This article considers how the long-standing American cultural tradition of sentimentality and its affective power can be discursively utilized by contemporary Black women in the public contexts. Using the concept of sentimental political storytelling as discussed by Rebecca Wanzo, I analyze three award speeches given by Viola Davis – a popular and acclaimed African American actress whose speeches generate significant public and media attention. Framing Davis’s speeches within the Black feminist epistemology, I draw on the conventions of sentimental storytelling proposed by Wanzo to argue that Davis is an example of a Black woman skilfully using sentimentality to gain affective agency and mobilize sympathy from mainstream public while at the same time narrativizing African Americans’ lived experiences to have their humanity and their struggle recognized today. Given the continued prioritization of White female suffering in the American media over stories of Black women’s struggle, the ways in which Black women can discursively utilize sentimentality to gain affective agency and negotiate self-definition in interactional public contexts is of significant sociolinguistic interest.
{"title":"To be sentimental, powerful, and Black: Affective agency in Viola Davis’s award speeches","authors":"Agata Janicka","doi":"10.14746/yplm.2020.6.6","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14746/yplm.2020.6.6","url":null,"abstract":"This article considers how the long-standing American cultural tradition of sentimentality and its affective power can be discursively utilized by contemporary Black women in the public contexts. Using the concept of sentimental political storytelling as discussed by Rebecca Wanzo, I analyze three award speeches given by Viola Davis – a popular and acclaimed African American actress whose speeches generate significant public and media attention. Framing Davis’s speeches within the Black feminist epistemology, I draw on the conventions of sentimental storytelling proposed by Wanzo to argue that Davis is an example of a Black woman skilfully using sentimentality to gain affective agency and mobilize sympathy from mainstream public while at the same time narrativizing African Americans’ lived experiences to have their humanity and their struggle recognized today. Given the continued prioritization of White female suffering in the American media over stories of Black women’s struggle, the ways in which Black women can discursively utilize sentimentality to gain affective agency and negotiate self-definition in interactional public contexts is of significant sociolinguistic interest.","PeriodicalId":431433,"journal":{"name":"Yearbook of the Poznan Linguistic Meeting","volume":"35 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126691894","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Exposed correction can be seen as a tool whose use on the one hand temporarily stops the progressivity of the talk, but at the same time makes it possible for the speakers in interaction to clarify problems that have occurred, both in mundane conversation and institutional talk. Using conversation analysis, a dataset of 18 teaching hours (1585 minutes of video-recordings of whole-class work in total) was examined to identify and describe the practices used by learners and teachers in English as a foreign language (EFL) classrooms when conducting exposed correction. The analysis shows that in exposed correction sequences there seems to be a requirement for the learners to produce a reaction to teacher correction. While learners typically repeat the correct form after the teacher has corrected them in a correction sequence that the learners initiated by displaying trouble producing the target language form, teacher-initiated sequences tend to generate minimal post-expansion on the part of the learners. When no student response comes, the teacher may expand the correction sequence.
{"title":"Doing exposed correction in the language class-room: A conversation analysis perspective","authors":"František Tůma, N. Fořtová","doi":"10.14746/yplm.2020.6.8","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14746/yplm.2020.6.8","url":null,"abstract":"Exposed correction can be seen as a tool whose use on the one hand temporarily stops the progressivity of the talk, but at the same time makes it possible for the speakers in interaction to clarify problems that have occurred, both in mundane conversation and institutional talk. Using conversation analysis, a dataset of 18 teaching hours (1585 minutes of video-recordings of whole-class work in total) was examined to identify and describe the practices used by learners and teachers in English as a foreign language (EFL) classrooms when conducting exposed correction. The analysis shows that in exposed correction sequences there seems to be a requirement for the learners to produce a reaction to teacher correction. While learners typically repeat the correct form after the teacher has corrected them in a correction sequence that the learners initiated by displaying trouble producing the target language form, teacher-initiated sequences tend to generate minimal post-expansion on the part of the learners. When no student response comes, the teacher may expand the correction sequence. ","PeriodicalId":431433,"journal":{"name":"Yearbook of the Poznan Linguistic Meeting","volume":"227 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130837249","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Panagiotis Boutris, J. Rees, Brodie Bevan, Cristina Izura
Cognitive performance declines with age following different trajectories. The cognitive trade-off, however, between age and cognitive reserve is still not clear. In addition, bilingualism has been thought to play a role in delaying cognitive decline by affecting cognitive control outside the scope of language. However, the effect has been unreliably reproduced and without exploring sufficiently the differences between cognitive functions that govern language control. In the current study 112 adults varying in age, level of bilingualism and cognitive reserve, completed a modified version of the Simon task, which engaged the mechanisms of interference suppression and shifting. Using ex-Gaussian analysis, the Simon effect was replicated in the normal component and the shifting effect was found in the exponential. Additional linear mixed-effects model analysis showed a significant “negative” effect of bilingualism on inhibition and a “positive” effect of cognitive reserve on shifting, both independent of age. Age affected similarly the speed of engagement of both executive functions irrespectively of language or cognitive background. Implications of a bilingual disadvantage and a beneficial effect of cognitive reserve during ageing are discussed.
{"title":"Bilingualism and cognitive reserve: It’s a matter of top-down or bottom-up process","authors":"Panagiotis Boutris, J. Rees, Brodie Bevan, Cristina Izura","doi":"10.14746/yplm.2020.6.5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14746/yplm.2020.6.5","url":null,"abstract":"Cognitive performance declines with age following different trajectories. The cognitive trade-off, however, between age and cognitive reserve is still not clear. In addition, bilingualism has been thought to play a role in delaying cognitive decline by affecting cognitive control outside the scope of language. However, the effect has been unreliably reproduced and without exploring sufficiently the differences between cognitive functions that govern language control. In the current study 112 adults varying in age, level of bilingualism and cognitive reserve, completed a modified version of the Simon task, which engaged the mechanisms of interference suppression and shifting. Using ex-Gaussian analysis, the Simon effect was replicated in the normal component and the shifting effect was found in the exponential. Additional linear mixed-effects model analysis showed a significant “negative” effect of bilingualism on inhibition and a “positive” effect of cognitive reserve on shifting, both independent of age. Age affected similarly the speed of engagement of both executive functions irrespectively of language or cognitive background. Implications of a bilingual disadvantage and a beneficial effect of cognitive reserve during ageing are discussed.","PeriodicalId":431433,"journal":{"name":"Yearbook of the Poznan Linguistic Meeting","volume":"26 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"117251228","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Due to the increasing Islamisation, in contemporary Malaysia, non-veiled Muslim women have become the minority in many domains of public life, including the workplace (Hochel 2013; Izharuddin 2018; Mouser 2007). As the veil is widely regarded as a signifier of a Muslim woman’s identity and her level of piety (Ruby 2006; Stirling & Shaw 2004), a woman’s decision to not wear it can result in discriminatory treatment, such as exclusion from the religious community (Othman 2006). In this paper we give these often discriminated against women a voice and describe some of the challenges that they experience at work. Our particular focus is how these non-veiling women construct their identities – as religious Muslims, “good” women, and successful professionals – in a socio-cultural context where veiling is the norm (Hochel 2013; Izharuddin 2018; Khalid and O’Connor 2011). Drawing on 20 interviews with such women and using Bucholtz and Hall’s (2005) relationality principle, we demonstrate how through their stories of personal experience these women mobilise and orient to a range of different identities – including gender, religious and professional – which are intertwined with each other in complex ways.
{"title":"Negotiating gender, religious and professional identities. Exploring some of the challenges of non-veiled Muslim women at work","authors":"Farhana Abdul Fatah, S. Schnurr","doi":"10.14746/yplm.2020.6.9","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14746/yplm.2020.6.9","url":null,"abstract":"Due to the increasing Islamisation, in contemporary Malaysia, non-veiled Muslim women have become the minority in many domains of public life, including the workplace (Hochel 2013; Izharuddin 2018; Mouser 2007). As the veil is widely regarded as a signifier of a Muslim woman’s identity and her level of piety (Ruby 2006; Stirling & Shaw 2004), a woman’s decision to not wear it can result in discriminatory treatment, such as exclusion from the religious community (Othman 2006). In this paper we give these often discriminated against women a voice and describe some of the challenges that they experience at work. Our particular focus is how these non-veiling women construct their identities – as religious Muslims, “good” women, and successful professionals – in a socio-cultural context where veiling is the norm (Hochel 2013; Izharuddin 2018; Khalid and O’Connor 2011). Drawing on 20 interviews with such women and using Bucholtz and Hall’s (2005) relationality principle, we demonstrate how through their stories of personal experience these women mobilise and orient to a range of different identities – including gender, religious and professional – which are intertwined with each other in complex ways.","PeriodicalId":431433,"journal":{"name":"Yearbook of the Poznan Linguistic Meeting","volume":"25 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133405477","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract Speech production in multilinguals involves constant inhibition of the languages currently not in use. In relation to phonological development, higher inhibitory skills may lead to the improved suppression of interference from the remaining languages in one’s repertoire and more accurate production of target features. The participants were 20 sequential multilingual learners (13-year-olds with L1 Polish, L2 English, L3 German), acquiring their L2 and L3 by formal instruction in a primary school. Inhibition was measured in a modified flanker task (Eriksen & Eriksen 1974; Poarch & Bialystok 2015). Multilingual production of voice onset time (VOT) and rhotic consonants was tested in a delayed repetition task (e.g. Kopečková et al. 2016; Krzysik 2019) in their L2 and L3. The results revealed that higher inhibitory control was related to increased global accuracy in the L2 and L3 production. Moreover, higher inhibitory control was also linked to higher accuracy in the overall L2 production, but there was no significant relationship with the L3 accuracy. These findings suggest that inhibition may play a role in phonological speech production, however, it may depend on one’s level of proficiency.
{"title":"The relationship between inhibitory control and speech production in young multilinguals","authors":"Iga Krzysik","doi":"10.2478/yplm-2020-0006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2478/yplm-2020-0006","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Speech production in multilinguals involves constant inhibition of the languages currently not in use. In relation to phonological development, higher inhibitory skills may lead to the improved suppression of interference from the remaining languages in one’s repertoire and more accurate production of target features. The participants were 20 sequential multilingual learners (13-year-olds with L1 Polish, L2 English, L3 German), acquiring their L2 and L3 by formal instruction in a primary school. Inhibition was measured in a modified flanker task (Eriksen & Eriksen 1974; Poarch & Bialystok 2015). Multilingual production of voice onset time (VOT) and rhotic consonants was tested in a delayed repetition task (e.g. Kopečková et al. 2016; Krzysik 2019) in their L2 and L3. The results revealed that higher inhibitory control was related to increased global accuracy in the L2 and L3 production. Moreover, higher inhibitory control was also linked to higher accuracy in the overall L2 production, but there was no significant relationship with the L3 accuracy. These findings suggest that inhibition may play a role in phonological speech production, however, it may depend on one’s level of proficiency.","PeriodicalId":431433,"journal":{"name":"Yearbook of the Poznan Linguistic Meeting","volume":"6 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125873234","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract Whereas the belief “the younger, the better” regarding foreign language learning seems to hold tenaciously, studies comparing learners of different starting ages attest that in instructed (as opposed to naturalistic) learning contexts, a younger age of onset does not automatically yield better results. However, little is known about how multilingual learners from different age groups develop in their non-native languages over time. The present study thus investigates the understudied domain of perceptual development with seven adolescents aged 12–13 and seven adults aged 19–39 (L1 German, L2 English) over the first year of L3 Polish instruction (tested after one, three, five, and ten months). The sound contrast under scrutiny was /v–w/, which only exists in the learners’ L2 and L3. As expected, in the ABX task, adults performed better than adolescents in both languages at most testing times and generally showed a slight upward trend in both their L2 and L3 learning trajectories. For the adolescents, development was more non-linear. Further, a boosting ‘novelty effect’ was found for the younger learner group: After only a few hours of L3 instruction, they perceived the contrast more consistently and faster than in L2 and at any other testing time, performing within the adults’ range.
{"title":"The younger, the better? Speech perception development in adolescent vs. adult L3 learners","authors":"Christina Nelson","doi":"10.2478/yplm-2020-0005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2478/yplm-2020-0005","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Whereas the belief “the younger, the better” regarding foreign language learning seems to hold tenaciously, studies comparing learners of different starting ages attest that in instructed (as opposed to naturalistic) learning contexts, a younger age of onset does not automatically yield better results. However, little is known about how multilingual learners from different age groups develop in their non-native languages over time. The present study thus investigates the understudied domain of perceptual development with seven adolescents aged 12–13 and seven adults aged 19–39 (L1 German, L2 English) over the first year of L3 Polish instruction (tested after one, three, five, and ten months). The sound contrast under scrutiny was /v–w/, which only exists in the learners’ L2 and L3. As expected, in the ABX task, adults performed better than adolescents in both languages at most testing times and generally showed a slight upward trend in both their L2 and L3 learning trajectories. For the adolescents, development was more non-linear. Further, a boosting ‘novelty effect’ was found for the younger learner group: After only a few hours of L3 instruction, they perceived the contrast more consistently and faster than in L2 and at any other testing time, performing within the adults’ range.","PeriodicalId":431433,"journal":{"name":"Yearbook of the Poznan Linguistic Meeting","volume":"29 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122603224","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract Translation Process Research defines translation as a decision-making process, but a plethora of studies has demonstrated that there is high individual variation in the translators’ styles of making decisions. The present interdisciplinary empirical study combines the theory of personality types and translation process research in order to identify the behavioural indicators that characterise translators’ decisional styles at the stage of end revision, where final decision-making takes place. As based on previous research, such indicators as the duration of end revision, pause length and number, the number of deleted characters and the types of corrections introduced at the stage of end revision may comprise the behavioural variables that define the translators’ styles of decision-making. The analysis of the data shows that two distinct behavioural styles may be distinguished, and their nature lies in the translators’ individual preferences for one of the two dichotomous psychological functions responsible for decision-making.
{"title":"Behavioural indicators of translators’ decisional styles in a translation task: A longitudinal study","authors":"Olha Lehka-Paul","doi":"10.2478/yplm-2020-0007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2478/yplm-2020-0007","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Translation Process Research defines translation as a decision-making process, but a plethora of studies has demonstrated that there is high individual variation in the translators’ styles of making decisions. The present interdisciplinary empirical study combines the theory of personality types and translation process research in order to identify the behavioural indicators that characterise translators’ decisional styles at the stage of end revision, where final decision-making takes place. As based on previous research, such indicators as the duration of end revision, pause length and number, the number of deleted characters and the types of corrections introduced at the stage of end revision may comprise the behavioural variables that define the translators’ styles of decision-making. The analysis of the data shows that two distinct behavioural styles may be distinguished, and their nature lies in the translators’ individual preferences for one of the two dichotomous psychological functions responsible for decision-making.","PeriodicalId":431433,"journal":{"name":"Yearbook of the Poznan Linguistic Meeting","volume":"87 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123023475","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract This paper tackles the issue of the lack of a substantially new approach to classifying the interpreters’ notes. In my paper, I highlight the fact that the researchers in the field are yet to agree on the contents of interpreters’ notes, and that is, in my opinion, the problem that is numerously stumbled upon in consecutive interpretation research in general and note-taking research in particular. Not only do researchers invent new classifications within an excising paradigm, sometimes they contradict each other presenting different definitions for the same concepts. This paper attempts to solve the issue by introducing a new perspective on the contents of interpreters’ notes by adapting the human-centered approach and turning to the “writers” of the notes, the interpreters. The interpreter trainees who participated in this research were interviewed to obtain an in-depth understanding of what is included in interpreters’ notes. Under the semiotic perspective, which assumes both linguistic and non-linguistic notes as a system of signs, I classified the interpreters’ notes based on the subject’s comments to the notes they had written. This retrospective approach unveiled how interpreter trainees perceive their notes which prompt meaning-making and facilitate the memory when delivering interpretation.
{"title":"Reconsidering the contents of interpreters’ notes: A human-centered approach to classification","authors":"Anna Sasaki","doi":"10.2478/yplm-2020-0004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2478/yplm-2020-0004","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This paper tackles the issue of the lack of a substantially new approach to classifying the interpreters’ notes. In my paper, I highlight the fact that the researchers in the field are yet to agree on the contents of interpreters’ notes, and that is, in my opinion, the problem that is numerously stumbled upon in consecutive interpretation research in general and note-taking research in particular. Not only do researchers invent new classifications within an excising paradigm, sometimes they contradict each other presenting different definitions for the same concepts. This paper attempts to solve the issue by introducing a new perspective on the contents of interpreters’ notes by adapting the human-centered approach and turning to the “writers” of the notes, the interpreters. The interpreter trainees who participated in this research were interviewed to obtain an in-depth understanding of what is included in interpreters’ notes. Under the semiotic perspective, which assumes both linguistic and non-linguistic notes as a system of signs, I classified the interpreters’ notes based on the subject’s comments to the notes they had written. This retrospective approach unveiled how interpreter trainees perceive their notes which prompt meaning-making and facilitate the memory when delivering interpretation.","PeriodicalId":431433,"journal":{"name":"Yearbook of the Poznan Linguistic Meeting","volume":"49 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125696052","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract Since its inception in the second part of the 20th century, the science of language evolution has been exerting a growing and formative pressure on linguistics. More obviously, given its interdisciplinary character, the science of language evolution provides a platform on which linguists can meet and discuss a variety of problems pertaining to the nature of language and ways of investigating it with representatives of other disciplines and research traditions. It was largely in this way that the attention of linguists was attracted to the study of emerging sign languages and gestures, as well as to the resultant reflection on the way different modalities impact communicative systems that use them. But linguistics also benefits from the findings made by language evolution researchers in the context of their own research questions and methodologies. The most important of these findings come out of the experimental research on bootstrapping communication systems and the evolution of communicative structure, and from mass comparison studies that correlate linguists data with a wide range of environmental variables.
{"title":"How research on language evolution contributes to linguistics","authors":"Przemysław Żywiczyński","doi":"10.2478/yplm-2020-0001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2478/yplm-2020-0001","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Since its inception in the second part of the 20th century, the science of language evolution has been exerting a growing and formative pressure on linguistics. More obviously, given its interdisciplinary character, the science of language evolution provides a platform on which linguists can meet and discuss a variety of problems pertaining to the nature of language and ways of investigating it with representatives of other disciplines and research traditions. It was largely in this way that the attention of linguists was attracted to the study of emerging sign languages and gestures, as well as to the resultant reflection on the way different modalities impact communicative systems that use them. But linguistics also benefits from the findings made by language evolution researchers in the context of their own research questions and methodologies. The most important of these findings come out of the experimental research on bootstrapping communication systems and the evolution of communicative structure, and from mass comparison studies that correlate linguists data with a wide range of environmental variables.","PeriodicalId":431433,"journal":{"name":"Yearbook of the Poznan Linguistic Meeting","volume":"54 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126841191","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract By considering a specific scenario of early language evolution, here I advocate taking into account one of the most obvious players in the evolution of human language capacity: (sexual) selection. The proposal is based both on an internal reconstruction using syntactic theory, and on comparative typological evidence, directly bringing together, formal, typological, and evolutionary considerations. As one possible test case, transitivity is decomposed into evolutionary primitives of syntactic structure, revealing a common denominator and the building blocks for crosslinguistic variation in transitivity. The approximations of this early grammar, identified by such a reconstruction, while not identical constructs, are at least as good proxies of the earliest stages of grammar as one can find among tools, cave paintings, or bird song. One subtype of such “living fossils” interacts directly with biological considerations of survival, aggression, and mate choice, while others clearly distinguish themselves in fMRI experiments. The fMRI findings are consistent with the proposal that the pressures to be able to master ever more and more complex syntax were at least partly responsible for driving the selection processes which gradually increased the connectivity of the Broca’s-basal ganglia network, crucial for syntactic processing, among other important functions.
{"title":"Natural/sexual selection: What’s language (evolution) got to do with it?","authors":"Ljiljana Progovac","doi":"10.2478/yplm-2020-0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2478/yplm-2020-0002","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract By considering a specific scenario of early language evolution, here I advocate taking into account one of the most obvious players in the evolution of human language capacity: (sexual) selection. The proposal is based both on an internal reconstruction using syntactic theory, and on comparative typological evidence, directly bringing together, formal, typological, and evolutionary considerations. As one possible test case, transitivity is decomposed into evolutionary primitives of syntactic structure, revealing a common denominator and the building blocks for crosslinguistic variation in transitivity. The approximations of this early grammar, identified by such a reconstruction, while not identical constructs, are at least as good proxies of the earliest stages of grammar as one can find among tools, cave paintings, or bird song. One subtype of such “living fossils” interacts directly with biological considerations of survival, aggression, and mate choice, while others clearly distinguish themselves in fMRI experiments. The fMRI findings are consistent with the proposal that the pressures to be able to master ever more and more complex syntax were at least partly responsible for driving the selection processes which gradually increased the connectivity of the Broca’s-basal ganglia network, crucial for syntactic processing, among other important functions.","PeriodicalId":431433,"journal":{"name":"Yearbook of the Poznan Linguistic Meeting","volume":"34 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114616652","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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