Human impersonal pronouns in Afrikaans: a double questionnaire-based study
Publication date: Available online 17 May 2018 Source:Language Sciences Author(s): Daniël Van Olmen, Adri Breed This 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 existentia...
Source: Language Sciences - May 18, 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 2018 Source:Language Sciences Author(s): Fang Li, David Kellogg The 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 logogene...
Source: Language Sciences - May 11, 2018 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research
Life and language: Is meaning biosemiotic?
Publication date: May 2018 Source:Language Sciences, Volume 67 Author(s): Stephen J. Cowley Since 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 what c...
Source: Language Sciences - April 28, 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 - April 23, 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 2018 Source:Language Sciences Author(s): David Block In 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 ent...
Source: Language Sciences - April 18, 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 2018 Source:Language Sciences, Volume 67 Author(s): Yu Fang, Haitao Liu Dependency 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 lengths...
Source: Language Sciences - April 18, 2018 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research
(Dis)Continuity: The cultural intelligence hypothesis reconsidered
Publication date: Available online 11 April 2018 Source:Language Sciences Author(s): Anneliese Kuhle According 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 ...
Source: Language Sciences - April 12, 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 - April 12, 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 - April 10, 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 2018 Source:Language Sciences Author(s): Paul J. Thibault In 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 selve...
Source: Language Sciences - April 8, 2018 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research
Evolution, lineages and human language
Publication date: Available online 5 April 2018 Source:Language Sciences Author(s): Stephen J. Cowley, Anton Markoš In 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 or...
Source: Language Sciences - April 6, 2018 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research
Marx, Volo šinov, Williams: language, history, practice
Publication date: Available online 30 March 2018 Source:Language Sciences Author(s): Tony Crowley The 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 analys...
Source: Language Sciences - March 30, 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 - March 29, 2018 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research
Language and simplexity: A powers view
Publication date: Available online 26 March 2018 Source:Language Sciences Author(s): Charles Lassiter The 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 to a...
Source: Language Sciences - March 27, 2018 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research
The bio-logic of languaging and its epistemological background
Publication date: Available online 24 March 2018 Source:Language Sciences Author(s): Vincenzo Raimondi Maturana'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 order ...
Source: Language Sciences - March 25, 2018 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research
