Simplex selves, functional synergies, and selving: Languaging in a complex world
Publication date: Available online 7 April 2018Source: Language SciencesAuthor(s): Paul J. ThibaultAbstractIn this paper, I present selves as simplex structures (Berthoz, 2012/2009) that construct themselves and are constructed in and through the embodied socio-cognitive dynamics of ‘selving’. Selves are, following Vygotsky (1986: 59–73; see also Ratner, 2017), individuations and crystallisations of the concrete social relations in which the self has participated along its life-trajectory. Selving arises and takes place in dialogically coordinated languaging activity. In complex social and cultural worlds, simplex se...
Source: Language Sciences - July 11, 2018 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research
English and Marx's 'general intellect': The construction of an English-speaking élite in Rwanda
This article demonstrates that Rwanda's education system has been reorganised according to the particular form of the ‘general intellect’ that is required by transnational capital. Specifically, this framework casts English as a particularly important cognitive skill. Crucially, Marx's theory allows us to discuss the construction of ‘selective intellectuality’ in Rwanda, and to demonstrate that this entails the reproduction of class-based hierarchies determined in part by access to capital, and access to English. (Source: Language Sciences)
Source: Language Sciences - July 11, 2018 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research
What would Karl say? The entrepreneur as ideal (and cool) citizen in 21st century societies
Publication date: Available online 17 April 2018Source: Language SciencesAuthor(s): David BlockAbstractIn recent years, the entrepreneur has become a key figure in discussions of idealised neoliberal citizenship in capitalist societies around the world. This paper extends on previous discussions of the term, first going into detail about its origin and how it has evolved over time, before examining how Marx eschewed the term in favour of the ‘capitalist’, framing the latter as a mere functionary in accumulation of capital. The paper then examines and analyses the discursive self-construction of Josef Ajram, a celerity ...
Source: Language Sciences - July 11, 2018 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research
Life and language: Is meaning biosemiotic?
Publication date: May 2018Source: Language Sciences, Volume 67Author(s): Stephen J. CowleyAbstractSince the multi-scalarity of life encompasses bodies, language and human experience, Timo Järvilehto's (1998) ‘one-system’ view can be applied to acts of meaning, knowing and ethics. Here, I use Paul Cobley's Cultural Implications of Biosemiotics (2016) to explore a semiotic construal of such a position. Interpretation, he argues, shows symbolic, indexical and iconic ‘layers’ of living. While lauding Cobley's breadth of vision, as a linguist, I baulk at linking ‘knowing’ too closely with the ‘symbolic’ qua wha...
Source: Language Sciences - July 11, 2018 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research
What factors are associated with dependency distances to ensure easy comprehension? A case study of ba sentences in Mandarin Chinese
Publication date: May 2018Source: Language Sciences, Volume 67Author(s): Yu Fang, Haitao LiuAbstractDependency distance, referring to the linear distance between two syntactically related words, is often minimized, because long-distance dependencies (LDDs) may cause processing difficulties. However, LDDs can be found in some sentences, for example, Chinese ba sentences, because besides LDDs, other factors also influence the comprehension difficulty. Based on ba sentences extracted from three genres: interviews, essays and research papers, this study investigated the impact of givenness, word frequencies and adverbial lengt...
Source: Language Sciences - July 11, 2018 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research
Assessing the effect of ambiguity in compositionality signaling on the processing of diphones
This study empirically investigates the influence of ambiguity and lexicality on the processing speed of consonantal diphones in speech perception. More specifically, its goal is to test the predictions of the Strong Morphonotactic Hypothesis, which asserts that phonotactic processing is influenced by morphological structure, and to clarify the two conceptions thereof present in extant research. In two discrimination task experiments, it is found that the processing speed of cross-morpheme diphones decreases with their ambiguity, but there is no processing difference between primarily cross-morphemic and morpheme-internal ...
Source: Language Sciences - July 11, 2018 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research
Editorial Board
Publication date: May 2018Source: Language Sciences, Volume 67Author(s): (Source: Language Sciences)
Source: Language Sciences - July 11, 2018 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research
Representing the cognitive construal of Chinese first-person singular reference in discourse
This study aims to explore the Chinese first-person singular reference in discourse, and exhibit the complexity of its usage. Default Semantics is applied in the construal of Chinese first-person singular reference phenomenon taken as an act of communication. After analyzing the examples elicited from the Lancaster Chinese Corpus, we find that the discourse meanings of Chinese first-person singular pronoun wǒ are not limited to self-reference, a variety of additional or non-deictic meanings are conveyed by it in different contexts, and many non-deictic expressions can also be employed to convey self-referential meanings. ...
Source: Language Sciences - July 11, 2018 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research
Clues to the puzzle: The significance of material cultures in nonhuman primates for the study of language
This article argues in favor of a significant continuity, i.e., a homology, in underlying cognition between prelinguistic tool use in nonhuman primates and linguistic behavior in humans. In terms of theory, the evidence for such a cognitive homology is based on the distinct criteria for intentional behavior and cross-group cultural variation. I argue that these criteria are equally valid in primatological and human linguistic research. In past decades, tool use and natural language use have indeed been considered analogous with one another. However, this analogy has never been applied outside of the human domain. In fact, ...
Source: Language Sciences - July 11, 2018 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research
(Dis)Continuity: The cultural intelligence hypothesis reconsidered
Publication date: May 2018Source: Language Sciences, Volume 67Author(s): Anneliese KuhleAbstractAccording to linguistic functionalism, the cultural theory of language rests on the assumption of general learning abilities in the human individual. Such general intelligence encompasses various capabilities, including an efficient working memory, swift learning from experience, and the ability to plan complex actions under displaced conditions. Over the past two decades, a further hypothesis has emerged that social intelligence, in particular, explains the human-unique ability to engage in linguistic behavior. In this view, hu...
Source: Language Sciences - July 11, 2018 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research
A science for verbal art: Elizabeth Gaskell's contribution to a critique of political economy
Publication date: Available online 10 May 2018Source: Language SciencesAuthor(s): Fang Li, David KelloggAbstractThe two central arguments of this paper are symmetrical: language science is a science for verbal art, and Elizabeth Gaskell's verbal art offers a way of understanding the historical method pioneered by Marx and using it to develop language science in turn. The argument unfolds on three different timescales, examining the logogenetic development of one work, the ontogenetic development of one writer, and the sociogenetic development of one genre, namely the nineteenth century social-realist novel. Taking a logoge...
Source: Language Sciences - July 11, 2018 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research
Human impersonal pronouns in Afrikaans: a double questionnaire-based study
Publication date: Available online 17 May 2018Source: Language SciencesAuthor(s): Daniël Van Olmen, Adri BreedAbstractThis paper is the first in-depth study of the main human impersonal pronouns in Afrikaans: jy ‘you’, (’n) mens ‘(a) human’ and hulle ‘they’. It adopts a double questionnaire approach, consisting of an acceptability judgment task for one group of participants and a completion task for another group. On the theoretical side, we test the different dimensions proposed in two of the most recent semantic maps of human impersonal pronouns. The first map features vague, inferred and specific existent...
Source: Language Sciences - July 11, 2018 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research
Simplexity, languages and human languaging
Publication date: Available online 19 May 2018Source: Language SciencesAuthor(s): Stephen J. Cowley, Rasmus Gahrn-AndersenAbstractBuilding on a distributed perspective, the Special Issue develops Alain Berthoz's concept of simplexity. By so doing, neurophysiology is used to reach beyond observable and, specifically, 1st-order languaging. While simplexity clarifies how language uses perception/action, a community's ‘lexicon’ (a linguistic 2nd order) also shapes human powers. People use global constraints to make and construe wordings and bring a social/individual duality to human living. Within a field of perception-act...
Source: Language Sciences - July 11, 2018 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research
A competitive mechanism selecting verb-second versus verb-final word order in causative and argumentative clauses of spoken Dutch: A corpus-linguistic study
We present the results of a corpus study on the incidence of omdat-V2 in spoken Dutch, and compare them to published data on weil-V2 in spoken German. Basic findings: omdat-V2 is much less frequent than weil-V2 (ratio almost 1:8); and the frequency relations between coordinating and subordinating conjunctions are opposite (want>> omdat; denn << weil). We propose that conjunction selection and V2/VF selection proceed partly independently, and sometimes miscommunicate—e.g. yielding omdat/weil paired with V2. Want/denn-VF pairs do not occur because want/denn clauses are planned as autonomous sentences, which take V2...
Source: Language Sciences - July 11, 2018 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research
Revisiting Marx and problematizing Vygotsky: a transformative approach to language and speech internalization
Publication date: Available online 24 May 2018Source: Language SciencesAuthor(s): Jeremy E. Sawyer, Anna StetsenkoAbstractFollowing Marx, Vygotsky saw the historical origins of language in labor, geared to coordinating productive activity that transforms the world and humans themselves. This collaborative activity entails dynamic interactivity, productive practicality and the profound sociality and historicity of language. Vygotsky’s attempted to advance psychology on these Marxist grounds while integrating insights from psychological and linguistic theories of his time, resulting in a complicated tapestry of ideas not w...
Source: Language Sciences - July 11, 2018 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research
