A classification of collocations with special reference to those used in business English

Author(s): Alexander Hollinger / Language(s): English / Issue: 2/2000

Based on the seminal contribution of Dumitru Chitoran (1965), this paper discusses wordcombinations used in business English, since collocations are a specific yet recurrenttype. A proposal to classify collocations using structural criteria may actually differ fromstandard references in the area. A series of eight examples present various types ofcombinations, either verb plus noun, adjective plus noun, verbs and adjectives or nounsonly. In conclusion, collocations are often clearly specialised, leaving though amplespace for further potential research since examples are far from being exhausted.

A COMMUNICATIONAL ANALYSIS OF THE EVOLUTION OF SYMBOLIC LANGUAGE

CASE STUDY: EMOJIS

Author(s): Anca Violeta BISCHOFF,Adina Palea / Language(s): English / Issue: 12/2019

The paper tackles the evolution of the symbolic language, more precisely, it focuses on a novel form of digital communication known as emojis. It has been commonly accepted that in the post 2.0 web era few concepts have been so richly delineated, have become so visible and have spread so rapidly in both mainstream and niche culture. The aim of this study is to highlight intrinsic and extrinsic characteristics which led to the mass popularization and use of emojis, as well as communicational implications pertaining to this phenomenon. From the standpoint of communication studies, the emergence of the concept has brought about valuable and interesting changes in both global etymology and semantics, thus identifying an inherent necessity to examine it. The present paper also aims to identify how teenagers from Western Romania, ages 14 to 18, use this new way of communicating and the reasons behind opting for emojis. Furthermore, the research conducted in Arad seeks to establish the specific aspects which shape the way teenagers use emojis when interacting among themselves and outside the dynamic of their preferred group.

A Comparative Study of Perception of (Im)Politeness between Iranian EFL Learners and Americans: The Case of Request Speech Act

Author(s): Bahareh Ghasempour,Maryam Farnia / Language(s): English / Issue: 29/2016

Learning a language means learning the culture. What we act and speak reflect the culture of our language. Requests have attracted the attention of many researchers which they have often been investigated adjacent to the politeness (Liu, 2007; Jalilifar, 2009; Al-Marrani & Sazalie, 2010; Félix- Brasdefer, 2010; Youssef, 2012; Mohammadi & Tamimi Sa’d, 2014). The purpose of this study is to examine Iranian EFL learners, Persian native speakers, and American English native speakers’ perception of speech act of requests without politeness markers. To this end, the data were collected from 35 EFL learners, 35 Persian native speakers, and 14 English native speakers. The data were collected through an open ended questionnaire in the form of Discourse Completion Task and a Perception questionnaire in the form of Likert scale adopted from Saidi and Khosravi (2015). The questionnaire consists of situations with variations in contextual variables, i.e. social status: requests made by people of higher social status, equal social status and lower social status relative to the speakers. The participants were asked to imagine themselves in the situations and rate the (im)politeness of each request situation on a 4-point Likert scale. Moreover, they were required to write down what they would say if they were in a situation without politeness markers. A translated version of questionnaire was handed to Persian native speakers. Results indicated that there was a significant difference between EFL learners and English native participants, and also between EFL learners and Persian speakers’ perceptions of (im)politeness of different request situations. Moreover, by comparing the three groups of participants who perceived a request as mostly/ slightly impolite, the writer provided information about their expectations of politeness in different situations. It is hoped that the findings of this study can add to the body of knowledge in speech act studies in general and to our understanding of Iranian EFL learners and Persian native speakers’ perception of (im)politeness in particular.

A cy na san tu Litvate? A czy nie jesteś pan z Litwy? Gwara i identyfikacja Cyganów litewskich

Author(s): Lev Tcherenkov / Language(s): English,Polish,Romany / Issue: 1/2009

In the vast area, ranging from Kamchatka in the East to Brest and Bialystok in the West, dialects spoken by the local Gypsies are so close to each other regarding phonetics, morphology and vocabulary, that they make in fact one macro-dialect with local varieties. The details of these varieties can barely be noticed by a non-professional and a non-Gypsy. Nevertheless, these details play an important role in group identification and in the differentiating between Gypsy groupings. The author has intended to present the peculiarities of the dialect spoken by the Lithuanian Gypsies, which make it different from the whole bunch of vernacular Gypsy tongues of a broader area that includes (except of the Republic of Lithuania) Western Belarus, Eastern Latvia and neighboring parts of the Russian Federation.

A Dynamic Contextual Analysis of Virginia Woolf, « The Waves »

Author(s): Cristina Prelipceanu / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2000

The article presents an application of the methodological principles for the analysis of theliterary text put forward by Tatiana Slama-Cazacu based on “the contextual-dynamic”approach in applied linguistics and psycholinguistics. This interpretation is a holisticapproach which implies both a reference to the form and to the content of the literarywork.This kind of approach also emphasizes the major importance which the context has byconsidering its various levels.The analysis of a fragment selected from the novel “The Waves” by Virginia Woolfreveals that the images, the symbols, the meditation on life identified in this fragment arepresent throughout the author’s literary work. They also pervade not only the novels, butalso the critical essays and her journal

A Few Words about the Aphorism Factory

Author(s): Zsolt Farkas / Language(s): English / Issue: 04/1994

It all started in a Schwäbisch Hall bookstore in the autumn of 1986. As I dawdled, drooling, and fondled the amazing selection, a quotation on the back of a book by someone called Hermann Lang caught my eye: “Das Unbewußte ist die Rede des Anderen”: “The unconscious is the discourse of the other”. Work is proceeding on the 2.0 version of the Aphorism Factory: it will allow the user to choose from a wide range of dictionaries and grammatical structures. (There are some fascinating possibilities. For instance, “Even an x is only a y ” or “You’ll never make an x of a y ”. And there are structures like: “An x is like a y: it’s a and 6, where a and b are adjectives. There are some marvelous adjectives. Or a format like “X is z;-ing y ’, where v is a third person singular, transitive verb: e.g., destroy, violate, deconstruct, and snicker at, etc.

A Generalized Nonlinear Affixation Approach to Polish Palatalizations

Author(s): Slawomir Zdziebko / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2015

The paper offers an autosegmental approach to Polish palatalizations whereby the presence of palatalizing features is the result of the translation of morpho-­syntactic features into phonological features. In the first part I present an analysis of the structural change of the relevant palatalizations, which boils down to the account of how floating autosegments are integrated into the underlying structures of the stem-­final segments. The second part is preoccupied with how relevant autosegments are inserted into representation: the palatalizing floating features are phonological ‘halves’ of vocabulary items matching the feature sets marking inflectional categories in Polish. The paper finishes with the discussion of the distribution of the endings i/y/i~ɨ/ and e /ɛ/ as the markers of the Dative and Locative in one of the declension classes in Polish. I show that the approach advocated here fares better at predicting the distribution of the said endings than the better established approach presented in Gussmann (2007).

A higher-education teaching module for integrating industry content and language through online recruitment advertisements

Author(s): Dietmar Tatzl / Language(s): English / Issue: 3/2018

Empirical evaluations of practical teaching units integrating content and language in higher education are rare and deserve more attention. The current article aims to narrow this gap by providing an empirical study of an integrating content and language in higher education (ICLHE, Smit & Dafouz, 2012) teaching module. It investigates the effectiveness of a content-based English for specific purposes module in tertiary aeronautical engineering education, which incorporates recruitment advertisements as online resources. The study adopted a mixed-methods approach and surveyed three aeronautical engineering student groups (N = 141) over three consecutive years on their perceptions of the module’s learning outcomes. This longitudinal survey was complemented by a teacher-assessed writing task and a qualitative content analysis of online recruitment advertisements (N = 80) in a self-built corpus. All three year groups rated the 10 questionnaire statements on a 5-point Likert scale rather equally, thus suggesting a similar perception of academic achievement stemming from the module’s completion. This student view was supported by the results of the writing assignment. In short, the module’s effectiveness was corroborated both quantitatively and qualitatively, which identifies this teaching concept as a feasible way forward.

A historical phonology of Western Karaim: The process of its diversification into dialects

Author(s): Michal Németh / Language(s): English / Issue: 3/2015

This article describes the emergence of the dialectal differences in phonology that eventually led to the division of Western Karaim into two dialects. The study is based on manuscripts and manuscript editions covering the period between the 17th and 20th centuries. Special attention is paid to the relative chronology of the phonological changes. A periodization of Western Karaim is also proposed.

A holistic multimodal approach to the pronunciation training of young learners of English - an attempt at verification

Author(s): Anita Buczek-Zawila / Language(s): English / Issue: 7/2017

In her book, Szpyra-Kozłowska (2015) argues for a holistic multimodal approach to EFL pronunciation instruction and claims that, in order to be effective, teaching pronunciation to foreign learners should be organized in such a way as to cater for different learning styles by combining elements of auditory, articulatory, cognitive and multisensory training. She concentrates more on older and slightly more advanced learners and provides no empirical evidence to show that this proposal is in fact superior to the traditional ‘listen-and-repeat’ procedure, commonly employed in the ELT classroom as the major pronunciation training technique. The present study attempts to verify the validity of the approach. It is a report on an experiment, carried out with 34 Polish learners of English at the ages between 7 and 9, representing the (pre)elementary level of general proficiency, who, during fourteen classes in the summer of 2014 and 2015, were taught selected aspects of English pronunciation (the interdental fricatives, the palatoalveolars, inflectional endings, some contracted negatives) via the adopted holistic multimodal approach, but retaining also the ‘listen-and-repeat’ procedure due to its familiarity to students. The study aimed at answering the following research questions: • Which procedure, i.e. a ‘listen-and-repeat’ approach or a holistic multimodal training brings better improvement in learners’ pronunciation?• Do the obtained results depend on the integration of the techniques applied into regular course activities? (trainers’ views) • How do learners evaluate the holistic multimodal training? (learners’ views)

A ILEŻ TO KŁOPOTU... ZE SPÓJNIKIEM WZGLĘDNIE I SPÓJNIKIEM EWENTUALNIE

Author(s): Elzbieta Magner / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 09/2017

A la recherche d’une « voix » critique J. –P. Richard lisant Stendhal

Author(s): Deliana VASILIU / Language(s): French / Issue: 1/2000

La difficulté et les chemins divers que la lecture de la littérature emprunte pour trouverune « voix » et « se dire » finissent par donner naissance à la diversité des directionscritiques. La présente approche se propose justement de parler de cette rencontre entre letexte à lire et les langages plus ou moins conservateurs ou, au contraire, innovants dechaque époque. Dans ce qui suit, afin d’illustrer ce cheminement ardu mais parfois aussiextrêmement enrichissant et beau, nous allons essayer de faire entendre la voix de J.-P.Richard en train de lire-écrire Stendhal.

A LOW TE(A)CH APPROACH TO DIGITAL HUMANITIES

Author(s): Liviu Pop / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2017

Technological fatigue is spreading due to the increased arrays of technological branches and the rapid pace of development. Keeping up with the latest and newest might prove not only difficult and tiring, but also not necessarily recommended to beginners in digital humanities. A more “back to the basis” approach might be more useful for students that don’t have technical backgrounds.

A METHODOLOGICAL APPROACH TO TECHNICAL TRANSLATION

Author(s): Raluca Ghentulescu / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2012

This article presents the results of my research in the field of Technical-Scientific Translations and offers some suggestions to those who teach specialized translations at an academic level. My perspective on this subject is based on my own experience in working with the future specialized translators and interpreters from the Specialization of Translation and Interpretation within the Technical University of Civil Engineering of Bucharest. The main aim of this paper is to share with my colleagues and my students the new methods of teaching specialized translations, which I have implemented at my lectures and seminars, in an attempt to turn an apparently tedious school subject into an attractive and useful activity.

A miks sa torusse ei räägi? Miks-küsilausetega tehtavad suhtlustegevused argitelefonivestlustes

Author(s): Kirsi Laanesoo / Language(s): Estonian / Issue: 13/2017

This paper analyses interrogatives formed with the why pronoun in Estonian everyday telephone conversations. Why-interrogatives are regularly defined as questions asking for reasons for or accounts of actions. This paper, however, demonstrates that only a small fraction of why-interrogatives are actually used for questioning. The data come from the Corpus of Spoken Estonian of the University of Tartu. Altogether 41 why-interrogatives were analysed using the approach of interactional linguistics. The primary social actions conducted by why-interrogatives are the following: question, reproach, command, suggestion, complaint and challenge.The study reveals that why-interrogatives are multifunctional, used to carry out several social actions concurrently. The question form makes it possible for the recipients to interpret why-interrogatives as questions (by giving a neutral answer) or as some socially dispreferred actions, such as reproaches, challenges etc (by justifying themselves). Why-interrogatives demonstrate the speaker’s negative stance towards a preceding action.

A Note on the Balto-Slavic and Indo-European Background of the Proto-Slavic Adjective *svętъ ‘Holy’

Author(s): Marek Majer / Language(s): English / Issue: 7/2017

The standard etymological explanation of the Proto-Slavic adjective *svętъ ‘holy, saint’– a word of extreme literary, cultural and religious importance in the Slavic world – concentrateson the formal match with Lithuanian šveñtas ‘id.’ and Avestan spəṇta‑ ‘life-giving, holy’ (PIE*ḱwen‑to‑, from the root *ḱwen‑). This article highlights the verbal formation seen in Latvian svinêtsvin svinẽjo ‘celebrate, venerate’, generally recognized as another reflex of the root *ḱwen‑ in Balto--Slavic, but without due attention to the formal implications. It is argued that both in Av. and in BSl.the adjective spəṇta‑/*svętъ behaves as an item participating in the so-called ‘Caland System’ (a set of arbitrary morphological alternations reconstructible for Proto-Indo-European).

A nyelvitájkép-kutatás mint az alkalmazott nyelvészet egyik legújabb kutatási területe

Author(s): Szilvia Szoták / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 1/2018

The linguistic landscape research from the 90s has raised an increasing interest in sociolinguistics. The definition of linguistic landscape derives from Landry and Bourhis. They used the term for the first time for signs in public places (commercial signs, inscriptions, place names, street signs, etc.). This paper reviews the theoretical and methodological basics of linguistic landscape research, focusing on recent researches, the most relevant approaches and key issues in the topic. In the last two decades linguistic landscape research has gathered speed and expanded. Since 2000, a number of research projects and studies have dealt with this subject from the perspective of applied linguistics, sociolinguistics or language policy – especially in bilingual and multilingual surroundings and situations –, and have shown increasing interest for signs and inscriptions in different places. The researches require an interdisciplinary approach and the involvement of different disciplines (education, economics, demography, geography, semiotics, etc.).

A Polish argument for the underlying status of [ɨ]

Author(s): Pawel Rydzewski / Language(s): English / Issue: 3/2016

This article argues against the single-phoneme approach discussed in Padgett (2001, 2003, 2010), which does not recognize the phonemic status of the vowel [ɨ]. The relevant data are drawn from the processes of Polish palatalization in the class of velars, while the presented analyses are couched in the theory of Lexical Phonology. It is argued that the lack of [ɨ] enforces the use of diacritics and leads to the proliferation of rules that are necessary to accommodate diacritically-specified contexts of palatalization. It is also shown that the singlephoneme approach leads to the morphologization of processes that are typically phonological. On the other hand, assuming the existence of underlying [ɨ] allows for a transparent and uniform account of palatalization effects.

A Position on Classifying and Qualifying Adjectives Revisited

Author(s): Jadwiga Linde-Usiekniewicz / Language(s): English / Issue: 2/2016

This work is sequel to my paper on the controversy concerning the appropriate syntactic and semantic account of the distinction between classificatory and qualifying adjectives in Polish (Linde-Usiekniewicz 2013). It develops the lines of inquiry suggested therein, mainly the claim that differences between the pre-nominal and post-nominal attributive syntax can only be adequately explained when the lexical meaning of the head noun and the attribute are taken into account – specifically, in the case of relational adjectives, the actual semantic relation between the head noun and the adjective. The interplay between the lexical meanings and the meanings imposed by syntactic order is presented within Encoding Grammar, a multi-layered framework devised in Linde-Usiekniewicz (2012). In particular, postposing of lexically qualitative adjectives and preposing of relational adjectives is presented as a type of coercion, in which the meaning imposed by syntax overrides the lexical meaning of the adjective. The possibilities for and restrictions on the order of multiple adjectives occurring within a noun phrase is explained by proposing a distinction between adjectives that saturate argument positions of the head noun, as in produkcja samochodowa ‘car production’, and adjectives that correspond to adjuncts, as in wycieczka samochodowa ‘car trip’ (cf. Bosque and Picallo 1996). A more fine-grained hierarchy within each class is proposed to account for possible noun—adjective(s) permutations.

A Relevance Theoretic Analysis of the Concepts of NEUROSIS and DISEASE in the Context of Psychotherapy

Author(s): Elwira Szehidewicz / Language(s): English / Issue: 2/2016

This article presents a short analysis of two concepts – NEUROSIS and DISEASE– as used in the context of cognitive-behavioural psychotherapy carried out with two different patients. Drawing upon notions developed in Relevance Theory (Sperber and Wilson [1986] 1995), the analysis aims to provide conclusions useful to psychotherapeutic practice. The underlying proposal is that the psychotherapist’s awareness of the relevance-based features of concepts can help contribute to positive therapeutic results through the accomplishment of self-disclosure, transparency of meaning and emotional communication (Pawelczyk 2010, 62). Moreover, the analysis of the meaning of the concepts NEUROSIS and DISEASE may also be seen as supporting RT’s multilevel perspective on concepts. Different ways in which the concepts may be used in therapy are presented, including the literal, metaphorical and metonymical understandings.