004; Couper-Kuhlen & Ono, 2007). In French, extensions of this kind consist frequently of a nominal phrase which is co-referential with the referent figuring in the first part of the turn. The syntactic structure resulting from such expansions has been called by functional linguists a right-dislocation & sometimes interpreted in terms of afterthought{that is some kind of post hoc clarification of a referential item. Drawing on radio phone-in confidential chats, we will first show that the notion of increment is somehow problematic when analyzing naturally occurring data in which syntax is to be taken as a real-time phenomenon, which is deployed moment-by-moment & locally managed, so that a syntactically complete turn-so-far can always be extended through further additions. Secondly, we will argue against the notion of afterthought as an explanation for the late delivery of the nominal phrase. Focusing on the research which has been undertaken in recent years in the field of interactional linguistics, we will show that one interactional task which speakers accomplish through turn extensions is to delete the first possible turn completion point & to exhibit the end of the extension as a new slot which creates a second opportunity for the interlocutor to take the turn or to exhibit alignment. In this sense, formulating a turn extension can be seen not only as an example of emerging grammar, but also as a resource that participants use for pursuing a response & creating an opportunity space for co-participants to display their aligning stances. Finally, we will discuss the implications that the realization of these incremental right-dislocations have for the conception of syntax & grammar.

This one comes directly from our "Discourse is Syntax and vice versa" dept. I'm a big fan of this kind of work, as crazy as it might be. I believe, as many others do, that we are making a mistake when we ignore the interaction between linguistic components. For example, I think a language's phonology has an enormous impact on its syntactic structure, both diachronically and within a speaker or an utterance. Until recently, I thought the reason why most linguists ignored these interactions was because it was incredibly difficult to discover and quantify them: A worthy complaint if you believe that the most important questions to answer in the field are those posed during the Chomskian revolution. But then I discovered that there are prominent linguists out there who truly believe that the compartmentalization of these linguistic sub-systems, from phonology to discourse/pragmatics, is not only practical, but a cognitive reality! In other words there are plenty of respectable minds who operate under the assumption that intonational units are unaffected by syntactic constituents and vice versa...

I believe that , while we do have the tools and the knowhow to make decent predictions about how discourse strategies affect language processing and the syntax produced for some real utterance, I don't think we are able to measure those interactions with scientific rigor. But this abstract tells me that people are trying and I'm really happy to see that.

Small talk, high stakes: Interactional disattentiveness in the context of prosocial doctor-patient interaction

Language in Society (v37-5)
by D.W. Maynard & P.L.Hudak

Abstract:

The literature on “small talk” has not described the way in which this talk, even as it “oils the social wheels of work talk” (Holmes 2000), enables disattending to the instrumental tasks in which one or both participants may be engaged. Small talk in simultaneity can disattend to the movements, bodily invasions, and recording activities functional for the instrumental tasks of medicine. Small talk in sequence occurs in sensitive sequential environments. Surgeons may use small talk to focus away from psychosocial or other concerns of patients that may focus off the central complaint or treatment recommendation related to that complaint. Patients may use small talk to disattend to physician recommendations regarding disfavored therapies (such as exercise). Overall, small talk often may be used to ignore, mask, or efface certain kinds of agonistic relations in which doctor and patient are otherwise engaged. We explore implications of this research for the conversation analytic literature on doctor–patient interaction and the broader sociolinguistic literature on small talk.

This one is from our "sociolinguistics saving lives" dept. I've always hated participating in small talk. i don't do so well talking about boring topics like the weather. Back when I was an avid basketball and baseball fan, I even found it difficult to chit chat about that (since I had strong opinions about sports teams that were not necessarily shared by all in the city I lived in). So I loved reading this abstract (written by linguist and a doctor) on how engaging in small talk (which doctors are required to do as part of their 'bed-side manner' routine) can actually be detrimental to one's health!

Take that small talk!

Fashion as communication: A semiotic analysis of fashion on ‘Sex and the City’

Semiotica (v.2008-171)
by Katarina Kuruc

Abstract:

In this article, I demonstrate the phenomenal role that fashion, as a form of communication, plays within contemporary society specifically in television media. This paper makes use of semiotic and fashion theory in order to analyze the popular television show ‘Sex and the City.’ Despite its reputation as an innovative program that allows women a distinct ‘voice’ within a male dominated society, ‘Sex and the City,’ reinforces gender-based stereotypes with the use of fashion. This article is divided into three sections. First, a brief history and definition of fashion is provided in order to establish a basis for analysis. Second, the significance of fashion and branding is outlined. Third, ‘Sex and the City’ is examined in detail. Notions about how fashion contributes to the overall character development are discussed in relation to how the show perpetuates gender-based and cultural stereotypes.

This one from our "is semiotics linguistics?" dept. I've been reading a lot (more) of semiotics (then I probably should) recently so you might see a smattering of these types of abstracts. Semiotics is, more or less, a field which has been credited with spawning the foundational ideas that transformed the field of linguistics from being composed of dictionary writers and historical text analysts into a field composed of Chomsky's and Jackendoff's. And while many semiotics articles do focus on language (what words and phrases truly symbolize), some are a hell of a lot more fun than that.

The word "dog" is a sign which represents the symbol:


but the item:


is also a sign that represents something that it does not resemble. And what it represents is for this author to tell you.

Role conflict as an interactional resource in the multimodal emergence of expert identity

Semiotica (v.2008-171)
by Greg Matoesian

Abstract:

In this article, I draw on Robert Merton's notion of role set theory and his corollary concept of sociological ambivalence as the background for examining a discursive conflict between prosecuting attorney and expert witness in a criminal trial. I hope to demonstrate how the participants display an orientation to ambivalent norms and counternorms in the situated details of interactional and embodied practices. Although these practices certainly do not yield a factual order in the orthodox Durkheimian sense, they do perform a multimodal integration of verbal and bodily conduct in the sociocultural order as participants strive to articulate disturbances in the projected role set — as conflict in the discursive order is superimposed onto represented order. More specifically, rather than attack the expert's physiological theory, the prosecuting attorney attempts to impeach credibility on the grounds that he is an ‘academic’ rather than private physician. I examine not only how the prosecutor attacks the expert along the fault lines of this represented conflict but also how both participants contextualize legal identities and ground epistemological claims in the verbal and visual particulars of legal interaction.

This one is from our "pardon me?" Dept. I've looked at this article for a while now and I'm still having a hard time understanding what it's trying to analyze. Even the title is completely opaque to me. My latest theory is this: Some guy wrote a theory about how we use emotions in a linguistic domain. In this article, the author uses that theory to analyze the discourse of two participants in a trial: An expert witness and the prosecuting attorney. I assume that, eventually, the author untangles this chess game between these two characters and informs us of how such people interact linguistically.

It goes without saying that I am not this author's intended audience. But if I'm not, then who is? Someone steeped in post modern discourse analytic theory. Someone who understands

• what sociologcial ambivalence is
• what ambivalent norms are
• what the difference between norms and counternorms is
• what interactional and embodied practices are
• who durkhaim is and what his orthodox sense is

and so on.

And then what happens? Such a target audience will read this work and apply it to their own work which will be just as opaque to me.

Now let's assume that I'm trying to develop a theory of 'jargon' in some lexical semantics framework which requires an analysis of different registers or other similar social factors, like power struggles between an expert witness and someone challenging his expertise. Maybe there's some interesting insight here that might make it worth my while to learn the lingo and plow through the article. But if I can't even understand what the abstract is saying I'll never even know whether the article should be of any interest to me.

Even worse, if this article has something enlightening to say about how the court of law should be run, how expert witnesses should be treated or talked to in a trial, who's going to apply this author's insights in a way that might actually improve things in the real world?

All academic disciplines share this pitfall: That the work being produced is incomprehensible to anyone but the small group of followers of the particular theoretical constructs. But at the very least, an abstract should, if only in part, be written in a way that a college educated person coming from any of the main field can get the gist. (If not linguistics, someone with a B. degree in sociology or political science should be able to understand the abstract above. I've sent it off to two friends in each of those fields, they were both unable to help me decipher it). In this way, such a person could choose to put the work into reading the whole paper, thus benefiting a larger slice of the world.

Soon we'll see ways in which theoretical linguists fail in this regard.

Zipf's Law for Indian Languages

Journal of Quantitative Linguistics (v.15-4)
by B.D. Jayaram and M.N. Vidya

Abstract:

The present paper attempts to study the application of Zipf's law for Indian languages. It examines the rank-frequency distribution in four Indian languages representing two Indo-Aryan and two Dravidian languages. The sample texts were drawn from five different genres viz., aesthetics, commerce, natural physical and professional sciences, official and media languages and social sciences. The rank-frequency distributions were analysed for fitting the distribution by using Altmann Fitter software where it fitted the truncated zeta distribution defined as where R is the truncation parameter and T is the normalizing constant. The analysis shows that rank-frequency distribution follows zipf's law.

This is from our "stop the presses" dept. Zipf's law, being general enough to be applied to almost any observed phenomenon by defining the parameters accordingly, has been shown to accurately fit some data in both Indo-Aryan AND Dravidian languages. I'm glad someone is checking these things out, and I'm superglad it isn't me.

First Post

Welcome to Crazy Linguistics Abstracts.

On this blog I'll be posting some of the craziest academic journal abstracts in the field of linguistics (and making silly remarks about them).

Thanks for visiting!