Dynamic resonance and social reciprocity in language change: the case of Good morrow
This study aims at complementing the usage-based model of language change by operationalising the role of dialogic creativity as a mechanism that can be in competition with conventionalization and grammaticalization. We provide a distinctive collexeme analysis (i.e. Hilpert, 2006) focussing on the constructionalization of the dialogic pair [A: good morrow B B: (good) morrow (A)] from the 15th up to the 18th century. After reaching the highest degree of entrenchment and automatisation, the dialogic pair will show an increasing tendency to be creatively re-modelled with ad-hoc meanings during online exchanges by means of dyn...
Source: Language Sciences - July 11, 2018 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research
Accent-induced bias in linguistic transcriptions
This article focuses on the susceptibility of transcribers to such accent-induced bias, based on speaker's accent, transcriber's variety, and the transcriber's knowledge about the language variety they are transcribing. We offer a method to statistically detect accent-induced biases in linguistic transcriptions.This article investigates accent-induced bias in transcriptions of Reference French and Laurentian French (in Canada). In Reference French, high front vowels are phonologically tense /i y/, but they may be phonetically realised as lax [ɪ ʏ]. In Laurentian French, lax [ɪ ʏ] occur as allophones of /i y/. We compar...
Source: Language Sciences - July 11, 2018 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research
Explicit and implicit speaker evaluations and their differential attitudinal determinants
Publication date: Available online 4 July 2018Source: Language SciencesAuthor(s): Tessa Elisabeth Lehnert, Sabine Krolak-Schwerdt, Thomas HörstermannAbstractPrevious speaker evaluation studies have traditionally assessed the influence of attitudes toward languages with explicit self-report measures. Social-cognitive theories positing a differential influence of explicit and implicit attitudes on controlled versus automatic evaluative responses have not been addressed in this domain thus far. In addition to separating attitudes toward languages from attitudes toward nationality, the aim of this study was to test whether ex...
Source: Language Sciences - July 11, 2018 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research
The spectator bias in the linguistic descriptions of information structure
This article argues that the linguistic descriptions of information structure are characterized by a bias. The argument takes a starting point in the observation that these descriptions are insufficiently informative and misleading when applied to language use embedded in practical activities, e.g. hunting, baking bread, playing handball or landing an airliner. The purpose of the article is to explain these inadequacies and lay the groundwork for new informative and accurate descriptions.The claim is that the observed inadequacies can be explained by a bias. This bias can be described on the basis of a distinction between ...
Source: Language Sciences - July 11, 2018 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research
Laryngeal Realism vs. Modulation Theory – evidence from VOT discrimination in Polish
Publication date: Available online 9 July 2018Source: Language SciencesAuthor(s): Geoffrey Schwartz, Daria ArndtAbstractA perception study testing Polish listeners' discrimination of the voice-voiceless contrast in stop consonants is presented. Results show that the absence of pre-voicing in /bdg/ does not hinder perception of voiced stops in Polish. These findings are presented within a wider discussion of the phonological representation of laryngeal contrasts in languages with two series of consonants. The approach of Laryngeal Realism is compared with a new approach based on the assumptions of Modulation Theory (MT) and...
Source: Language Sciences - July 11, 2018 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research
The spectator bias in the linguistic descriptions of information structure
This article argues that the linguistic descriptions of information structure are characterized by a bias. The argument takes a starting point in the observation that these descriptions are insufficiently informative and misleading when applied to language use embedded in practical activities, e.g. hunting, baking bread, playing handball or landing an airliner. The purpose of the article is to explain these inadequacies and lay the groundwork for new informative and accurate descriptions.The claim is that the observed inadequacies can be explained by a bias. This bias can be described on the basis of a distinction between ...
Source: Language Sciences - July 10, 2018 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research
Laryngeal Realism vs. Modulation Theory – evidence from VOT discrimination in Polish
Publication date: Available online 9 July 2018Source: Language SciencesAuthor(s): Geoffrey Schwartz, Daria ArndtAbstractA perception study testing Polish listeners' discrimination of the voice-voiceless contrast in stop consonants is presented. Results show that the absence of pre-voicing in /bdg/ does not hinder perception of voiced stops in Polish. These findings are presented within a wider discussion of the phonological representation of laryngeal contrasts in languages with two series of consonants. The approach of Laryngeal Realism is compared with a new approach based on the assumptions of Modulation Theory (MT) and...
Source: Language Sciences - July 10, 2018 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research
Language, commodification and labour: the relevance of Marx
This article explores, through a Marxist lens, the nature and extent of language commodification in work situations from three perspectives: firstly, as a component of the commodity of labour power in the exploitative labour process; secondly, from an ideological perspective, the influence of the dominant neoliberal narrative of commodification which marketizes everything; and thirdly, the active social agent dimension of ‘language workers’ who resist, in various ways, attempts at commodification of their language. (Source: Language Sciences)
Source: Language Sciences - July 5, 2018 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research
The bio-logic of languaging and its epistemological background
Publication date: Available online 24 March 2018Source: Language SciencesAuthor(s): Vincenzo RaimondiAbstractMaturana's notion of languaging is deeply rooted in his “Biology of cognition” and in the epistemological orientation provided by the “autopoietic systems” theory developed with Varela. Within this framework, language is traced to its operational and interactional matrix. In this paper, I show how pursuing such a “bio-logically” grounded approach allows a shift from traditional conceptions of language, in particular with regards to its role in the achievement of communication and joint activities. In ord...
Source: Language Sciences - July 5, 2018 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research
Language and simplexity: A powers view
Publication date: Available online 26 March 2018Source: Language SciencesAuthor(s): Charles LassiterAbstractThe notion of simplexity is that complex problems are often solved by novel combinations of simple mechanisms. These solutions aren't simple; they're simplex. Language use, as a complex behavior, is ripe for simplex analysis. In this paper, I argue that the notion of powers—an organism's capacity to instigate or undergo change—is doubly useful. First, powers, as opposed to mental representations, are a suitable object for simplex analysis. So conceptualizing languaging in terms of powers gets us one step closer t...
Source: Language Sciences - July 5, 2018 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research
Biological simplexity and cognitive heteronomy
This article explores Berthoz's (2012) notion of simplexity in relation to heteronomous aspects of human cognition while it criticises proponents of Active Externalism for presuming that cognitive activity is based in strong autonomy. Specifically, its negative target is the problematic aspects of Varelian Enactivism and Extended Cognitive Functionalism which are linked to the assumption that cognition is conditioned by the cogniser's strong autonomy. Since active externalists presume that cognition has a clear agent-to-world directionality, they prove unable to account for cases where cognition is informed by novel sensuo...
Source: Language Sciences - July 5, 2018 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research
Marx, Vološinov, Williams: language, history, practice
Publication date: Available online 30 March 2018Source: Language SciencesAuthor(s): Tony CrowleyAbstractThe article will consider the development of the Marxist tradition of thought on language. It will focus specifically on the limited though significant account of language found in Marx's writing, consider how this is developed by Vološinov, and then turn to the work of Raymond Williams. It will be argued that an emphasis on language as a fundamental and creative form of labour is an important development in Marxist social theory and a significant contribution to linguistic thought. The article will conclude with an ana...
Source: Language Sciences - July 5, 2018 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research
Evolution, lineages and human language
Publication date: Available online 5 April 2018Source: Language SciencesAuthor(s): Stephen J. Cowley, Anton MarkošAbstractIn life as in language, living beings act in ways that are multiply constrained as history works through them both directly and as mediated by what we identify as structures (e.g. genes or words). Emphasising direct effects, we replace the ‘language metaphor of life’ with the view that language extends the domain of the living. Just as a living proteome system manages without central control, so does language. Both life and language enable living beings to expand into –and create – new domains ...
Source: Language Sciences - July 5, 2018 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research
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 5, 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 5, 2018 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research
