Cross Linguistic Studies

As part of a major ongoing project, we consider and compare contemporary patterns of address pronoun use in four major European languages-French, German, Italian and Swedish. We are specifically interested in two major aspects: intralingual behaviour, that ...

This paper discusses the status of Romanian tenses with respect to the cross-linguistic typology which distinguishes between Sequence of Tense (SOT) and non-SOT languages. The major difference between SOT languages (English) and non-SOT languages (Japanese/Russian) is that in the former, past under past yields a simultaneous reading whereas in the latter, present under past yields a simultaneous construal. On traditional tense analyses, the simultaneous construals in SOT languages arise via a “null” (past) tense, while in non-SOT languages, simultaneous construals arise via either a “null” tense (Japanese) or a “shifted indexical” present tense (Russian). I examine the distribution of Romanian past and present in subordinate contexts and show that (i) past always expresses anteriority and (ii) present is indexical under past and the realization of a “null” tense under a matrix future. I discuss the simultaneous construal of the Romanian present in complement clauses in the light of ...

Regarding the acquisition of English as an additional language in heritage contexts, research has shown that different bilingual heritage groups cannot make use of their previous bilingual experience to the same extent. For example, in the context of Germany, Maluch et al. (2015) document larger achievement gains for Chinese-German and Polish-German bilingual students in comparison to Arabic-German and Turkish-German students. The latter Turkish-German group of students especially has frequently been associated with lower educational attainment when compared to other groups. The present study offers a different picture based on an analysis of English proficiency measured in Russian-German (n = 237) and Turkish-German (n = 320) bilingual heritage groups. We divide the bilingual students into three cohorts based on their scoring in a visual-spatial cognitive ability test. Using structural equation modelling, we assess the impact of German as the majority language as well as the students' heritage language on their achievement in English. Results document a monotonic increase in the impact of German from low to high cognitive achievement groups. Moreover, the two bilingual groups are practically indistinguishable, but we do see a negative effect of the Russian-German group among the students with comparably low cognitive abilities. Heritage languages show inconsistent effects on English achievement. We argue that the study context matters and that one should avoid generalizing from single studies to the general behavior of specific social groups. This point is even more relevant as we control for socioeconomic status, proficiency in the majority language and heritage language, as well as cognitive ability.

This paper is an analysis of idioms containing the name of the animal (animalistic phraseology) in Polish and Croatian and animal lexemes that can have the function of negative expressions of man – zooinvective. Attention is paid to anthropocentric treatment of animals in phraseology, using them to negative evaluation human traits and behaviors, such as: stupidity, cruelty, stubbornness, too much sex drive, gluttony, drunkenness, falsehood, dishonesty, ugliness, awkwardness. Animalistic phraseology also pays attention to the aspect of bad treatment of pets (dog, cat) and farm animals (horse, ox, donkey, domestic fowl). The phenomenon of negative treatment of some animals may be a manifestation a kind of “hate speech,” because it favors the creation and consolidation of negative stereotypes and cultural portraits of some representatives of the fauna world.

In order to investigate listeners’ perceptual patterns regarding segments from an unfamiliar language, researchers commonly employ perceptual assimilation tasks. These tasks investigate the perceptual similarity of non-native sounds to L1 sounds, but do not provide information on the perceived similarity among non-native sounds. In order to examine how German vowels are perceived by naive American English listeners, both in their similarity to L1 vowels and to each other, this study employs a perceptual assimilation task and a free classification task, a tool previously used for investigating perceived (dis-)similarities of stimuli. The perceptual assimilation results largely replicate previous findings on American English assimilation of German vowels; however, the free classification results suggest that assimilation patterns are not reliable indicators of the German vowels’ perceptual similarity to each other. These results indicate that free classification offers an efficient me...

The growing interdisciplinary research field of psycholinguistics is in constant need of new and up-to-date tools which will allow researchers to answer complex questions, but also expand on languages other than English, which dominates the field. One type of such tools are picture datasets which provide naming norms for everyday objects. However, existing databases tend to be small in terms of the number of items they include, and have also been normed in a limited number of languages, despite the recent boom in multilingualism research. In this paper we present the Multilingual Picture (Multipic) database, containing naming norms and familiarity scores for 500 coloured pictures, in thirty-two languages or language varieties from around the world. The data was validated with standard methods that have been used for existing picture datasets. This is the first dataset to provide naming norms, and translation equivalents, for such a variety of languages; as such, it will be of partic...

Sections 1–3 provide a brief introduction to the emergence and consolidation of analytic philosophy in Korea, as reflected by the training and works of individual philosophers as well as by research and publication trends and the areas covered by philosophy journals, societies, and associations. Section 4 distinguishes between three types of philosophy that might aptly be labeled “Asian analytic philosophy.” Section 5 offers some brief remarks concerning the value and significance of these types of philosophy.

The article is co-authored with Yeollim Bae, Jungkyun Kim, Young Sung Kim, and Seong Soo Park.

The full PDF for the special issue in which the article was published is available (open access) here: https://cdn.ymaws.com/www.apaonline.org/resource/collection/2EAF6689-4B0D-4CCB-9DC6-FB926D8FF530/AsianV23n2.pdf

Advances in computer-assisted linguistic research have been greatly influential in reshaping linguistic research. With the increasing availability of interconnected datasets created and curated by researchers, more and more interwoven questions can now be investigated. Such advances, however, are bringing high requirements in terms of rigorousness for preparing and curating datasets. Here we present CLICS, a Database of Cross-Linguistic Colexifications (CLICS). CLICS tackles interconnected interdisciplinary research questions about the colexification of words across semantic categories in the world’s languages, and show-cases best practices for preparing data for cross-linguistic research. This is done by addressing shortcomings of an earlier version of the database, CLICS2, and by supplying an updated version with CLICS3, which massively increases the size and scope of the project. We provide tools and guidelines for this purpose and discuss insights resulting from organizing stude...

This review discusses the corpus study of Francis Pang that enquires into the degree of predictability of the correlation between telicity and perfectivity in Koine Greek. Pang argues that the lexical feature of telicity and perfective aspect operate independently of one another , or at least that the correlation cannot be simplistically and easily predicted in a systematic way.

This paper reports on a comprehensive phonetic study of American classroom learners of Russian, investigating the influence of the second language (L2) on the first language (L1). Russian and English productions of 20 learners were compared to 18 English monolingual controls focusing on the acoustics of word-initial and word-final voicing. The results demonstrate that learners’ Russian was acoustically different from their English, with shorter voice onset times (VOTs) in [−voice] stops, longer prevoicing in [+voice] stops, more [−voice] stops with short lag VOTs and more [+voice] stops with prevoicing, indicating a degree of successful L2 pronunciation learning. Crucially, learners also demonstrated an L1 phonetic change compared to monolingual English speakers. Specifically, the VOT of learners’ initial English voiceless stops was shortened, indicating assimilation with Russian, while the frequency of prevoicing in learners’ English was decreased, indicating dissimilation with Rus...

Speakers' readiness to describe event scenes using active or passive constructions has previously been attributed-among other factors-to the accessibility of referents. While most research has highlighted the accessibility of agents, the present study examines whether patients' accessibility can be modulated by means of visual preview of the patient character (derived accessibility), as well as by manipulating the animacy status of patients (inherent accessibility). Crucially, we also examined whether effects of accessibility were amenable to the visuospatial position of the patient by presenting the patient character either to the left or to the right of the agent. German native speakers were asked to describe drawings depicting event scenes while their gaze and speech were recorded. Our results show that making patients more accessible using derived and inherent accessibility factors led to more produced passives, shorter speech onsets, and a reduction of fixations on patients. Complementing previous research on agent accessibility, our findings demonstrate that the accessibility of patients affected both sentence production and looking behavior. While effects were observed for both inherent and derived accessibility, they appeared to be more pronounced for the latter. Regarding character position, we observed a significant effect of position on participants' gaze patterns and structural choices, suggesting that position itself can be considered an accessibility-related factor. Importantly, the position of a patient also interacted with our manipulation of its accessibility via visual preview. Participants produced more passives after preview than no preview for left-positioned but not for right-positioned patients, demonstrating that effects of patient accessibility (i.e., visual preview) were susceptible to character position. A similar interaction was observed for participants' viewing patterns. These findings provide the first evidence that the position of a referent is a factor that interacts with other accessibility-related factors (i.e., cueing), emphasizing the need of controlling for position effects when testing referent accessibility.

Introduction: There is evidence of close links between the allocation of attention and the production of language. For instance, while speakers commonly produce active sentences when they describe an event with an agent acting on a patient, this preference can shift once the patient is in the spotlight of attention (e.g., by means of a brief attentional cue preceding the patient). In this case, speakers are more prone to produce non-canonical sentences such as passives. Critically, however, whereas attentional cueing is particularly effective for speakers of English, it has proven less effective for speakers of languages like German that differ from English in terms of case-marking and word order flexibility. This observation begs the question of how German speakers respond to alternative cue types that differ in the conceptual and lexical information they provide. In the current study, we address this question by directly comparing the effect of different cue types on sentence production.

Methods: German-speaking participants were asked to describe transitive event scenes while their eye gaze was monitored via eye tracking. Prior to scene onset, participants saw one of three different cue types: a short attentional cue preceding the patient character, a long attentional cue, or a centrally presented pre-view of the patient (referential cue).

Results and discussion: Our results demonstrate that different cue types led to differences in speakers' propensity to produce passives. Critically, referential cueing was more effective than attentional cueing in increasing German speakers' rate of passive production, contra to what has previously been reported for English speakers. At the same time, the cues resulted in different viewing behavior, demonstrating that an increase in visual attention does not necessarily go hand in hand with an increase in passivization. Consequently, our findings show that a direct link between the allocation of attention and speakers' structural choices may not always be licensed.

La struttura proverbiale statisticamente più frequente risulta, per Miniati e Porto Bucciarelli (1981: 114–117; ma su questo si veda anche Soletti 2011: 1182), quella resa tramite l’impiego di una frase relativa senza antecedente, introdotta dal pronome indipendente chi. Su questa ci si soffermerà più approfonditamente nelle pagine che seguono, dando conto, dopo un rapido quadro di carattere teorico sul tipo di costruzione sintattica con cui si ha a che fare, dei risultati di un’analisi condotta su un corpus di repertori paremiologici italiani e dialettali coprente un arco temporale che va dal XVII al XXI sec. Ciò con lo scopo tanto di integrare e aggiornare il quadro abbozzato nel 1981 da Miniati e Porto Bucciarelli, per loro stessa ammissione non esaustivo circa questa sterminata famiglia, quanto di inglobare maggiormente nel campo d’indagine sia le espressioni paremiologiche oggi non più vive sia quelle rimaste legate a varietà locali d’italiano (donde il rinvio nel titolo alla geoparemiologia, su cui cfr. almeno Franceschi 2011).

If work in psychology has clearly brought to light the existence of "conceptual flexibility" in the categorisation of objects, which led to a re-questioning of the traditional conception of categorisation which considers rigid and discontinuous categories, it is not the case in linguistics and psycholinguistics. We propose, through a highlighting of the role of analogy in the categorisation of verbs, to defend the idea of semantic flexibility which constitutes a linguistic counterpart to psychologists' advances on categorisation. Accordingly, we show that the production of 'metaphoric' verbal utterances by adults and particularly by 2/3 year old children, reflects the existence of an analogical categorisation of verbs which makes it possible to argue in favour of a computational model of the role of analogy in the semantic network of the verb lexicon.

Advertising language in peninsular Spanish has been the subject of extensive study due to its innovative nature and richness of expression. Most attention has been paid to the communication processes involved, its linguistic functions, and its shortening communicative mechanisms at morphological, lexico-semantic and syntactic levels; however, the functions of English and German loanwords and the reasons for their remarkable productivity in advertising written texts have been addressed less frequently. Using data from a 200,000 word personally gathered linguistic corpus extending throughout the period 1998–2007, I focus on the reasons and factors that are responsible for the high productivity of these lexical Anglicisms and the noteworthiness of Germanisms in contemporary press advertising peninsular Spanish. The analysis here examines their semantic nature following a semantic typology adapted for the special tecnolect of advertising. Under discussion will be, among others, the main...

This paper investigates how successful B2 level English language learners (ELLs), high school students are in translating a group of most common false friends (FFs) from English to BCS and vice versa and examines whether they are more successful in translating absolute or partial FFs. In line with the classification by Otwinowska-Kasztelanic (2015), false friends are considered to be a class of cognates. They are further sub-classified into absolute FFs, which have the same or similar form and dissimilar meaning in two languages (e.g. eventually, meaning finally in English and eventualno, meaning possibly in BCS) and partial false friends with the same or similar form and one same and another dissimilar meaning. (e.g. argument in English, meaning reason, the same as argument in BSC and disagreement, the meaning for which a different word is used in BCS, rasprava). Due to their deceptive nature, FFs have been researched within different theoretical frameworks - theoretical, contrasti...

The aim of this research was to explain the crucial factors relevant for the acquisition of person marking in Croatian and Yucatec Maya. Previous studies on the acquisition of verbs have shown a dominance of the usage of verbal morphology in the one-word and two-word utterances (Kovacevic et al. 2008). In this study we focus on how, in these two typologically different languages, subject participants emerge in children’s speech. Longitudinal data from child language corpora of both languages were analysed in a comparative way. Despite the fact that the target entities are not equivalent in these languages, person is acquired in a similar manner ; both are marked by verb inflection and periphrasis. We tested several factors which could influence the development of person verb marking: position, alignment, morphological transparency and prosodic saliency. Position has been shown to play the crucial role in the acquisition of person marking in this research since suffixation was identi...

Analytic debates about truth are wide-ranging, but certain key themes tend to crop up time and again.  The three themes that we will examine in this paper are (i) the nature and behaviour of the ordinary concept of truth, (ii) the meaning of discourse about truth, and (iii) the nature of the property *truth.* We will start by offering a brief overview of the debates centring on these themes.  We will then argue that cross-linguistic experimental philosophy has an indispensable yet underappreciated role to play in all of these debates.  Recognising the indispensability of cross-linguistic experimental philosophy should compel philosophers to significantly revise the ways in which they inquire about truth.  It should also prompt analytic philosophers more generally to consider whether similar revisions might be necessary elsewhere in the field.

The ubiquitous inverse relationship between word frequency and word rank is commonly known as Zipf’s law. The theoretical underpinning of this law states that the inverse relationship yields decreased effort in both the speaker and hearer, the so-called principle of least effort. Most research has focused on showing an inverse relationship only for written monolog, only for frequencies and ranks of one linguistic unit, generally word unigrams, with strong correlations of the power law to the observed frequency distributions, with limited to no attention to psychological mechanisms such as the principle of least effort. The current paper extends the existing findings, by not focusing on written monolog but on a more fundamental form of communication, spoken dialog, by not only investigating word unigrams but also units quantified on syntactic, pragmatic, utterance, and nonverbal communicative levels by showing that the adequacy of Zipf’s formula seems ubiquitous, but the exponent of ...

Imageability is a psycholinguistic variable that indicates how well a word gives rise to a mental image or sensory experience. Imageability ratings are used extensively in psycholinguistic, neuropsychological, and aphasiological studies. However, little formal knowledge exists about whether and how these ratings are associated between and within languages. Fifteen imageability databases were cross-correlated using nonparametric statistics. Some of these corresponded to unpublished data collected within a European research network-the Collaboration of Aphasia Trialists (COST IS1208). All but four of the correlations were significant. The average strength of the correlations (rho = .68) and the variance explained (R (2) = 46%) were moderate. This implies that factors other than imageability may explain 54% of the results. Imageability ratings often correlate across languages. Different possibly interacting factors may explain the moderate strength and variance explained in the correla...

this paper analyses the separation events, as manifested in the cut and break verbs in Lubukusu. This is done with a particular reference to the intention behind the separation, the instrument used in the disintegrating event and the manner in which the Cutting and Breaking events are expressed in Lubukusu. Video recordings of activities involving separation were compiled and presented to selected Lubukusu native speakers. Discourses on the various types of verbs used to describe the separation of fruits/crops from their trees/plants, separation events involving animals, people and items such as paper and clothes were also recorded. The corpora of the separation events were organized and grouped using the Bohnemeyer elicitation tool. Out of the 100 verbs of Cut and Break that were collected, the study systematically sampled 30 CUT verbs and 20 BREAK verbs. The study shows that meanings of Lubukusu CUT and BREAK verbs can either be constricted or widened contextually to suit the use. The paper contributes to the existing studies on CUT and BREAK verbs, and in the formulation of further cross-linguistic generalizations on this topic.

This study presents the architecture of the mental lexicon of third language learners by focusing on three representation levels: letter, word and language. In particular, this analysis attempts to examine the extent of the influence of the first and second languages known by bilingual learners of English. The study is guided by Dijkstra’s (2003) Multilingual Interactive Activation (MIA) model, and the hypothesis of the language selective or language nonselective access of third language learners is tested. The method involved in this analysis is the word translation task as a tool for investigating the organization of the mental lexicon. The results obtained as a result of the translation task claim that trilingual speakers can operate with three languages during the process of learning.Keywords: multilingual processing, mental lexicon, language typology.

Anthroponymy mirrors faithfully the features and core values of people considered as individuals or as ethnic groups sharing common traits. Whether we refer to a religious name chosen for one’s child according to one’s personal beliefs, a foreign, trendy name, or an unusual name which ensures the bearer is easily distinguished, all anthroponyms convey a message. Depending on people’s particular way of perceiving integration in a foreign culture, some may choose to give their children names that are specific to their native culture to perpetuate their tradition; others may wish not to reveal their migrant background by naming their offspring in a way that is characteristic to the host culture. The present approach is both synchronic and diachronic. It follows naming practices in contemporary multicultural communities, at the same time illustrating how names are culturally embedded. The grounds for this perspective are provided by the analysis of a wide corpus of anthroponyms existing...

Shorter lexical bundles (LBs) have been the central point of focus in L2 oral fluency studies, with longer LBs often being neglected. The current study examined the extent to which longer LBs vs. shorter LBs relate to aspects of oral fluency. Data were collected from 50 undergraduate L2 English learners performing three speaking tasks. We analyzed speaking performances in terms of speed, breakdown, and repair fluency, while LB (2-to 5-word) usage was measured using a combined text-internal and text-external approach. Utilizing robust multiple regression, dominance analysis, and random forest techniques, our study found a marginal positive effect of longer LB use on speed fluency, a potential negative association with the frequency of mid-and end-clause pauses, and a strong negative association with the frequency of total repair. Furthermore, the analysis uncovers the significant impacts of shorter LBs (bigrams and trigrams) on various aspects of fluency. These insights underscore the pedagogical potential of longer LBs for enhancing oral fluency, while emphasizing the necessity for a comprehensive focus on different lengths and types of multiword sequences in EFL pedagogy. Our findings could inform more effective, data-driven language teaching strategies and materials. We discuss the findings in relation to L2 speech production models and provide important suggestions for future LB-fluency research.

In studies on Conceptual Metaphor Theory and the Metaphor Master List scholars have come up with over the years, the metaphors (target domains) of loyalty, courage, and friendship figure among very important ones. In this study, we undertake to explore these three metaphors in the Harry Potter series, as these three conceptual domains also happen to constitute three underlying themes in these novels. Cross-linguistic work in this regard is in its infancy and would benefit from ongoing research, because our knowledge of metaphors is only useful insofar as we can determine if a domain is universally and cross-linguistically also used to conceptualize a given target concept similarly in another language, or if it is found to be subject to some variation between the two languages being compared. We look at how these three generic-level concepts are conceptualized in English and their translations into Turkish, and if the cross-domain mappings are similar/different in the two languages, ...