Pub Date : 2024-04-07DOI: 10.3390/languages9040133
Rita Faria
The point of departure for this study is an incident in 2020 when a football manager testifying in a Lisbon court used the pronoun address você and was reprimanded. With the aid of corpus linguistics, we qualitatively analyse the comments (understood as metacomments) that this case generated on media outlets and social media. The main conclusion is that the sociocultural foundations of EP address are polarised and unstable based on the following: the nexus between forms of address and the expression of (im)politeness is often rejected, with concerns that a complex system of address might impede an egalitarian society; despite this, discernment remains a core facet, expressed in the concern of finding appropriate sociolinguistic rules so as to arrive at forms understood as intrinsically (im)polite. Furthermore, a binary T/V dimension does not apply to the EP system, and although a N(neutral) dimension should be added, the polarised perceptions of EP address preclude clear candidates not only for the N platform but also, to an extent, for the V dimension. Fifty years after the 1974 ‘Carnation’ Revolution that initiated the transition to democracy in Portugal, EP conceptualisations of address show that sociocultural concerns for an egalitarian society coexist with persistent concerns for hierarchy and rules.
{"title":"Perceptions of Forms of Address in European Portuguese in Online Metadiscourse or What Happens When You Use você in Court","authors":"Rita Faria","doi":"10.3390/languages9040133","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3390/languages9040133","url":null,"abstract":"The point of departure for this study is an incident in 2020 when a football manager testifying in a Lisbon court used the pronoun address você and was reprimanded. With the aid of corpus linguistics, we qualitatively analyse the comments (understood as metacomments) that this case generated on media outlets and social media. The main conclusion is that the sociocultural foundations of EP address are polarised and unstable based on the following: the nexus between forms of address and the expression of (im)politeness is often rejected, with concerns that a complex system of address might impede an egalitarian society; despite this, discernment remains a core facet, expressed in the concern of finding appropriate sociolinguistic rules so as to arrive at forms understood as intrinsically (im)polite. Furthermore, a binary T/V dimension does not apply to the EP system, and although a N(neutral) dimension should be added, the polarised perceptions of EP address preclude clear candidates not only for the N platform but also, to an extent, for the V dimension. Fifty years after the 1974 ‘Carnation’ Revolution that initiated the transition to democracy in Portugal, EP conceptualisations of address show that sociocultural concerns for an egalitarian society coexist with persistent concerns for hierarchy and rules.","PeriodicalId":52329,"journal":{"name":"Languages","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2024-04-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140732748","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}
Pub Date : 2024-04-03DOI: 10.3390/languages9040132
Wílmar López-Barrios
This study explores the extent to which Palenquero/Spanish bilinguals, a population that is said to have a residual high tone of African origin, keep their two languages temporally and intonationally distinct across statements. While creole languages that emerged from the contact of African and European languages, such as Palenquero, may develop hybrid prosodic systems with tones from substrate languages, and stress from the majority language, language-specific prosody might be expected to converge or simplify over the course of time. As prosodic convergence seems to be inescapable under Palenquero’s circumstances, which factors could support language-specific prosody in this population, if there are any? Two-hundred and thirty-four five-syllable statements were elicited through a discourse completion task, with the participation of ten Palenquero/Spanish bilinguals, in two unilingual sessions. Both phrase-final lengthening and F0 contours were assessed using linear mixed-effects models testing their association with final stress, language, and generation. F0 contours were dimensionally reduced using functional principal component analysis. Despite the strong similarities between the two languages, results indicate that both groups keep their two languages intonationally distinct using plateau-shaped contours in Palenquero initial rises followed by steeper declinations in Spanish. However, elderly bilinguals implement penultimate lengthening language-specifically, being more pronounced in Palenquero. Adults, in contrast, do not show this distinction. In addition to this, elderly speakers show hyperarticulation in Spanish intonation, increasing the difference between their languages. This leads us to believe that adults exhibit a more simplified prosodic system between their languages, relative to elderly bilinguals. In spite of such differences, both generations seem to have the same underlying process (perhaps a substrate effect) driving plateau-shaped intonation in Palenquero, which enhances language differentiation.
{"title":"Language-Specific Prosody in Statements of Palenquero/Spanish Bilinguals","authors":"Wílmar López-Barrios","doi":"10.3390/languages9040132","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3390/languages9040132","url":null,"abstract":"This study explores the extent to which Palenquero/Spanish bilinguals, a population that is said to have a residual high tone of African origin, keep their two languages temporally and intonationally distinct across statements. While creole languages that emerged from the contact of African and European languages, such as Palenquero, may develop hybrid prosodic systems with tones from substrate languages, and stress from the majority language, language-specific prosody might be expected to converge or simplify over the course of time. As prosodic convergence seems to be inescapable under Palenquero’s circumstances, which factors could support language-specific prosody in this population, if there are any? Two-hundred and thirty-four five-syllable statements were elicited through a discourse completion task, with the participation of ten Palenquero/Spanish bilinguals, in two unilingual sessions. Both phrase-final lengthening and F0 contours were assessed using linear mixed-effects models testing their association with final stress, language, and generation. F0 contours were dimensionally reduced using functional principal component analysis. Despite the strong similarities between the two languages, results indicate that both groups keep their two languages intonationally distinct using plateau-shaped contours in Palenquero initial rises followed by steeper declinations in Spanish. However, elderly bilinguals implement penultimate lengthening language-specifically, being more pronounced in Palenquero. Adults, in contrast, do not show this distinction. In addition to this, elderly speakers show hyperarticulation in Spanish intonation, increasing the difference between their languages. This leads us to believe that adults exhibit a more simplified prosodic system between their languages, relative to elderly bilinguals. In spite of such differences, both generations seem to have the same underlying process (perhaps a substrate effect) driving plateau-shaped intonation in Palenquero, which enhances language differentiation.","PeriodicalId":52329,"journal":{"name":"Languages","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2024-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140747133","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}
Pub Date : 2024-04-02DOI: 10.3390/languages9040131
Jason D. Smith
The distinction between weak and strong islands has been extensively explored in the literature from both a descriptive and analytical perspective. In this paper, I document and analyze island constructions and constraints in Mende, an understudied Mande language spoken in Sierra Leone. Mende has both weak islands (left branch and wh-islands) and strong islands (adjunct clauses, sentential subjects, and coordinate structures). Intriguingly, it has a third class of islands, that I call mixed islands which show a subject–non-subject asymmetry in allowing for movement out of relative clauses, only when they modify the subject. As such, subject-modifying RCs cannot be classified as (strong/weak) islands in Mende. This is the first systematic work on islands and island constraints in the Mande language family, and, as such, it brings novel data from an understudied language family to bear on our understanding of A-bar dependencies and the study of island escape in African languages. It also calls into question a neat paradigm of cross-linguistic island constraints. Importantly, this work also lays down a baseline for future research on island constraints in the broader Mande language family. In order to discuss island constraints, this paper also lays out the first analysis of relative clauses in Mende, while integrating new research on the left periphery, focus constructions, and wh-constructions.
文献从描述和分析的角度广泛探讨了弱岛和强岛的区别。在本文中，我记录并分析了 Mende 语中的孤岛结构和限制条件，Mende 语是一种在塞拉利昂使用的未被充分研究的曼德语。门德语既有弱岛（左分支和词岛），也有强岛（从句、句主语和坐标结构）。耐人寻味的是，它还有第三类岛屿，我称之为混合岛屿（mixed islands），它们表现出主语与非主语的不对称，只有在修饰主语时才允许从相对从句中移出。因此，在门德语中，修饰主语的 RC 不能归类为（强/弱）岛屿。这是对曼德语系中的岛屿和岛屿限制进行的首次系统研究，因此，它为我们对非洲语言中的A-bar依赖关系和岛屿逃逸研究的理解带来了来自一个未被充分研究的语系的新数据。它还对跨语言岛屿限制的整齐范式提出了质疑。重要的是，这项工作还为今后在更广泛的曼德语系中研究岛屿限制奠定了基础。为了讨论岛屿限制，本文还首次对曼德语中的相对从句进行了分析，同时整合了有关左边缘、焦点结构和 wh 结构的新研究。
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Pub Date : 2024-04-01DOI: 10.3390/languages9040127
S. Korsah, Andrew Murphy
The precise nature of Ā-dependencies that terminate in a pronoun has been a long-standing subject of cross-linguistic research. Traditionally, it has been assumed that there are two derivational strategies to form resumptive Ā-dependencies: movement and base generation. Island configurations have played a crucial role in determining which derivational strategy is employed in a given language, as islands effects are expected to arise from dependencies created by movement but not by base generation. The body of cross-linguistic research on resumption has shown that the situation is more complicated once other diagnostics are taken into account, as languages can have mixed resumption profiles. In this paper, we discuss resumption in Ā-dependencies in Akan, a Kwa language spoken in Ghana, and illustrate that, despite their general insensitivity to islands, resumptive dependencies also show many classic hallmarks of movement. We situate these findings in the broader context of a general understanding of resumption cross-linguistically and discuss how the conflicting diagnostics might be reconciled with a movement-based analysis.
{"title":"The Absence of Islands in Akan: The Role of Resumption","authors":"S. Korsah, Andrew Murphy","doi":"10.3390/languages9040127","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3390/languages9040127","url":null,"abstract":"The precise nature of Ā-dependencies that terminate in a pronoun has been a long-standing subject of cross-linguistic research. Traditionally, it has been assumed that there are two derivational strategies to form resumptive Ā-dependencies: movement and base generation. Island configurations have played a crucial role in determining which derivational strategy is employed in a given language, as islands effects are expected to arise from dependencies created by movement but not by base generation. The body of cross-linguistic research on resumption has shown that the situation is more complicated once other diagnostics are taken into account, as languages can have mixed resumption profiles. In this paper, we discuss resumption in Ā-dependencies in Akan, a Kwa language spoken in Ghana, and illustrate that, despite their general insensitivity to islands, resumptive dependencies also show many classic hallmarks of movement. We situate these findings in the broader context of a general understanding of resumption cross-linguistically and discuss how the conflicting diagnostics might be reconciled with a movement-based analysis.","PeriodicalId":52329,"journal":{"name":"Languages","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2024-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140772374","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}
Pub Date : 2024-04-01DOI: 10.3390/languages9040126
Olesya Kisselev, Irina Y. Dubinina, Galina Paquette
The challenges faced by heritage language (HL) learners in mastering spelling and orthography are well-documented. Despite these documented difficulties, this aspect of HL linguistic knowledge has received limited attention from HL researchers. Beyond instructional implications, the study of spelling and orthography in HL speakers holds significance to building a finer understanding of the nature of heritage languages, since the development of orthographic skills is intricately linked to the knowledge of phonology and morphology as well as to metalinguistic awareness in these two areas. The study presented in this paper attempts to contribute to this area of research by turning its attention to orthographic skills of Russian heritage learners with English as their dominant language. The corpus-based research presented here categorizes orthographic errors in adjectival endings in hand-written essays produced by college-age HL learners of Russian of various writing proficiency levels and attempts to provide preliminary explanations for the source of these errors. While this paper is exploratory in nature and limited in scope by focusing only on adjectival endings, our results emphasize the need for further exploration in this underrepresented area to enhance our understanding of heritage language development and improve instructional strategies.
{"title":"A Corpus-Based Study on Orthographic Errors of Russian Heritage Learners and Their Implications for Linguistic Research and Language Teaching","authors":"Olesya Kisselev, Irina Y. Dubinina, Galina Paquette","doi":"10.3390/languages9040126","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3390/languages9040126","url":null,"abstract":"The challenges faced by heritage language (HL) learners in mastering spelling and orthography are well-documented. Despite these documented difficulties, this aspect of HL linguistic knowledge has received limited attention from HL researchers. Beyond instructional implications, the study of spelling and orthography in HL speakers holds significance to building a finer understanding of the nature of heritage languages, since the development of orthographic skills is intricately linked to the knowledge of phonology and morphology as well as to metalinguistic awareness in these two areas. The study presented in this paper attempts to contribute to this area of research by turning its attention to orthographic skills of Russian heritage learners with English as their dominant language. The corpus-based research presented here categorizes orthographic errors in adjectival endings in hand-written essays produced by college-age HL learners of Russian of various writing proficiency levels and attempts to provide preliminary explanations for the source of these errors. While this paper is exploratory in nature and limited in scope by focusing only on adjectival endings, our results emphasize the need for further exploration in this underrepresented area to enhance our understanding of heritage language development and improve instructional strategies.","PeriodicalId":52329,"journal":{"name":"Languages","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2024-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140792680","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}
Pub Date : 2024-04-01DOI: 10.3390/languages9040128
Kristy Beers Fägersten, Karyn Stapleton, Minna Hjort
In this paper, we consider the censorship of public swear word usage as a function of, and continued maintenance of, taboo with a focus on L1 and LX swearing and its management. In research with multilingual speakers, first-language swear words are consistently perceived as more taboo, and thus more emotional/powerful than equivalent words from a second or third language. While the public use of English-language swear words may be subject to censorship in Anglophone contexts, it is not censored to the same extent in LX contexts. On the other hand, L1 swear words are censored. Such perceptions of differences in strength between one’s L1 and LX languages also seem to affect the work of language professionals: translators’ tendency to self-censor may at least in part be explained by this bias. The existence of a two-tier system of swearing and censorship serves to reinvigorate L1 swear words, while diminishing the power of English swear words. We thus examine how censorship works as a means of maintaining and/or attenuating taboo, potentially moderating the power of swearing itself in cross-linguistic and multilingual contexts.
{"title":"Censorship and Taboo Maintenance in L1 and LX Swearing","authors":"Kristy Beers Fägersten, Karyn Stapleton, Minna Hjort","doi":"10.3390/languages9040128","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3390/languages9040128","url":null,"abstract":"In this paper, we consider the censorship of public swear word usage as a function of, and continued maintenance of, taboo with a focus on L1 and LX swearing and its management. In research with multilingual speakers, first-language swear words are consistently perceived as more taboo, and thus more emotional/powerful than equivalent words from a second or third language. While the public use of English-language swear words may be subject to censorship in Anglophone contexts, it is not censored to the same extent in LX contexts. On the other hand, L1 swear words are censored. Such perceptions of differences in strength between one’s L1 and LX languages also seem to affect the work of language professionals: translators’ tendency to self-censor may at least in part be explained by this bias. The existence of a two-tier system of swearing and censorship serves to reinvigorate L1 swear words, while diminishing the power of English swear words. We thus examine how censorship works as a means of maintaining and/or attenuating taboo, potentially moderating the power of swearing itself in cross-linguistic and multilingual contexts.","PeriodicalId":52329,"journal":{"name":"Languages","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2024-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140786816","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}
This study aims to examine whether a crosslinguistic influence (CLI) is exerted on the referring expressions of the spoken narratives of Japanese–English bilingual children in different discourse contexts. Thirteen early bilingual (school-age) children separately presented Japanese and English narratives for a wordless picture book and a speechless video clip. Further, seven Japanese and nine English monolingual children participated as controls. The linguistic devices that the children adopted to introduce, reintroduce, and maintain the topic were compared with those of their monolingual controls to detect any CLI. As predicted, CLI for English on Japanese was observed but not vice versa. In Japanese, bilinguals utilize significantly more noun phrases (NPs) compared with their monolingual counterparts. More crucially, this was observed only in the referent reintroduction context, indicating that only discourse contexts that require the integration of much pragmatic information may be vulnerable to English influence. Null forms are barely utilized in English narratives; thus, no influence from Japanese was observed. We present the referential choice patterns in the elicited spoken narratives of bilingual school-age children acquiring an under-researched language pair. By controlling for the discourse context, we demonstrate that CLI is more likely to manifest in the reintroduction context. These findings offer additional evidence for the interface and structural overlap hypothesis, further highlighting the criticality of considering information structure as an influencing condition.
{"title":"Is Referent Reintroduction More Vulnerable to Crosslinguistic Influence? An Analysis of Referential Choice among Japanese–English Bilingual Children","authors":"Satomi Mishina-Mori, Yuki Nakano, Yuri Jody Yujobo, Yumiko Kawanishi","doi":"10.3390/languages9040120","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3390/languages9040120","url":null,"abstract":"This study aims to examine whether a crosslinguistic influence (CLI) is exerted on the referring expressions of the spoken narratives of Japanese–English bilingual children in different discourse contexts. Thirteen early bilingual (school-age) children separately presented Japanese and English narratives for a wordless picture book and a speechless video clip. Further, seven Japanese and nine English monolingual children participated as controls. The linguistic devices that the children adopted to introduce, reintroduce, and maintain the topic were compared with those of their monolingual controls to detect any CLI. As predicted, CLI for English on Japanese was observed but not vice versa. In Japanese, bilinguals utilize significantly more noun phrases (NPs) compared with their monolingual counterparts. More crucially, this was observed only in the referent reintroduction context, indicating that only discourse contexts that require the integration of much pragmatic information may be vulnerable to English influence. Null forms are barely utilized in English narratives; thus, no influence from Japanese was observed. We present the referential choice patterns in the elicited spoken narratives of bilingual school-age children acquiring an under-researched language pair. By controlling for the discourse context, we demonstrate that CLI is more likely to manifest in the reintroduction context. These findings offer additional evidence for the interface and structural overlap hypothesis, further highlighting the criticality of considering information structure as an influencing condition.","PeriodicalId":52329,"journal":{"name":"Languages","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2024-03-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140375743","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}
Pub Date : 2024-03-27DOI: 10.3390/languages9040121
Vanessa Bonato, Giorgio Maria Di Nunzio, Federica Vezzani
Semic analysis is a linguistic technique aimed at methodically factorizing the meaning of terms into a collection of minimum non-decomposable atoms of meaning. In this study, we propose a methodology targeted at enhancing the systematicity of semic analysis of medical terminology in order to increase the quality of the creation of the set of atoms of meaning and improve the identification of concepts, as well as enhance specialized domain studies. Our approach is based on: (1) a semi-automatic domain-specific corpus-based extraction of semes, (2) the application of the property of termhood to address the diaphasic and the diastratic variations of language, (3) the automatic lemmatization of semes, and (4) seme weighting to establish the order of semes in the sememe. The paper explores the distinction between denotative and connotative semes, offering insights into polysemy and polyreferentiality in medical terminology.
{"title":"A Novel Approach to Semic Analysis: Extraction of Atoms of Meaning to Study Polysemy and Polyreferentiality","authors":"Vanessa Bonato, Giorgio Maria Di Nunzio, Federica Vezzani","doi":"10.3390/languages9040121","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3390/languages9040121","url":null,"abstract":"Semic analysis is a linguistic technique aimed at methodically factorizing the meaning of terms into a collection of minimum non-decomposable atoms of meaning. In this study, we propose a methodology targeted at enhancing the systematicity of semic analysis of medical terminology in order to increase the quality of the creation of the set of atoms of meaning and improve the identification of concepts, as well as enhance specialized domain studies. Our approach is based on: (1) a semi-automatic domain-specific corpus-based extraction of semes, (2) the application of the property of termhood to address the diaphasic and the diastratic variations of language, (3) the automatic lemmatization of semes, and (4) seme weighting to establish the order of semes in the sememe. The paper explores the distinction between denotative and connotative semes, offering insights into polysemy and polyreferentiality in medical terminology.","PeriodicalId":52329,"journal":{"name":"Languages","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2024-03-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140377125","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}
Pub Date : 2024-03-26DOI: 10.3390/languages9040117
M. Zimmermann, Constantine Kouankem
This paper discusses the structural realisation of contrastive focus in the Grassfields Bantu language Bamileke Mǝ̀dʉ́mbà, yet another language with grammatically optional focus fronting. We show that the realisation of contrastive focus in Mǝ̀dʉ́mbà is by default marked in situ with the morphological focus marker á. We further show that á introduces an additional, not-at-issue exhaustivity inference as part of its lexical meaning. Taken together, this means that two often-discussed interpretive triggers of grammatically optional focus fronting, namely, contrastivity and exhaustivity, are not responsible for triggering Mǝ̀dʉ́mbà’s focus left-dislocation. Rather, the main semantic contribution of focus fronting consists in triggering an existence presupposition, a discourse-semantic effect well known from other focus–background bipartitions, possibly in combination with other, softer discourse-semantic effects, such as the special emphasis required in cases of discourse unexpectedness.
本文讨论了草场班图语 Bamileke M̀dʉ́mbà 中对比焦点的结构实现，这是另一种在语法上可选择焦点前置的语言。我们的研究表明，在 Mǝ̀dʉ́mbà，对比焦点的实现默认情况下是用形态焦点标记 á 就地标记的。我们进一步证明，á 作为其词义的一部分，引入了一个额外的、无关紧要的穷竭性推理。综上所述，这意味着语法上可选的焦点前置的两个经常被讨论的解释性触发因素，即对比性和穷竭性，并不是触发 M̀dʉ́mbà 焦点左移的原因。相反，焦点前置的主要语义贡献在于引发存在预设，这是其他焦点-背景二分法中众所周知的话语语义效果，可能与其他更柔和的话语语义效果结合在一起，如话语意外性情况下所需的特别强调。
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Pub Date : 2024-03-26DOI: 10.3390/languages9040116
Rania Habib
The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region represents a rich tapestry of languages, cultures, and political, religious, and societal dynamics [...]
中东和北非（MENA）地区汇集了丰富的语言、文化以及政治、宗教和社会动态 [...] 。
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