Journal Description
Languages
Languages
is an international, multidisciplinary, peer-reviewed open access journal on interdisciplinary studies of languages, and is published quarterly online by MDPI. The first issue has been released in 2016.
- Open Access— free for readers, with article processing charges (APC) paid by authors or their institutions.
- High Visibility: indexed within Scopus, ESCI (Web of Science), ERIH Plus, and other databases.
- Journal Rank: CiteScore - Q2 (Language and Linguistics)
- Rapid Publication: manuscripts are peer-reviewed and a first decision is provided to authors approximately 54 days after submission; acceptance to publication is undertaken in 10 days (median values for papers published in this journal in the first half of 2023).
- Recognition of Reviewers: reviewers who provide timely, thorough peer-review reports receive vouchers entitling them to a discount on the APC of their next publication in any MDPI journal, in appreciation of the work done.
Impact Factor:
0.9 (2022)
Latest Articles
Filipino Children’s Acquisition of Nominal and Verbal Markers in L1 and L2 Tagalog
Languages 2023, 8(3), 188; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages8030188 - 08 Aug 2023
Abstract
Western Austronesian languages, like Tagalog, have unique, complex voice systems that require the correct combinations of verbal and nominal markers, raising many questions about their learnability. In this article, we review the experimental and observational studies on both the L1 and L2 acquisition
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Western Austronesian languages, like Tagalog, have unique, complex voice systems that require the correct combinations of verbal and nominal markers, raising many questions about their learnability. In this article, we review the experimental and observational studies on both the L1 and L2 acquisition of Tagalog. The reviewed studies reveal error patterns that reflect the complex nature of the Tagalog voice system. The main goal of the article is to present a full picture of commission errors in young Filipino children’s expression of causation and agency in Tagalog by describing patterns of nominal marking and voice marking in L1 Tagalog and L2 Tagalog. It also aims to provide an overview of existing research, as well as characterize research on nominal and verbal acquisition, specifically in terms of research problems, data sources, and methodology. Additionally, we discuss the research gaps in at least fifty years’ worth of studies in the area from the 1960’s to the present, as well as ideas for future research to advance the state of the art.
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(This article belongs to the Special Issue Errors of Commission in Child Language)
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Combinatorial Productivity of Spanish Verbal Periphrases as an Indicator of Their Degree of Grammaticalization
by
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Languages 2023, 8(3), 187; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages8030187 - 07 Aug 2023
Abstract
Studies on the constitution of the Spanish periphrastic system show that there is a great ease with which verbal periphrases admit different lexical items in the second verb slot as they go through their grammaticalization process. However, it has not been sufficiently explored
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Studies on the constitution of the Spanish periphrastic system show that there is a great ease with which verbal periphrases admit different lexical items in the second verb slot as they go through their grammaticalization process. However, it has not been sufficiently explored whether the evolution of combinatorial patterns in near-synonymous periphrases follows similar grammaticalization paths. Adopting a constructionist, usage-based approach, we investigate the evolution of the so-called near-synonymous periphrases dejar de + inf and parar de + inf, as in Deja de/Para de gritar, ‘Stop shouting.’ More specifically, we discuss the semantic areas they cover, the functional distribution between the two throughout time, their evolution in terms of collostructional patterns, and their realized and potential productivity, paying special attention to the Aktionsart of the predicates in the Vinf slot. All tokens in the corpus were extracted from CORDE and analyzed in terms of morphosyntactic and semantic-pragmatic parameters, as well as contextual elements. We conduct a distinctive collexeme analysis to investigate which lexemes are strongly attracted or repelled by the Vinf slot in each construction. This analysis shows that the evolution of parar de + inf is not parallel to that of dejar de + inf and that there is a clear distribution of labor between the two constructions.
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(This article belongs to the Special Issue Grammaticalization across Languages, Levels and Frameworks)
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Exploring the Role of Phonological Environment in Evaluating Social Meaning: The Case of /s/ Aspiration in Puerto Rican Spanish
Languages 2023, 8(3), 186; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages8030186 - 04 Aug 2023
Abstract
Research in sociophonetic perception has suggested that linguistic factors influence the social meaning of a particular variant, such that the strength of social meaning appears to be mediated by factors like grammatical category or phonological environment. Here, we further investigate the impact of
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Research in sociophonetic perception has suggested that linguistic factors influence the social meaning of a particular variant, such that the strength of social meaning appears to be mediated by factors like grammatical category or phonological environment. Here, we further investigate the impact of linguistic factors on the perception of sociolinguistic variables by examining evaluations of /s/ aspiration in the speech of four male Puerto Rican Spanish speakers. We look at how evaluations of this variable pattern based on the phonological context (preconsonantal vs. prevocalic), the proportion of a given variant ([s] or [h]) in the stimuli, and the listener residence (Puerto Rico vs. mainland US). Our results replicate earlier work showing that /s/ realization contributes to status and masculinity ratings. However, we do not find evidence of an effect of incremental changes in the proportions of [s]:[h] variants in an utterance or an effect of listener residence. Critically, we do find that phonological context influences the evaluations of listeners: [s] is rated as less masculine than [h] in preconsonantal environments, but in prevocalic environments, there is no effect of variant. Given that [s] is rarely found in preconsonantal contexts in Puerto Rican Spanish, and even less so in male speech, this result is consistent with studies arguing that social meaning is stronger in marked contexts. Expected patterns for gender, phonological context, and dialect interact to make an [s] realization of preconsonantal /s/ particularly rare in male speech of this variety, which opens the door for more robust socioindexical meaning.
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(This article belongs to the Special Issue Social Meanings of Language Variation in Spanish)
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Culturally Specific Messaging and the Explanation of Contact in Impacted Bilinguals
Languages 2023, 8(3), 185; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages8030185 - 03 Aug 2023
Abstract
A sketch is offered of a framework that would abandon the familiar notion of a language and the accompanying question of whether it has changed under contact. The framework would focus instead on speakers and on the linguistic consequences of people contact. Speakers
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A sketch is offered of a framework that would abandon the familiar notion of a language and the accompanying question of whether it has changed under contact. The framework would focus instead on speakers and on the linguistic consequences of people contact. Speakers in contact settings are not failing or deviating from a language’s norm while attempting to say the same things that are said in non-contact settings; rather, they are succeeding at saying different things. New arrivals face vast differences in the conceptualization of referents between their home precursor setting and the new encounter setting. These differences in conceptualization give rise to large numbers of changes in what speakers say. In most cases, these new things they say are just that, new speech or new messaging with no change in the grammar. But in a minority of cases, the new messaging does have linguistic, that is, grammatical consequences. Changes in the grammars of people in contact thus result not only, and perhaps not primarily, from formal copying or modeling but are responses to new conceptualizations prevailing in the new environment. The distinction between expressions reflecting only new conceptualizations, and those reflecting new conceptualizations and new grammar carries theoretical implications for the way linguists think about the grammars of bilinguals. And it carries applied implications for the way educators think about the linguistic performance of bilingual students, especially in social settings where they are minoritized. Data are drawn from the speech of Latin Americans and their descendants in New York City and other U.S. locales.
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(This article belongs to the Special Issue Promoting Cross-Cultural Communication in Digital and Non-digital Environments: Language and Intercultural Interaction)
Open AccessArticle
Factivity-Alternating Attitude Verbs in Azeri
Languages 2023, 8(3), 184; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages8030184 - 01 Aug 2023
Abstract
Factivity alternations received at least two kinds of explanations in the literature: there are approaches that attribute the two readings to two different LFs and approaches that derive the presence/absence of a factive inference by appealing to general pragmatic mechanisms. In this paper
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Factivity alternations received at least two kinds of explanations in the literature: there are approaches that attribute the two readings to two different LFs and approaches that derive the presence/absence of a factive inference by appealing to general pragmatic mechanisms. In this paper I investigate verbs displaying two different kinds of factivity alternations in Azeri and argue for the former view of how factivity alternations emerge.
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(This article belongs to the Special Issue Theoretical Studies on Turkic Languages)
Open AccessArticle
When a Dual Marker Acts as a Paucal Marker: The Case of the Dual -e:n in Northern Rural Jordanian Arabic
Languages 2023, 8(3), 183; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages8030183 - 31 Jul 2023
Abstract
In this research paper, based on an acceptability judgment task, it is demonstrated that dual morphology can denote paucity in northern rural Jordanian Arabic (NRJA), asserting on Blanc and Brustad’s observation that some Arabic varieties have pseudo-dual (or unspecified dual), i.e., it may
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In this research paper, based on an acceptability judgment task, it is demonstrated that dual morphology can denote paucity in northern rural Jordanian Arabic (NRJA), asserting on Blanc and Brustad’s observation that some Arabic varieties have pseudo-dual (or unspecified dual), i.e., it may refer to numbers above two. It is shown that the dual morpheme -e:n in this dialect does not only refer to an exact (dual) number, but also to an approximative (paucal) number. This implies that the paucal category, which typically evolves from the plural category in natural languages, may likewise develop from the dual category. On this basis, the paucal is peculiar in Arabic, as it can be derived by (1) plural morphology as in Standard Arabic or (2) dual morphology, as in NRJA. In addition, the paper shows how the morphosyntax of the dual in NRJA yields either dual or paucal reading. Adopting Harbour’s number theory where the components of a number system are predicted by a set of bivalent number features under the number head #0, I show that the bivalent feature [±minimal] in the morphosyntax of the dual in NRJA is crucial to derive its two interpretations: [+minimal] yields the exact (dual) reading, whereas [-minimal] yields the approximative (paucal) reading. This analysis is expected to have intralingual usefulness. Specifically, it could be employed to plausibly derive the paucal category that is based on the dual category in other Arabic varieties, as descriptively reported in Blanc and Brustad’s studies. Furthermore, the observation that the dual category is the source of the paucal category has cross-linguistic implications. Particularly, it implies that the paucal category does not necessarily require the plural category to be derived in a language. Additionally, this observation asserts that languages tend to use lower numerals to assign a paucal reading to them, as is the case in French (e.g., deux ou trois).
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Open AccessArticle
Clitic Placement and the Grammaticalization of the Future and the Conditional in Old Catalan
by
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Languages 2023, 8(3), 182; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages8030182 - 28 Jul 2023
Abstract
The romance future and conditional tenses are the result of the grammaticalization of Latin periphrasis, mainly cantāre habeō. In some medieval Romance languages, including Catalan, two types of forms existed: synthetic forms (faré ‘I will do’) and analytical forms (fer-lo
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The romance future and conditional tenses are the result of the grammaticalization of Latin periphrasis, mainly cantāre habeō. In some medieval Romance languages, including Catalan, two types of forms existed: synthetic forms (faré ‘I will do’) and analytical forms (fer-lo he ‘I will do it’). Analytical forms do not present univerbation and are thus less grammaticalized than synthetic forms. The present work aims to study the distribution of synthetic and analytical forms diachronically. A diachronic corpus (11th c.–16th c.) was compiled to serve this purpose. According to the syntactic restrictions of clitic placement, analytical forms could appear in the same syntactic environments than synthetic forms with postverbal pronouns (faré-lo ‘I will do it’). Therefore, only those contexts are analysed to assess the degree of grammaticalization. Some recent works point out that the grammaticalization of future and conditional was more advanced in the eastern languages of the Iberian Peninsula, such as Catalan, than in the western ones. The results from our corpus confirm these differences. In addition, the data show another grammaticalization process: the evolution of clitic placement towards a fixed preverbal position.
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(This article belongs to the Special Issue Grammaticalization across Languages, Levels and Frameworks)
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The Interaction between Language Skills and Cross-Cultural Competences in Bilingual Programs
Languages 2023, 8(3), 181; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages8030181 - 27 Jul 2023
Abstract
Language and culture are intrinsically intertwined, and culture should not be considered as an expendable fifth skill in language teaching. Bilingual programs are expected to be a key element to enhance culture learning and to develop intercultural competence due to the extensive use
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Language and culture are intrinsically intertwined, and culture should not be considered as an expendable fifth skill in language teaching. Bilingual programs are expected to be a key element to enhance culture learning and to develop intercultural competence due to the extensive use of the L2. This study aimed at exploring the effects of bilingual programs for the development of the formerly mentioned skills in language learners. It also sought to contrast students’ insights with teachers’ perceptions on the implementation of bilingual programs and their effects on students’ language and culture learning. The sample consisted of 136 students and 35 Spanish teachers. The results should be carefully interpreted as they showed that there is no significant difference between the perception of bilingual and non-bilingual students in their development of intercultural competence and culture learning. Additionally, content teachers usually adhere to narratives of resistance towards CLIL programs. We concluded that the current implementation of bilingual programs should be specifically addressed. In this regard, it is important to focus on teacher training and to foster exchange programs for teachers and students. Moreover, addressing the availability of human and material resources is essential.
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(This article belongs to the Special Issue Promoting Cross-Cultural Communication in Digital and Non-digital Environments: Language and Intercultural Interaction)
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Bilingualism in Brazil: An Examination of Its Effect on the Formation of Individual Identities
Languages 2023, 8(3), 180; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages8030180 - 26 Jul 2023
Abstract
The 21st century has witnessed a substantial increase in research focused on the benefits of bilingualism for individuals. The aspects that have received the most attention have been executive functions. And communication skills. Less is known, however, about the noncognitive and nonlinguistic aspects
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The 21st century has witnessed a substantial increase in research focused on the benefits of bilingualism for individuals. The aspects that have received the most attention have been executive functions. And communication skills. Less is known, however, about the noncognitive and nonlinguistic aspects of bilingualism. Personality psychologists claim that personality is the result of a combination of nature-related and nurture-related factors, but the latter have not been sufficiently addressed in studies on bilingualism. Thus, to bridge this gap, the present contribution pursues this line of inquiry by adopting a quantitative approach to the examination of the self-perceived mobility, employability, and intercultural competence of participants who studied in a bilingual education program. A total of 835 respondents living in Brazil completed an online questionnaire. Mann–Whitney U and Wilcoxon W tests showed higher scores for bilingual graduates than for their nonbilingual counterparts on the three subscales. Correlation analyses revealed moderate-to-high positive correlations between bilingual graduates’ perception of their way of being and their way of life on the one hand, and among their self-perceived mobility, employability, and intercultural competence on the other. Likewise, the analyses showed statistically significant positive correlations between being proficient in more than one foreign language and the dimension of mobility. Our findings illustrate the influence that bilingualism/multilingualism exerts on factors that determine everyday life and corroborate and expand the research conducted in this strand. Avenues for further related research are discussed.
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(This article belongs to the Special Issue Promoting Cross-Cultural Communication in Digital and Non-digital Environments: Language and Intercultural Interaction)
Open AccessArticle
Negative Concord without Agree: Insights from German, Dutch and English Child Language
by
, , , , , and
Languages 2023, 8(3), 179; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages8030179 - 26 Jul 2023
Abstract
Children acquiring a non-negative concord language like English or German have been found to consistently interpret sentences with two negative elements in a negative concord manner as conveying a single semantic negation. Corpus-based investigations for English and German show that children also produce
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Children acquiring a non-negative concord language like English or German have been found to consistently interpret sentences with two negative elements in a negative concord manner as conveying a single semantic negation. Corpus-based investigations for English and German show that children also produce sentences with two negative elements but only a single negation meaning. As any approach to negative concord and negative indefinites needs to account for both the typological variation and the child data, we revisit the three most current syntactic Agree-based analyses, as well as a movement-based approach and show that they either have difficulties with the child data or face challenges in the adult language variation or both. As a consequence, we develop a novel analysis of negative concord and negative indefinites which relies on purely morphological operations applying to hierarchical semantic representations within a version of the Meaning First architecture of grammar. We will argue that the typological variation between the main three different types of languages as well as the children’s non adult-like behaviour fall out from this in a straightforward fashion while the downsides of the Agree- and the movement-based accounts are avoided.
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(This article belongs to the Special Issue Errors of Commission in Child Language)
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On Actuality Entailments, Causation, and Telicity in Balkar
Languages 2023, 8(3), 178; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages8030178 - 24 Jul 2023
Abstract
This paper presents a study of actuality entailments in Balkar (a dialect of Karachay-Balkar, Turkic). The study focuses on the deontic and causal meanings of four morphemes: two suffixes (the causative suffix and the suffix -al (‘can/may’)) and two verbs (bujur (‘order’)
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This paper presents a study of actuality entailments in Balkar (a dialect of Karachay-Balkar, Turkic). The study focuses on the deontic and causal meanings of four morphemes: two suffixes (the causative suffix and the suffix -al (‘can/may’)) and two verbs (bujur (‘order’) and qoj (‘allow’)). In the first half of the paper, I provide empirical support for three generalizations: (a) only causal modals can have actuality entailments (all universal and some existential causal modals); (b) actuality entailments arise whenever a causal modal has a telic interpretation, more precisely, when it is not embedded under an imperfective or a delimitative operator (c) existential but not universal causal modals trigger an anti-actuality entailment under negation. In the second half of the paper, I propose a theory of root modality within the framework of situation semantics. In this framework, root modals describe a situation (the anchor situation) and quantify over situations that stand in a particular semantic relation to it. The proposed Causal Modality Theory (CMT) consists of two assumptions: (a) Causal modals quantify over causal chains initiated by the counterparts of the anchor situation. (b) Some existential causal modals have a conditional presupposition: if any counterpart of the anchor situation caused another situation, then the anchor situation itself caused the same situation. The first assumption explains why all universal causal modals have actuality entailments and why existential causal modals trigger an anti-actuality entailment under negation. The second assumption predicts that some existential causal modals (the ones with the conditional presupposition) also trigger an actuality entailment. CMT treats causal modals as bi-eventive predicates, like (non-culminating) accomplishments. They describe two situations: the anchor situation and a situation caused by it. As a result, causal modals are predicted to behave like (non-culminating) accomplishments, namely, they are predicted to trigger actuality entailments if and only if they are not embedded under an imperfective or a delimitative operator.
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(This article belongs to the Special Issue Theoretical Studies on Turkic Languages)
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‘Good’ Is ‘Possible’: A Case Study of the Modal Uses of ‘Good’ in Shaoxing
by
and
Languages 2023, 8(3), 177; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages8030177 - 24 Jul 2023
Abstract
This paper sets out to investigate the modal uses of the lexeme hɒ3 ‘good’ in the Jidong Shaoxing variety of Wu and to reconstruct its grammaticalization pathway. Modal meanings of hɒ3 include circumstantial possibility, deontic possibility and necessity, and epistemic possibility.
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This paper sets out to investigate the modal uses of the lexeme hɒ3 ‘good’ in the Jidong Shaoxing variety of Wu and to reconstruct its grammaticalization pathway. Modal meanings of hɒ3 include circumstantial possibility, deontic possibility and necessity, and epistemic possibility. These meanings can be summarized as ‘can’, ‘may’, and ‘should’, respectively. The modal meanings of hɒ3 are derived from its meaning of ‘fit to’ rather than ‘good’. We propose here that hɒ3 first extended to express circumstantial possibility, and then further extended to denote deontic modality and participant-internal possibility in two separate directions: (i) circumstantial possibility > deontic modality, and (ii) circumstantial possibility > participant-internal possibility. The epistemic use of hɒ3 is proposed as the final stage of the lexeme’s modal extension.
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(This article belongs to the Special Issue Typology of Chinese Languages: One Name, Many Languages)
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Ancient Connections of Sinitic
Languages 2023, 8(3), 176; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages8030176 - 24 Jul 2023
Abstract
Six main alternative linkage proposals which involve the Sino-Tibetan family, including Sinitic and other language families of the East Asian area (Miao-Yao, Altaic/Transeurasian, Austroasiatic, Tai-Kadai, Austronesian) are briefly outlined. Using the standard techniques of comparative linguistics, a remote linkage between the Sino-Tibetan languages,
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Six main alternative linkage proposals which involve the Sino-Tibetan family, including Sinitic and other language families of the East Asian area (Miao-Yao, Altaic/Transeurasian, Austroasiatic, Tai-Kadai, Austronesian) are briefly outlined. Using the standard techniques of comparative linguistics, a remote linkage between the Sino-Tibetan languages, including Sinitic, the Yeniseian languages of Siberia, and the Na-Dene languages of northwest North America is demonstrated. This includes cognate core lexicon showing regular sound correspondences, morphological similarities of form and function, as well as similarities in social structure. The other proposals for linkages that connect Sinitic and other languages of the East Asian area appear not to be based on a genetic linguistic relationship but rather due to contact: millennia of loanwords from Sinitic into the languages of those families and some lexicon borrowed into Sinitic. More remains to be done to further document the status of the linkage between Sino-Tibetan and Dene-Yeniseian.
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(This article belongs to the Special Issue New Directions for Sino-Tibetan Linguistics in the Mid-21st Century)
Open AccessArticle
Are Stylistic Neologisms More Neological? A Corpus-Based Study of Lexical Innovations of Women and Men
Languages 2023, 8(3), 175; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages8030175 - 21 Jul 2023
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To deepen on the study of the concept of neologicity, an exhaustive review of the literature was carried out. Once the different parameters related to this concept were isolated, we realized that some of them were also used to determine the communicative function
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To deepen on the study of the concept of neologicity, an exhaustive review of the literature was carried out. Once the different parameters related to this concept were isolated, we realized that some of them were also used to determine the communicative function of neologisms. For this reason, first, we correlated the objective criteria to classify neologisms as prototypical of the denominative or the stylistic function with the parameters related to the neological quality. Second, we defined new criteria, both linguistic and chronological, to broaden the scope of our analysis. Afterwards, all the criteria were applied to a corpus of neologisms from newspaper articles and journalistic blogs in Spanish written by women and men. The results confirmed that neologisms with stylistic features tend to be more neological than denominative neologisms. Consequently, they are usually less frequent lexical units used in general or informal contexts. In addition, they tend to be the result of unproductive word formation rules that might contain subjective linguistic components and also tend to be more recent.
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Stereotypes in a Multilingual Film: A Case Study on Issues of Social Injustice
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Languages 2023, 8(3), 174; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages8030174 - 20 Jul 2023
Abstract
Films serve to (re-)create a ‘world’ within the mind of the audience. Additionally, they introduce or reinforce stereotypes portrayed as a reality of the modern world through multiplexity and the strategic use of foreign languages, dialects, and non-native language use, among others. Various
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Films serve to (re-)create a ‘world’ within the mind of the audience. Additionally, they introduce or reinforce stereotypes portrayed as a reality of the modern world through multiplexity and the strategic use of foreign languages, dialects, and non-native language use, among others. Various concepts of stereotypes can be explored in fiction feature films, especially as film characters are often based on different kinds of stereotypes. Audiovisual texts tend to operate as cultural constructs that reflect and convey certain ideologies within an industry that holds the power to marginalize or belittle voices. Multilingual films highlight the contrasts among and within cultures; hence, they can further exacerbate the marginalization and stereotyping of different cultures and nations, ultimately having damaging effects on society’s perception of different stereotypes, such as race and gender groups, which is shown with the examples from a multilingual film. This article analyzes the marginalization and stereotypes in a Hollywoodian multilingual film through film analysis and critical theory. By doing so, this study aims to provide insight into the stereotypes that have been depicted, covering various clichés and stereotypes, including cultural, gender, political, and religious stereotypes. Furthermore, it seeks to dissect the societal consequences that arise from detrimental portrayals of stereotyping in a purposeful selection of an American multilingual film.
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(This article belongs to the Special Issue New Trends, Challenges and Discoveries in the Translation of Multilingualism in Fiction)
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Examining Oral (Dis)Fluency in—uh– —Spanish as a Heritage Language
Languages 2023, 8(3), 173; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages8030173 - 19 Jul 2023
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Silence, self-interruptions, or hesitations in spontaneous speech are often interpreted as markers of oral disfluency as they lead to difficulties in delivering a message and in processing it. The main purpose of this study is to examine how such markers of discourse structure
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Silence, self-interruptions, or hesitations in spontaneous speech are often interpreted as markers of oral disfluency as they lead to difficulties in delivering a message and in processing it. The main purpose of this study is to examine how such markers of discourse structure factor into the overall oral fluency of 58 US Spanish heritage language learners enrolled in Spanish classes at the college level. Participants were grouped according to age of onset of bilingualism (i.e., sequential or simultaneous) and the order in which they acquired each language (i.e., English first or Spanish first). After completing a semi-controlled oral production task, in both Spanish and English, breakdown pauses and repair pauses were extracted and then analyzed in terms of quantity, quality, and mean duration. Our findings revealed (i) that all groups produced shorter pauses in English, their dominant language; and (ii) that all experimental groups behaved very similarly in Spanish despite having had different experiences with bilingualism growing up. Albeit tentatively, given the sample size and the nature of the present study, we take these findings to suggest that type of heritage bilingualism and the order in which each language was acquired does not seem to play a significant role in terms of production of breakdown and repair pauses.
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Open AccessArticle
Vowel Phonotactics in Modern Korean Phonology: A Corpus-Based Approach
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Languages 2023, 8(3), 172; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages8030172 - 19 Jul 2023
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Ideophones are believed to exhibit distinct phonotactic patterns compared to regular language, in their expressiveness. Vowel harmony can be observed in ideophones in Modern Korean. However, over time, Korean has gradually lost its regular vowel harmony process, due to the influx of foreign
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Ideophones are believed to exhibit distinct phonotactic patterns compared to regular language, in their expressiveness. Vowel harmony can be observed in ideophones in Modern Korean. However, over time, Korean has gradually lost its regular vowel harmony process, due to the influx of foreign words, especially from Chinese, and historical sound changes like the vowel shift of /ɔ/ to different vowel types. Previous studies have mainly focused on the vowel patterns of ideophones without necessarily comparing the degree of vowel harmony between ideophones and other lexical strata. This lack of comparison makes it challenging to assess the level of corruption in vowel harmony specifically within ideophones, relative to other components of the lexicon. To address this gap, this paper examines vowel patterns extracted from the online dictionary of Korean, developed by the National Institute of the Korean Language (NIKL) with contributions from anonymous users and specialists. The analysis specifically explores vowel patterns across lexical items with varying syllable lengths, focusing on the lexical stratum, adverbial parts of speech, and the semantic meaning of the adverbials. This examination aims to assess the regularity of vowel sequencing and determine the extent of purity in vowel harmony patterns. The quantitative analysis of the compiled dictionary provides valuable insights into the degree of irregular phonotactics and its relationship to sound symbolism in Modern Korean.
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Ver-Based Evidential Re/Positioning Strategies in Conservative Digital Newspaper Readers’ Comments on Controversial Immigration Policies in Spanish
Languages 2023, 8(3), 171; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages8030171 - 19 Jul 2023
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The emergence of political polarization in Europe has intensified divisions among citizens regarding immigration, inequality, and racism. The present paper investigates the use of ver-based (“see”-based) evidentiality in positioning and repositioning strategies by conservative Spanish readers of the digital newspapers ABC and
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The emergence of political polarization in Europe has intensified divisions among citizens regarding immigration, inequality, and racism. The present paper investigates the use of ver-based (“see”-based) evidentiality in positioning and repositioning strategies by conservative Spanish readers of the digital newspapers ABC and La Razón. The study focuses on their responses to two different controversial measures involving immigrants and refugees taken in by the Spanish government. Such measures relate to the Aquarius (2018) and the Open Arms (2019) incidents. The analysis will be corpus, content-based, and grounded in positioning theory and theories of visual evidential perception. The ultimate aim is to explore the instances of ver-based evidentiality introducing positioning and repositioning strategies that are present in the corpus. Subsequently, we will classify and analyze the viewpoints expressed by conservative readers through these ver-based evidential markers.
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Open AccessArticle
On the Prosodic Exponence of Universal Quantification in Turkish Relative Clauses
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Languages 2023, 8(3), 170; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages8030170 - 17 Jul 2023
Abstract
We identify a tonal contour in Turkish that expresses universal quantification. We show that the distribution of this contour is restricted to noun phrases modified by relative clauses and that it expresses universal quantification over situations rather than over individuals. We describe the
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We identify a tonal contour in Turkish that expresses universal quantification. We show that the distribution of this contour is restricted to noun phrases modified by relative clauses and that it expresses universal quantification over situations rather than over individuals. We describe the prosodic structure of the contour, unexpected from the perspective of the phonology of Turkish intonation, and identify it as a tonal morpheme. We define it, and provide a compositional analysis of the sentences that contain it.
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(This article belongs to the Special Issue Theoretical Studies on Turkic Languages)
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Lexical Borrowings from Spanish into Wayuunaiki: Contact, Classification, and Motivations
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Languages 2023, 8(3), 169; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages8030169 - 14 Jul 2023
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This study identifies and analyzes lexical borrowings from Spanish into Wayuunaiki (an Arawak language spoken in Colombia and Venezuela). The analysis, based on bibliographic documentation and fieldwork, focuses on the borrowability and semantic domains of Spanish loanwords and the factors motivating Spanish loanword
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This study identifies and analyzes lexical borrowings from Spanish into Wayuunaiki (an Arawak language spoken in Colombia and Venezuela). The analysis, based on bibliographic documentation and fieldwork, focuses on the borrowability and semantic domains of Spanish loanwords and the factors motivating Spanish loanword adoption into Wayuunaiki. The results show that, despite the typological distance, Wayuunaiki is prone to adopting lexical items from Spanish, as evident in the moderate number of lexical borrowings identified. A key motivating factor for Spanish loanword incorporation is Wayuunaiki speakers’ need for lexical items to refer to new concepts adopted from the dominant Spanish-speaking culture. This phenomenon is partly due to the contact dynamics between Wayuunaiki and Spanish. Besides expanding on the description of the Wayuunaiki language and its contact with Spanish, this study contributes to identifying factors and motivations favoring the adoption of loanwords between typologically distant languages.
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