Pub Date : 2023-12-12DOI: 10.1515/lingvan-2022-0106
Abdel-Rahman Abu Helal
The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, it proposes a compositional semantic analysis for approximative kaada in Classical Arabic which has the property of being a clause-level rather than predicate-level operator: [KAADA α] is paraphrased as [α is false but there exists β close to α such that β is true]. The analysis is based on the integrated semantics of Penka (Penka, Doris. 2006. Almost there: The meaning of almost. Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 10. 275–286) in which the negativity component of kaada is interpreted as part of its lexical meaning within a situation semantics framework. It also makes a novel use of the concept of semantic closeness among situations in terms of the intuitively appealing dimension of the relative completion of an event. Second, the paper presents and analyzes an instance of a puzzle noted by most descriptive Classical Arabic grammarians (see, for example, al-Ahmad, Ayman. 2021. Dalalit KAADA l-manfiah fi l-Qurʾaan l-kareem. Journal of the Association of Arab Universities for Literature 9(2). 838–859) in which negated kaada has an interpretation where the negativity implication disappears altogether. The paper offers a solution to the puzzle based on a previous suggestion made by Kilbourn-Ceron (Kilbourn-Ceron, Oriana. 2016. Embedded exhaustification: Evidence from almost. Journal of Semantics 34(1). 43–60) in which an instance of embedded exhaustification appears to apply in approximatives in certain contexts in such a way that the negativity inference is obscured.
本文有两个目的。首先，本文提出了古典阿拉伯语中近似 kaada 的构成语义分析，该语义分析具有分句级运算符而非谓语级运算符的特性：[KAADA α]被解析为[α 是假的，但存在接近 α 的 β，这样 β 就是真的]。该分析基于 Penka 的综合语义（Penka, Doris.2006.Almost there：几乎的意义》。Sinn und Bedeutung 10.275-286），其中 kaada 的否定成分在情境语义框架内被解释为其词汇意义的一部分。论文还从事件的相对完成这一直观吸引人的维度出发，新颖地使用了情境间语义接近性的概念。其次，本文介绍并分析了大多数描述性古典阿拉伯语语法学家都注意到的一个难题的实例（例如，参见 al-Ahmad，Ayman.2021.Dalalit KAADA l-manfiah fi l-Qurʾaan l-kareem.Journal of the Association of Arab Universities for Literature 9(2).838-859）中，否定的 kaada 有一种解释，其中的否定含义完全消失。本文根据基尔伯恩-塞隆（Kilbourn-Ceron，Oriana.2016.嵌入式穷竭：来自几乎的证据》。语义学杂志》34（1）。43-60），其中嵌入式穷竭的一个实例在某些语境中似乎适用于近似词，从而使否定推理变得模糊不清。
{"title":"On the semantics of (negated) approximative kaada in Classical Arabic: a case for embedded exhaustification","authors":"Abdel-Rahman Abu Helal","doi":"10.1515/lingvan-2022-0106","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/lingvan-2022-0106","url":null,"abstract":"The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, it proposes a compositional semantic analysis for approximative <jats:italic>kaada</jats:italic> in Classical Arabic which has the property of being a clause-level rather than predicate-level operator: [KAADA α] is paraphrased as [α is false but there exists β close to α such that β is true]. The analysis is based on the integrated semantics of Penka (Penka, Doris. 2006. Almost there: The meaning of almost. <jats:italic>Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung</jats:italic> 10. 275–286) in which the negativity component of <jats:italic>kaada</jats:italic> is interpreted as part of its lexical meaning within a situation semantics framework. It also makes a novel use of the concept of <jats:italic>semantic closeness</jats:italic> among situations in terms of the intuitively appealing dimension of the relative completion of an event. Second, the paper presents and analyzes an instance of a puzzle noted by most descriptive Classical Arabic grammarians (see, for example, al-Ahmad, Ayman. 2021. Dalalit KAADA l-manfiah fi l-Qurʾaan l-kareem. <jats:italic>Journal of the Association of Arab Universities for Literature</jats:italic> 9(2). 838–859) in which negated <jats:italic>kaada</jats:italic> has an interpretation where the negativity implication disappears altogether. The paper offers a solution to the puzzle based on a previous suggestion made by Kilbourn-Ceron (Kilbourn-Ceron, Oriana. 2016. Embedded exhaustification: Evidence from <jats:italic>almost</jats:italic>. <jats:italic>Journal of Semantics</jats:italic> 34(1). 43–60) in which an instance of embedded exhaustification appears to apply in approximatives in certain contexts in such a way that the negativity inference is obscured.","PeriodicalId":55960,"journal":{"name":"Linguistics Vanguard","volume":"120 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-12-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138580503","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-12-11DOI: 10.1515/lingvan-2022-0122
Hengbin Yan, Yinghui Li
A central task in empirical and quantitative language studies is the extraction of linguistic constructions important to linguistic theory and application. The great number and variety of such constructions increasingly necessitates computer-assisted extraction, which often proves challenging as it entails a simultaneous analysis of multiple layers of linguistic information latent in large-scale corpora. To address this, we present Constraction, an open-source tool for the automatic extraction and interactive exploration of linguistic constructions from arbitrary textual corpora. Constraction features a generic algorithm that integrates customizable layers of linguistic annotation (e.g., lexical, syntactic, and semantic) to identify constructional patterns of varying sizes and abstraction levels. Its browser-based interface allows users to configure various extraction parameters and enables visual, interactive exploration of the extracted patterns. We demonstrate the utility of Constraction through case studies and discuss its potential applications in language research and pedagogy.
{"title":"Constraction: a tool for the automatic extraction and interactive exploration of linguistic constructions","authors":"Hengbin Yan, Yinghui Li","doi":"10.1515/lingvan-2022-0122","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/lingvan-2022-0122","url":null,"abstract":"A central task in empirical and quantitative language studies is the extraction of linguistic constructions important to linguistic theory and application. The great number and variety of such constructions increasingly necessitates computer-assisted extraction, which often proves challenging as it entails a simultaneous analysis of multiple layers of linguistic information latent in large-scale corpora. To address this, we present Constraction, an open-source tool for the automatic extraction and interactive exploration of linguistic constructions from arbitrary textual corpora. Constraction features a generic algorithm that integrates customizable layers of linguistic annotation (e.g., lexical, syntactic, and semantic) to identify constructional patterns of varying sizes and abstraction levels. Its browser-based interface allows users to configure various extraction parameters and enables visual, interactive exploration of the extracted patterns. We demonstrate the utility of Constraction through case studies and discuss its potential applications in language research and pedagogy.","PeriodicalId":55960,"journal":{"name":"Linguistics Vanguard","volume":"97 4 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-12-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138573997","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-11-29DOI: 10.1515/lingvan-2022-0125
Pablo Gamallo
The neural architectures of language models are becoming increasingly complex, especially that of Transformers, based on the attention mechanism. Although their application to numerous natural language processing tasks has proven to be very fruitful, they continue to be models with little or no interpretability and explainability. One of the tasks for which they are best suited is the encoding of the contextual sense of words using contextualized embeddings. In this paper we propose a transparent, interpretable, and linguistically motivated strategy for encoding the contextual sense of words by modeling semantic compositionality. Particular attention is given to dependency relations and semantic notions such as selection preferences and paradigmatic classes. A partial implementation of the proposed model is carried out and compared with Transformer-based architectures for a given semantic task, namely the similarity calculation of word senses in context. The results obtained show that it is possible to be competitive with linguistically motivated models instead of using the black boxes underlying complex neural architectures.
{"title":"Contextualized word senses: from attention to compositionality","authors":"Pablo Gamallo","doi":"10.1515/lingvan-2022-0125","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/lingvan-2022-0125","url":null,"abstract":"The neural architectures of language models are becoming increasingly complex, especially that of Transformers, based on the attention mechanism. Although their application to numerous natural language processing tasks has proven to be very fruitful, they continue to be models with little or no interpretability and explainability. One of the tasks for which they are best suited is the encoding of the contextual sense of words using contextualized embeddings. In this paper we propose a transparent, interpretable, and linguistically motivated strategy for encoding the contextual sense of words by modeling semantic compositionality. Particular attention is given to dependency relations and semantic notions such as selection preferences and paradigmatic classes. A partial implementation of the proposed model is carried out and compared with Transformer-based architectures for a given semantic task, namely the similarity calculation of word senses in context. The results obtained show that it is possible to be competitive with linguistically motivated models instead of using the black boxes underlying complex neural architectures.","PeriodicalId":55960,"journal":{"name":"Linguistics Vanguard","volume":"507 2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-11-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138506196","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-11-24DOI: 10.1515/lingvan-2022-0086
Joshua Wilson Black, Jennifer Hay, Lynn Clark, James Brand
We analyse variation in vowel production within monologues produced by speakers in a quiet, well-controlled environment. Using principal component analysis (PCA) and generalized additive mixed models (GAMMs), applied to a large corpus of naturalistic recordings of New Zealand English speakers, we show that the first formant of monophthongs varies significantly with variation in a speaker’s relative amplitude. We also find that amplitude variation is used, potentially agentively, to mark the beginning and ending of topical sections within single-speaker monologues. These results have significant methodological consequences for the study of vocalic variation in the context of research on speaker style and language variation and change. While laboratory research has shown a connection between variation in F1 and amplitude in loud environments or with distant interlocutors, this has not been seen in quiet environments with unscripted speech of the sort often used in sociolinguistcs. We argue that taking account of this variation is an important challenge for both within-speaker investigation of stylistic covariation and across-speaker investigation. In the latter case we recommend, as a minimal step, the inclusion of a measure of relative amplitude within regression models.
{"title":"The overlooked effect of amplitude on within-speaker vowel variation","authors":"Joshua Wilson Black, Jennifer Hay, Lynn Clark, James Brand","doi":"10.1515/lingvan-2022-0086","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/lingvan-2022-0086","url":null,"abstract":"We analyse variation in vowel production within monologues produced by speakers in a quiet, well-controlled environment. Using principal component analysis (PCA) and generalized additive mixed models (GAMMs), applied to a large corpus of naturalistic recordings of New Zealand English speakers, we show that the first formant of monophthongs varies significantly with variation in a speaker’s relative amplitude. We also find that amplitude variation is used, potentially agentively, to mark the beginning and ending of topical sections within single-speaker monologues. These results have significant methodological consequences for the study of vocalic variation in the context of research on speaker style and language variation and change. While laboratory research has shown a connection between variation in F1 and amplitude in loud environments or with distant interlocutors, this has not been seen in quiet environments with unscripted speech of the sort often used in sociolinguistcs. We argue that taking account of this variation is an important challenge for both within-speaker investigation of stylistic covariation and across-speaker investigation. In the latter case we recommend, as a minimal step, the inclusion of a measure of relative amplitude within regression models.","PeriodicalId":55960,"journal":{"name":"Linguistics Vanguard","volume":"509 4","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-11-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138506195","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-11-22DOI: 10.1515/lingvan-2023-0029
Christina Sanchez-Stockhammer
Since George Lucas’s film A New Hope was first screened in 1977, the Star Wars saga has become a pop-culture phenomenon incorporating films, videogames, books, merchandise, and a quasi-religious philosophy, but linguistic research on Star Wars is scarce and has mainly focused on language use in the films. There is as yet no investigation of the impact of Star Wars on the English language, and the present study fills this gap using corpus-linguistic methods to investigate the extent to which characteristic words and constructions from the Star Wars universe have become established in English. Five Star Wars-derived items included in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), namely Jedi, Padawan, lightsabre (with spelling variants), Yoda, and the characteristic construction to the dark side were analysed regarding their frequency of occurrence in four corpora of present-day English (COCA, COHA, BNC, BNC Spoken 2014) and coded regarding their level of independence from the original films. The results show that over one-third of the uses of the investigated Star Wars-derived items are innovative (like the BNC example Other imbibers have gone over to the dark side of beer, rejecting the pasteurised lager produced by the breweries) and thus well integrated into the English language.
{"title":"The impact of Star Wars on the English language: Star Wars-derived words and constructions in present-day English corpora","authors":"Christina Sanchez-Stockhammer","doi":"10.1515/lingvan-2023-0029","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/lingvan-2023-0029","url":null,"abstract":"Since George Lucas’s film <jats:italic>A New Hope</jats:italic> was first screened in 1977, the <jats:italic>Star Wars</jats:italic> saga has become a pop-culture phenomenon incorporating films, videogames, books, merchandise, and a quasi-religious philosophy, but linguistic research on <jats:italic>Star Wars</jats:italic> is scarce and has mainly focused on language use in the films. There is as yet no investigation of the impact of <jats:italic>Star Wars</jats:italic> on the English language, and the present study fills this gap using corpus-linguistic methods to investigate the extent to which characteristic words and constructions from the <jats:italic>Star Wars</jats:italic> universe have become established in English. Five <jats:italic>Star Wars</jats:italic>-derived items included in the <jats:italic>Oxford English Dictionary</jats:italic> (<jats:italic>OED</jats:italic>), namely <jats:italic>Jedi</jats:italic>, <jats:italic>Padawan</jats:italic>, <jats:italic>lightsabre</jats:italic> (with spelling variants), <jats:italic>Yoda</jats:italic>, and the characteristic construction <jats:italic>to the dark side</jats:italic> were analysed regarding their frequency of occurrence in four corpora of present-day English (COCA, COHA, BNC, BNC Spoken 2014) and coded regarding their level of independence from the original films. The results show that over one-third of the uses of the investigated <jats:italic>Star Wars</jats:italic>-derived items are innovative (like the BNC example <jats:italic>Other imbibers have gone over to the dark side of beer, rejecting the pasteurised lager produced by the breweries</jats:italic>) and thus well integrated into the English language.","PeriodicalId":55960,"journal":{"name":"Linguistics Vanguard","volume":"509 15","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-11-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138506173","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-11-15DOI: 10.1515/lingvan-2023-0006
Peta M. Freestone, Jessica Kruk, Lauren Gawne
Abstract Research on emblems to date has not drawn on corpus methods that use public data. In this paper, we use corpus methods to explore the use of original fictional gestures in the real world. We look at two examples from popular science fiction, the Vulcan salute from Star Trek and the three-finger salute from The Hunger Games . First, a Twitter corpus of the Vulcan salute emoji shows that it is used to represent Star Trek fandom and wider nerd culture, alongside its use as a greeting. Second, a global news corpus shows the three-finger salute has come to be used as a pro-democracy protest gesture across political and cultural boundaries in South East Asia. These corpus studies show different trajectories for the two gestures, with the three-finger salute escaping the confines of its fictional world, while the Vulcan salute has come to stand in as a reference to the media it originated from. We conclude with a reflection on the opportunities, challenges, and limitations of bringing corpus methods to gesture studies.
{"title":"From <i>Star Trek</i> to <i>The Hunger Games</i>: emblem gestures in science fiction and their uptake in popular culture","authors":"Peta M. Freestone, Jessica Kruk, Lauren Gawne","doi":"10.1515/lingvan-2023-0006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/lingvan-2023-0006","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Research on emblems to date has not drawn on corpus methods that use public data. In this paper, we use corpus methods to explore the use of original fictional gestures in the real world. We look at two examples from popular science fiction, the Vulcan salute from Star Trek and the three-finger salute from The Hunger Games . First, a Twitter corpus of the Vulcan salute emoji shows that it is used to represent Star Trek fandom and wider nerd culture, alongside its use as a greeting. Second, a global news corpus shows the three-finger salute has come to be used as a pro-democracy protest gesture across political and cultural boundaries in South East Asia. These corpus studies show different trajectories for the two gestures, with the three-finger salute escaping the confines of its fictional world, while the Vulcan salute has come to stand in as a reference to the media it originated from. We conclude with a reflection on the opportunities, challenges, and limitations of bringing corpus methods to gesture studies.","PeriodicalId":55960,"journal":{"name":"Linguistics Vanguard","volume":"4 2","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136229682","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-11-15DOI: 10.1515/lingvan-2023-0023
Tanja Behrens
This article investigates the language of men and women in Star Trek: The Original Series and Star Trek: Discovery through corpus analysis. To that end, the transcripts of 13 episodes of The Original Series and five episodes of Discovery were analyzed. More specifically, this paper focuses on clause types, particularly interrogatives and imperatives, as well as interruptions and certain recurring phrases. Results indicate that the language of men and women is indicative of more gender equality in Discovery than in The Original Series.
本文采用语料库分析的方法对《星际迷航:原系列》和《星际迷航:发现号》中的男女语言进行了研究。为此，我们分析了13集《the Original Series》和5集《Discovery》的文字记录。更具体地说，本文侧重于从句类型，特别是疑问句和祈使句，以及中断和某些重复短语。结果表明，在《发现》中，男性和女性的语言表现出比《原始系列》中更多的性别平等。
{"title":"The language of men and women in Star Trek: The Original Series and Star Trek: Discovery","authors":"Tanja Behrens","doi":"10.1515/lingvan-2023-0023","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/lingvan-2023-0023","url":null,"abstract":"This article investigates the language of men and women in <jats:italic>Star Trek: The Original Series</jats:italic> and <jats:italic>Star Trek: Discovery</jats:italic> through corpus analysis. To that end, the transcripts of 13 episodes of <jats:italic>The Original Series</jats:italic> and five episodes of <jats:italic>Discovery</jats:italic> were analyzed. More specifically, this paper focuses on clause types, particularly interrogatives and imperatives, as well as interruptions and certain recurring phrases. Results indicate that the language of men and women is indicative of more gender equality in <jats:italic>Discovery</jats:italic> than in <jats:italic>The Original Series</jats:italic>.","PeriodicalId":55960,"journal":{"name":"Linguistics Vanguard","volume":"509 8","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-11-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138506194","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-11-10DOI: 10.1515/lingvan-2023-0011
Matt Gee
Abstract As can be witnessed in projects such as The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction (Prucher, Jeff. 2007. Brave new words: The Oxford dictionary of science fiction . Oxford: Oxford University Press), science fiction has been fertile ground for the creation of new words and concepts. Whereas the aforementioned dictionary was constructed by eliciting examples and citations from volunteers, this paper presents an initial foray into data-driven methods for uncovering lexis unique to science fiction. Words unique to science fiction texts are extracted by comparing a science fiction corpus against the British National Corpus (BNC Consortium. 2007. The British National Corpus, XML edition . Oxford Text Archive. http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12024/2554 (accessed 29 June 2022)) to produce a list of 306 neologisms from 74 texts. In addition, this study seeks to examine the ways in which authors impart the meaning of such words to the reader, drawing on frameworks of semantic word relations and work in cognitive linguistics. This reveals the use of definitions and glosses by the authors, both in narration and direct speech, co-occurrence with synonyms, and the drip-feeding of attributes pertaining to the concept being referenced. In addition, characters can be shown to struggle with the concepts to which neologisms refer, allowing authors to explore themes of alienation and other-worldliness.
{"title":"“There was much new to grok”: an analysis of word coinage in science fiction literature","authors":"Matt Gee","doi":"10.1515/lingvan-2023-0011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/lingvan-2023-0011","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract As can be witnessed in projects such as The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction (Prucher, Jeff. 2007. Brave new words: The Oxford dictionary of science fiction . Oxford: Oxford University Press), science fiction has been fertile ground for the creation of new words and concepts. Whereas the aforementioned dictionary was constructed by eliciting examples and citations from volunteers, this paper presents an initial foray into data-driven methods for uncovering lexis unique to science fiction. Words unique to science fiction texts are extracted by comparing a science fiction corpus against the British National Corpus (BNC Consortium. 2007. The British National Corpus, XML edition . Oxford Text Archive. http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12024/2554 (accessed 29 June 2022)) to produce a list of 306 neologisms from 74 texts. In addition, this study seeks to examine the ways in which authors impart the meaning of such words to the reader, drawing on frameworks of semantic word relations and work in cognitive linguistics. This reveals the use of definitions and glosses by the authors, both in narration and direct speech, co-occurrence with synonyms, and the drip-feeding of attributes pertaining to the concept being referenced. In addition, characters can be shown to struggle with the concepts to which neologisms refer, allowing authors to explore themes of alienation and other-worldliness.","PeriodicalId":55960,"journal":{"name":"Linguistics Vanguard","volume":"55 22","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135091620","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract Firefly is a TV series that aired in 2002 and 2003 in the United States. The series belongs to the space western subgenre, which allies science fiction and western tropes by layering, in this case, a dystopian society, space travel, standoffs in desolate landscapes, and saloon brawls. This juxtaposition of genres is reflected in the language of Firefly ’s characters in three ways: world-specific slang, Chinese code-switching, and features evoking Southern American English. This study explores the latter, employing quantitative methods used in variationist sociolinguistics. Using a corpus of all episodes of the series and the film Serenity (2005), we show that features reminiscent of Southern varieties of English, specifically nasal fronting and the use of ain’t , are stratified according to the social realities of the world of Firefly . Nonstandard linguistic variants are used to represent rebel smugglers as opposed to characters representing valued professions. This pattern contributes to world-building in Firefly by indexing divisions between the superpower-controlled territories and the recently settled edge of the universe. The use of realistically constrained Southern linguistic features draws upon present-day notions of linguistic (non)standardness to indicate marginality. Firefly therefore relies on its audience’s linguistic knowledge of the real world to create its fictional one.
{"title":"“So, I trucked out to the border, learned to say <i>ain’t</i>, came to find work”: the sociolinguistics of <i>Firefly</i>","authors":"Catherine Laliberté, Melanie Keller, Diana Wengler","doi":"10.1515/lingvan-2023-0013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/lingvan-2023-0013","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Firefly is a TV series that aired in 2002 and 2003 in the United States. The series belongs to the space western subgenre, which allies science fiction and western tropes by layering, in this case, a dystopian society, space travel, standoffs in desolate landscapes, and saloon brawls. This juxtaposition of genres is reflected in the language of Firefly ’s characters in three ways: world-specific slang, Chinese code-switching, and features evoking Southern American English. This study explores the latter, employing quantitative methods used in variationist sociolinguistics. Using a corpus of all episodes of the series and the film Serenity (2005), we show that features reminiscent of Southern varieties of English, specifically nasal fronting and the use of ain’t , are stratified according to the social realities of the world of Firefly . Nonstandard linguistic variants are used to represent rebel smugglers as opposed to characters representing valued professions. This pattern contributes to world-building in Firefly by indexing divisions between the superpower-controlled territories and the recently settled edge of the universe. The use of realistically constrained Southern linguistic features draws upon present-day notions of linguistic (non)standardness to indicate marginality. Firefly therefore relies on its audience’s linguistic knowledge of the real world to create its fictional one.","PeriodicalId":55960,"journal":{"name":"Linguistics Vanguard","volume":"55 24","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135091618","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-11-07DOI: 10.1515/lingvan-2023-0027
Delin Deng, Fenqi Wang
Abstract Based on data drawn from two corpora collected in Orléans, France, in two waves (ESLO 1, 1968–1971; ESLO 2, 2008–) over a 40-year period, this paper investigated the use of quoi as a discourse marker (DM) in the speech of 234 French native speakers. Our results indicate that the DM quoi has increased in frequency in the more recent corpus. The distribution of its discursive functions has changed between the two corpora. Meanwhile, we also demonstrate that the DM quoi is mainly used in final position and this tendency continues to increase in ESLO 2. Regarding the relation between function and particle position, the planning function is the only function favored by medial position in ESLO 1, while in ESLO 2, the quantification function also becomes one of the favored functions in this position. We suggest that this might indicate potential competition for the same position. Meanwhile, we also point out that the benchmarking function is quasi-categorically used in final position in ESLO 2. The relation between functions and positions changes between the two corpora.
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