Foreword

Abstract

Any scientific discipline undoubtedly encounters different challenges in their development over time. However, with the rise of modern technologies, such challenges expanded to new dimensions. In linguistics, corpus studies have already proven their advantages, and many researchers and other users enjoy the richness of different corpora, spreading enthusiasm and courage to treat linguistics interdisciplinarily. At the same time, minority languages and poorly studied languages are also gaining researchers' attention. Modern technologies further motivated different translation tools, which globalize the world with an enormous speed and seems to dicrease the relevance of language study and foreign language learning. However, the needs for interest in languages remain high. Though perhaps in a different form. This issue comprises the above ideas in five articles. Mayuri L. DILIP and Rayesh KUMAR coauthored the article “Clitic or Agreement Restriction in Santali: A Typological Analysis”, in which they investigated the syntactic configuration of pronominal number marking in Santali, the third most-spoken Austroasiatic language, from syntactic, morphological and prosodic perspective. The following article “Contextual factors and language: an analysis of order placements” was written by Andrej BEKEŠ. It tackles Japanese in a specific social context, namely written ordering requirements on a crowdsourcing website, and reports negative correlation between the level of added value of such requirements and the quality of linguistic expression, comparing it to the Grice’s maxims of conversation. ITO Hideaki's article “Orthoepic Competence Descriptors in Japanese Language Education: CEFR Levels B1 to C2” overviews the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) and the JF Standard for Japanese-Language Education to discuss the benefits of their merging. In particular, the author re-examines CEFR descriptors for levels B1 to C2 in a non-alphabetically transcribed Japanese, which have not yet been attempted, and combine them with the results for levels A1 and A2 to present descriptors for levels A1 to C2 in overall. KIM Yu Young in his article “Development and Operation Results of Japanese Accent Perception Test Based On e-learning System” introduced the [AJ-phonetic Test] system, an online tool for practicing perception of Japanese word accent, presented its benefits through a longitudinal study on Korean learners of Japanese.     Finally, Miha PAVLOVIČ wrote an article entitled “Grammar Errors by Slovenian Learners of Japanese: Corpus Analysis of Writings on Beginner and Intermediate Levels”. In it he first presents how to construct such a corpus, and then presents his analysis of grammar errors that a collection of 182 written texts written by Japanese learners contained.   Editors and Editorial Board wish the regular and new readers of the ALA journal a pleasant read full of inspiration.   ALA editorial board