Pub Date : 2025-05-21DOI: 10.1016/j.lingua.2025.103960
Delin Deng , Fenqi Wang , Ratree Wayland
This study investigates the grammaticalization and phonological reduction of the discourse marker (DM) genre in Swiss French, focusing on its nasal vowel /ɑ̃/. By comparing its acoustic properties in DM versus non-DM usage, the analysis highlights significant phonological reduction in DM genre, characterized by lower nasality (A1-P0) and distinct vowel height and backness adjustments. The findings reveal gender-based differences, with female speakers leading the change through more pronounced phonetic shifts, reflecting broader sociophonetic patterns of linguistic innovation. These differences align with established theories on gender and language change. This research contributes to understanding phonological reduction as a marker of grammaticalization and offers insights into sociophonetic variation in Swiss French.
{"title":"Nasalization reduction and grammaticalization of genre in Swiss French: a corpus-based sociophonetic study","authors":"Delin Deng , Fenqi Wang , Ratree Wayland","doi":"10.1016/j.lingua.2025.103960","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.lingua.2025.103960","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This study investigates the grammaticalization and phonological reduction of the discourse marker (DM) genre in Swiss French, focusing on its nasal vowel /ɑ̃/. By comparing its acoustic properties in DM versus non-DM usage, the analysis highlights significant phonological reduction in DM genre, characterized by lower nasality (A1-P0) and distinct vowel height and backness adjustments. The findings reveal gender-based differences, with female speakers leading the change through more pronounced phonetic shifts, reflecting broader sociophonetic patterns of linguistic innovation. These differences align with established theories on gender and language change. This research contributes to understanding phonological reduction as a marker of grammaticalization and offers insights into sociophonetic variation in Swiss French.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47955,"journal":{"name":"Lingua","volume":"323 ","pages":"Article 103960"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2025-05-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144106605","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-05-14DOI: 10.1016/j.lingua.2025.103951
Shuang He, Ling Zhou , Shaojie Zhang
This study explores the non-interrogative functions of the newsmark zhende (ma/a) (‘really’) in Mandarin conversation interaction, focusing on its stance-taking and (inter)subjective roles in systematically context-sensitive ways. Drawing on spontaneous conversational data and a discourse-pragmatic approach, we identify affective, evaluative, and alignment stances associated with zhende (ma/a) that extend beyond its epistemic function as a reaction to unexpected information and its affective role as an expression of surprise. The nuanced stance-taking activities reveal three key manifestations of (inter)subjectivity, primarily tied to the stance object targeted: (1) a device for involvement and rapport-building responding to irrelevant information; (2) an emotionally charged stance marker when addressing relevant information; and (3) a buffering mechanism for managing awkward moments, maintaining rapport in response to assessments directed at the zhende (ma/a) speaker. Additionally, the syntactic position of zhende (ma/a) also facilitates its intersubjective impact, particularly regarding its metadiscursive function. This study highlights the nuanced interplay between stance-taking and (inter)subjectivity and underscores the importance of contextual features in interpreting the non-interrogative functions of newsmarks, offering valuable insights into stance-taking and its (inter)subjective roles in Mandarin conversation interaction and beyond.
{"title":"Stance-taking and (inter)subjective roles of Mandarin zhende (ma/a)","authors":"Shuang He, Ling Zhou , Shaojie Zhang","doi":"10.1016/j.lingua.2025.103951","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.lingua.2025.103951","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This study explores the non-interrogative functions of the newsmark <em>zhende (ma/a)</em> (‘really’) in Mandarin conversation interaction, focusing on its stance-taking and (inter)subjective roles in systematically context-sensitive ways. Drawing on spontaneous conversational data and a discourse-pragmatic approach, we identify affective, evaluative, and alignment stances associated with <em>zhende (ma/a)</em> that extend beyond its epistemic function as a reaction to unexpected information and its affective role as an expression of surprise. The nuanced stance-taking activities reveal three key manifestations of (inter)subjectivity, primarily tied to the stance object targeted: (1) a device for involvement and rapport-building responding to irrelevant information; (2) an emotionally charged stance marker when addressing relevant information; and (3) a buffering mechanism for managing awkward moments, maintaining rapport in response to assessments directed at the <em>zhende (ma/a)</em> speaker. Additionally, the syntactic position of <em>zhende (ma/a)</em> also facilitates its intersubjective impact, particularly regarding its metadiscursive function. This study highlights the nuanced interplay between stance-taking and (inter)subjectivity and underscores the importance of contextual features in interpreting the non-interrogative functions of newsmarks, offering valuable insights into stance-taking and its (inter)subjective roles in Mandarin conversation interaction and beyond.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47955,"journal":{"name":"Lingua","volume":"323 ","pages":"Article 103951"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2025-05-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143947566","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-05-13DOI: 10.1016/j.lingua.2025.103948
Robert Fuchs , Xinyue Yao , Peter Collins , Adam Smith
Previous research has identified and studied a wide range of non-standard syntactic constructions in global varieties of English. However, there is currently a lack of large-scale corpus-based evidence on non-standard syntactic variation in English from a global perspective. The present study seeks to fill this gap through an analysis of a set of syntactic constructions across the fourteen L2 and six L1 varieties of English included in the Corpus of Global Web-based English, totalling 1.9 billion words. We conceptualise non-standard features as lying outside the “core” of the language that represents the object of description in English grammars, including those that might be regarded as “colloquial” or “vernacular”, such as there-existentials with singular agreement. The methodological approach is onomasiological, modelled on the alternation between non-standard features and corresponding standard forms. Across 28 morphosyntactic features drawn from eWAVE 3.0, a total of 289,827 non-standard and more than 37 million standard occurrences were analysed in a logistic mixed effects regression model. Register variation was accounted for by means of a co-variate for involved discourse following Biber’s Multidimensional Analysis. Results indicate a relatively low degree of non-standardness across both L1 and L2 varieties. The register dimension of involved discourse is the most important variable governing non-standard variation, followed by differences between world regions. These results were further confirmed by a hierarchical clustering model and a multidimensional scaling analysis.
{"title":"Non-standard morphosyntactic variation in L2 English varieties world-wide: a corpus-based study","authors":"Robert Fuchs , Xinyue Yao , Peter Collins , Adam Smith","doi":"10.1016/j.lingua.2025.103948","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.lingua.2025.103948","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Previous research has identified and studied a wide range of non-standard syntactic constructions in global varieties of English. However, there is currently a lack of large-scale corpus-based evidence on non-standard syntactic variation in English from a global perspective. The present study seeks to fill this gap through an analysis of a set of syntactic constructions across the fourteen L2 and six L1 varieties of English included in the <em>Corpus of Global Web-based English</em>, totalling 1.9 billion words. We conceptualise non-standard features as lying outside the “core” of the language that represents the object of description in English grammars, including those that might be regarded as “colloquial” or “vernacular”, such as <em>there</em>-existentials with singular agreement. The methodological approach is onomasiological, modelled on the alternation between non-standard features and corresponding standard forms. Across 28 morphosyntactic features drawn from eWAVE 3.0, a total of 289,827 non-standard and more than 37 million standard occurrences were analysed in a logistic mixed effects regression model. Register variation was accounted for by means of a co-variate for involved discourse following Biber’s Multidimensional Analysis. Results indicate a relatively low degree of non-standardness across both L1 and L2 varieties. The register dimension of involved discourse is the most important variable governing non-standard variation, followed by differences between world regions. These results were further confirmed by a hierarchical clustering model and a multidimensional scaling analysis.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47955,"journal":{"name":"Lingua","volume":"322 ","pages":"Article 103948"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2025-05-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143937320","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-05-12DOI: 10.1016/j.lingua.2025.103950
Nicholas Catasso
Present-day German adheres to the Verb-Second (V2) rule, generating the finite verb in V before relinearizing it to C, with only one constituent targeting Spec,CP in main clauses. However, recent studies have identified several mismatches between structural and linear syntax in the CP domain. While various proposals have addressed these individual patterns, configurations with multiple intrasentential phenomena that violate the V2 constraint have been largely neglected. This paper proposes a model within the cartographic framework to derive complex CP linearizations in German. This approach excludes polyadic – i.e., dyadic or multiple – fronting, integrates cyclic movement (internal Merge) and multiple base-generation (external Merge), and effectively applies the bottleneck effect to account for the observed derivations. The findings reveal that all possible linearizations are complex variants of the basic V2 pattern, offering a nuanced understanding of the CP domain’s structural complexities.
{"title":"Polyadic fronting does not exist in German (but crowded CPs do): Cyclic internal Merge and multiple external Merge in the left edge of the clause","authors":"Nicholas Catasso","doi":"10.1016/j.lingua.2025.103950","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.lingua.2025.103950","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Present-day German adheres to the Verb-Second (V2) rule, generating the finite verb in V before relinearizing it to C, with only one constituent targeting Spec,CP in main clauses. However, recent studies have identified several mismatches between structural and linear syntax in the CP domain. While various proposals have addressed these individual patterns, configurations with multiple intrasentential phenomena that violate the V2 constraint have been largely neglected. This paper proposes a model within the cartographic framework to derive complex CP linearizations in German. This approach excludes polyadic – i.e., dyadic or multiple – fronting, integrates cyclic movement (internal Merge) and multiple base-generation (external Merge), and effectively applies the bottleneck effect to account for the observed derivations. The findings reveal that all possible linearizations are complex variants of the basic V2 pattern, offering a nuanced understanding of the CP domain’s structural complexities.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47955,"journal":{"name":"Lingua","volume":"322 ","pages":"Article 103950"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2025-05-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143937321","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-04-30DOI: 10.1016/j.lingua.2025.103939
Pin Wang
For the most part Modern Chinese grammars treat coverbs as prepositions but acknowledge their grammaticalisation from verbs. This paper firstly provides a description of Chinese coverbal phrases and coverbs from a systemic functional perspective, taking as point of departure the system and structure of Chinese verbal groups. Secondly, it explores the functions that coverbal phrases realise at both clause and group ranks, and the conjunctive usage of coverbs in marking hypotactic clauses. Thirdly, this paper provides a classification of coverbs in Modern Chinese based on their relationship with the corresponding verbs. This systemic functional description supplements and complements existing Chinese grammars in multiple ways.
{"title":"Chinese coverbal phrases and coverbs: a systemic functional account","authors":"Pin Wang","doi":"10.1016/j.lingua.2025.103939","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.lingua.2025.103939","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>For the most part Modern Chinese grammars treat coverbs as prepositions but acknowledge their grammaticalisation from verbs. This paper firstly provides a description of Chinese coverbal phrases and coverbs from a systemic functional perspective, taking as point of departure the system and structure of Chinese verbal groups. Secondly, it explores the functions that coverbal phrases realise at both clause and group ranks, and the conjunctive usage of coverbs in marking hypotactic clauses. Thirdly, this paper provides a classification of coverbs in Modern Chinese based on their relationship with the corresponding verbs. This systemic functional description supplements and complements existing Chinese grammars in multiple ways.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47955,"journal":{"name":"Lingua","volume":"321 ","pages":"Article 103939"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2025-04-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143891015","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-04-26DOI: 10.1016/j.lingua.2025.103949
Nicola McNab , Irini Mavrou
This study investigates how emotions and moral stance influence evaluations of impoliteness between first language (L1) and second language (L2) English users, from an interdisciplinary perspective combining pragmatics, bilingualism, emotion research, and moral psychology. The study widens previous impoliteness research by focusing on both L1 and L2 users and analyses moral stance and emotions following a mixed methods approach. The study was preregistered prior to data collection and analysis. Fifty-five L1 English participants and 45 Spanish-speaking participants with L2 English watched video clips of workplace interactions and assessed the level of impoliteness in these videos. Moreover, the participants indicated the emotions they experienced after watching the video clips and completed the Moral Foundations Questionnaire. The results revealed that L2 users perceived higher levels of impoliteness. By contrast, emotional reactions to impoliteness did not significantly differ between L1 and L2 English users. Qualitative analysis of the participants’ emotions showed that these alluded to notions of moral order, with moral emotions being prevalent. The moral foundation of harm/care appeared to be the most prominent within impoliteness evaluations. In light of the above findings, this study suggests L2 (pragmatics) teaching should raise L2 learners’ awareness of the pesonal and psychological factors involved in impoliteness events, provide input on inferences from gesture, and draw on workplace interactions as a useful context for discussions on infelicitous interactions.
{"title":"Emotion and moral stance in evaluations of impoliteness in L1 and L2 from video clips of workplace interactions","authors":"Nicola McNab , Irini Mavrou","doi":"10.1016/j.lingua.2025.103949","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.lingua.2025.103949","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This study investigates how emotions and moral stance influence evaluations of impoliteness between first language (L1) and second language (L2) English users, from an interdisciplinary perspective combining pragmatics, bilingualism, emotion research, and moral psychology. The study widens previous impoliteness research by focusing on both L1 and L2 users and analyses moral stance and emotions following a mixed methods approach. The study was preregistered prior to data collection and analysis. Fifty-five L1 English participants and 45 Spanish-speaking participants with L2 English watched video clips of workplace interactions and assessed the level of impoliteness in these videos. Moreover, the participants indicated the emotions they experienced after watching the video clips and completed the Moral Foundations Questionnaire. The results revealed that L2 users perceived higher levels of impoliteness. By contrast, emotional reactions to impoliteness did not significantly differ between L1 and L2 English users. Qualitative analysis of the participants’ emotions showed that these alluded to notions of moral order, with moral emotions being prevalent. The moral foundation of harm/care appeared to be the most prominent within impoliteness evaluations. In light of the above findings, this study suggests L2 (pragmatics) teaching should raise L2 learners’ awareness of the pesonal and psychological factors involved in impoliteness events, provide input on inferences from gesture, and draw on workplace interactions as a useful context for discussions on infelicitous interactions.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47955,"journal":{"name":"Lingua","volume":"322 ","pages":"Article 103949"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2025-04-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143873286","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-04-24DOI: 10.1016/j.lingua.2025.103947
Steven Coats
This article examines the use of potentially offensive expressions, specifically “what the hell” and its euphemistic variants, in local government meetings across English-speaking countries. Two primary research questions are addressed: first, are there noticeable differences in the frequency of these expressions between countries and within regions? And second, how do euphemistic alternatives compare to “what the hell” in terms of emotional intensity and valence, both across and within national varieties? The study draws on data from three large, recent corpora of geolocated automatic speech recognition (ASR) transcripts and the corresponding underlying audio to explore the geographic distribution and emotional nuances of these expressions in various English-speaking countries, including the US, Canada, the UK, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand. To assess the emotionality of expressions, specifically anger, the speech emotion recognition model emotion2vec is employed. The findings provide insight into how the acceptability and emotional weight of “what the hell” and variants differ across regions. Additionally, the study demonstrates the potential of vector-based representations of speech in multimodal corpus analysis, while empirically validating theoretical claims in semantics related to pejoration and euphemism.
本文研究了在英语国家的地方政府会议上使用的潜在冒犯性表达，特别是“what the hell”及其委婉变体。两个主要的研究问题：首先，这些表达在国家之间和区域内的频率是否存在显著差异？其次，在情感强度和效价方面，无论是跨国家还是国内，委婉语的替代品与“什么鬼”相比如何？该研究利用了三个最新的大型地理位置自动语音识别（ASR）文本和相应的底层音频语料库的数据，以探索这些表达在不同英语国家（包括美国、加拿大、英国、爱尔兰、澳大利亚和新西兰）的地理分布和情感细微差别。为了评估表情的情绪性，特别是愤怒，我们使用了语音情绪识别模型emotion2vec。研究结果揭示了不同地区对“管他的”及其变体的接受程度和情感分量的差异。此外，该研究还展示了基于向量的语音表示在多模态语料库分析中的潜力，同时从经验上验证了与贬损和委婉语相关的语义理论主张。
{"title":"‘What the X’ in Anglophone government meetings: Areal distribution, emotionality, and euphemism","authors":"Steven Coats","doi":"10.1016/j.lingua.2025.103947","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.lingua.2025.103947","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This article examines the use of potentially offensive expressions, specifically “what the hell” and its euphemistic variants, in local government meetings across English-speaking countries. Two primary research questions are addressed: first, are there noticeable differences in the frequency of these expressions between countries and within regions? And second, how do euphemistic alternatives compare to “what the hell” in terms of emotional intensity and valence, both across and within national varieties? The study draws on data from three large, recent corpora of geolocated automatic speech recognition (ASR) transcripts and the corresponding underlying audio to explore the geographic distribution and emotional nuances of these expressions in various English-speaking countries, including the US, Canada, the UK, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand. To assess the emotionality of expressions, specifically anger, the speech emotion recognition model emotion2vec is employed. The findings provide insight into how the acceptability and emotional weight of “what the hell” and variants differ across regions. Additionally, the study demonstrates the potential of vector-based representations of speech in multimodal corpus analysis, while empirically validating theoretical claims in semantics related to pejoration and euphemism.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47955,"journal":{"name":"Lingua","volume":"321 ","pages":"Article 103947"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2025-04-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143864481","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-04-23DOI: 10.1016/j.lingua.2025.103946
Martin Schweinberger , Kate Burridge
This paper takes a corpus-based approach to study vulgar language in online communication across 20 English-speaking regions based on the Global Web-Based English Corpus (GloWbE). The identification of vulgarity combines word lists used in profanity detection with regular expressions to identify a wide range of vulgar elements including spelling variants and obscured forms. The results show a notable trend for inner circle L1-varieties to exhibit higher rates of vulgarity online compared to outer circle and L2-varieties. The results also show that inner circle varieties have lower adapted corrected type-token rations which indicates that inner circle variety speakers use more varied English vulgar forms compared with speakers from other circle varieties. In addition, there is a general register difference with vulgarity being more common in blog data compared with general web content. Finally, the results show that different regions exhibit preferences for specific vulgar lemmas feck being preferred in Ireland, cunt, in Britain, and ass(hole) in the United States. The findings are interpreted to show that cultural differences are reflected in region-specific preferences for vulgarity and that the creativity observed in inner circle varieties is linked to norm-setting compared to norm-reception associated with outer circle varieties.
{"title":"Vulgarity in online discourse around the English-speaking world","authors":"Martin Schweinberger , Kate Burridge","doi":"10.1016/j.lingua.2025.103946","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.lingua.2025.103946","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper takes a corpus-based approach to study vulgar language in online communication across 20 English-speaking regions based on the Global Web-Based English Corpus (GloWbE). The identification of vulgarity combines word lists used in profanity detection with regular expressions to identify a wide range of vulgar elements including spelling variants and obscured forms. The results show a notable trend for inner circle L1-varieties to exhibit higher rates of vulgarity online compared to outer circle and L2-varieties. The results also show that inner circle varieties have lower adapted corrected type-token rations which indicates that inner circle variety speakers use more varied English vulgar forms compared with speakers from other circle varieties. In addition, there is a general register difference with vulgarity being more common in blog data compared with general web content. Finally, the results show that different regions exhibit preferences for specific vulgar lemmas <em>feck</em> being preferred in Ireland, <em>cunt</em>, in Britain, and <em>ass(hole)</em> in the United States. The findings are interpreted to show that cultural differences are reflected in region-specific preferences for vulgarity and that the creativity observed in inner circle varieties is linked to norm-setting compared to norm-reception associated with outer circle varieties.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47955,"journal":{"name":"Lingua","volume":"321 ","pages":"Article 103946"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2025-04-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143864576","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-04-22DOI: 10.1016/j.lingua.2025.103935
Jing Hao
This paper examines the nominal realisations of activities in Mandarin Chinese history texts from a Systemic Functional Linguistic perspective, focusing specifically on texts that recount historical activities. Drawing on a distinction between experiential metaphors (i.e. metaphorical realisations of figures) and activity entities, the study investigates how these two resources function within text-wide language patterns. The analysis is conducted from a metafunctional perspective, exploring how the two resources interact with textual, interpersonal, and ideational meanings in the text. The findings reveal that both resources exhibit important characteristics across metafunctions. Textually, they present and presume meanings similarly in higher-level Themes, but differently in troughs and higher-level News. Interpersonally, they interact differently with evaluative resources. Ideationally, they function similarly in their relation to figures and sequences of figures within the unfolding text. These findings contrast with their distinctive metafunctional orientations (textual vs. ideational) previously recognised from a grammatical perspective.
{"title":"Nominalised Activities in Chinese History Texts: A Systemic Functional Linguistic Perspective","authors":"Jing Hao","doi":"10.1016/j.lingua.2025.103935","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.lingua.2025.103935","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper examines the nominal realisations of activities in Mandarin Chinese history texts from a Systemic Functional Linguistic perspective, focusing specifically on texts that recount historical activities. Drawing on a distinction between experiential metaphors (i.e. metaphorical realisations of figures) and activity entities, the study investigates how these two resources function within text-wide language patterns. The analysis is conducted from a metafunctional perspective, exploring how the two resources interact with textual, interpersonal, and ideational meanings in the text. The findings reveal that both resources exhibit important characteristics across metafunctions. Textually, they present and presume meanings similarly in higher-level Themes, but differently in troughs and higher-level News. Interpersonally, they interact differently with evaluative resources. Ideationally, they function similarly in their relation to figures and sequences of figures within the unfolding text. These findings contrast with their distinctive metafunctional orientations (textual vs. ideational) previously recognised from a grammatical perspective.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47955,"journal":{"name":"Lingua","volume":"320 ","pages":"Article 103935"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2025-04-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143855984","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-04-16DOI: 10.1016/j.lingua.2025.103937
Isabelle Chou , Kanglong Liu , Han Xu
Recognising translation as a site of language contact, this study utilises measures of dependency relations, namely dependency distance and dependency direction, to examine the influence of the source language in translation and how this influence is shaped by directionality and language pair. The data was obtained from a large-scale bidirectional multilingual corpus of original fiction and its translation across ten language pairs, with English serving as either the source or the target language in each pair. The findings reveal a balanced presence of source language influence in both translation directions, as shown by the patterns in variation of the mean dependency distance. However, this influence was not observed across all language pairs, which suggests that its manifestation was affected more by language pair than by directionality. At the same time, this study identifies a tendency for the characteristics of the translated fiction’s dependency direction to align with the word order convention of the target language, indicating that the influence of the source language is limited. Additionally, this study found that simplification, a widely recognised “translation universal”, may not be a unique property of translational language. Rather, it results from language contact, where the linguistic properties of the source language permeate the target language, causing the latter to reflect structural features of the original text.
{"title":"Language contact and translation: dependency relations as a lens for source language influence in fiction","authors":"Isabelle Chou , Kanglong Liu , Han Xu","doi":"10.1016/j.lingua.2025.103937","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.lingua.2025.103937","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Recognising translation as a site of language contact, this study utilises measures of dependency relations, namely dependency distance and dependency direction, to examine the influence of the source language in translation and how this influence is shaped by directionality and language pair. The data was obtained from a large-scale bidirectional multilingual corpus of original fiction and its translation across ten language pairs, with English serving as either the source or the target language in each pair. The findings reveal a balanced presence of source language influence in both translation directions, as shown by the patterns in variation of the mean dependency distance. However, this influence was not observed across all language pairs, which suggests that its manifestation was affected more by language pair than by directionality. At the same time, this study identifies a tendency for the characteristics of the translated fiction’s dependency direction to align with the word order convention of the target language, indicating that the influence of the source language is limited. Additionally, this study found that simplification, a widely recognised “translation universal”, may not be a unique property of translational language. Rather, it results from language contact, where the linguistic properties of the source language permeate the target language, causing the latter to reflect structural features of the original text.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47955,"journal":{"name":"Lingua","volume":"321 ","pages":"Article 103937"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2025-04-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143839264","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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