This study investigated language educators’ readiness in coping with language assessment during the global outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic and the enforced move to Emergency Remote Teaching (ERT). This pandemic prompted debates on language assessors’ roles in adjusting to a New Normal. While a good body of research has investigated the role of teacher assessment perceptions versus assessment behavior for many decades, little is known about the factors that may have impacted language educators’ assessment perceptions and practices during the recent crisis. To address this issue, an online survey was administered to 256 language educators. Pearson correlations and simple linear regression were utilized to determine if the language educators’ perceptions of (1) the official assessment measures, (2) purposes, and (3) their assessment self-efficacy were predictors of their assessment practices during this crisis. The results revealed a total absence of any correlations between these variables. The findings suggest that the assessment accommodations adopted by the teachers were not determined by their assessment perceptions. Other factors such as assessment policy and the assessment culture may have shaped their practices during this crisis. Full article

An important cue to the meaning of a new noun is its accompanying classifier. For example, in English, X in “a sheet of X” should refer to a broad, flat object. A classifier is required in Chinese to quantify nouns. Using children’s overt responses in an object/picture selection task, past research found reliable semantic knowledge of classifiers in Mandarin-reared children at around age three. However, it is unclear how children’s semantic knowledge differs across different types of classifiers and how this difference develops with age. Here we use an arguably more sensitive measure of children’s language knowledge (the intermodal preferential-looking paradigm) to examine Mandarin-reared three-, four-, and five-year-olds’ semantic knowledge of four types of classifiers indicating animacy (human vs. animal distinction), configuration (how objects are arrayed), object shape, and vehicle function. Multiple factors were matched across classifier types: the number of classifiers, perceived familiarity and perceived typicality of the target, and the visual similarity of the two images paired together. Children’s performances differed across classifier types, as they were better with animacy classifiers than with configuration and vehicle function classifiers. Their comprehension was reliable for animacy, object shape, and vehicle function classifiers but not for configuration classifiers. Furthermore, we did not find conclusive evidence for an age-dependent improvement in the child’s performance. The analysis, including the oldest (five-year-olds) and youngest (three-year-olds) children, revealed a marginally significant age effect. Full article

The revised version of the Speech Learning Model (SLM-r) regards full-time equivalent (FTE), which involves the amount of L2 use during the length of residence (LOR) in an L2 setting, as the main factor in L2 speech acquisition. Previous studiesshowed that LOR has a significant effect on L2 and L1 production and perception but does not explain differences between populations (i.e., L1-Spanish L2-English vs. L1-English L2-Spanish). A reanalysis of the data has been conducted by calculating the FTE of the experienced participants. The aim was also to investigate whether the assumptions of the SLM-r are applicable to L1 and L2 perception. A series of correlation tests between FTE and category boundary—between voiced and voiceless stops—was conducted, yielding non-significant results. The relatively short LOR of participants, the quality of the input and differences in terms of L2 instruction between participants could explain the lack of a clear effect of FTE in this study. Therefore, FTE on its own may not be sufficient to account for L2 accuracy in perception, at least for L2 speakers with limited L2 input, and other factors should be considered. Full article

Polymorphism has long been recognized as a crucial dimension of the nature of language. One of the merits of dialectology and dialectologists is emphasis on the inherently variable and polymorphic nature of linguistic systems, which are always in a state of relative equilibrium and stability. The most striking features of the Occitan data that will be discussed lies in the possibility of finding various forms in a given cell in certain paradigms; more strikingly, it will be shown that two or three (even four) paradigms for one and the same (tense) verb may coexist in the same variety. It will be argued that if polymorphism is the natural state of linguistic systems, it is also anti-economic from a cognitive and processing point of view. It follows that the diachronic evolution of languages tends to develop adaptive solutions to circumvent the potential drawbacks of extreme polymorphism: “natural selection” leads to the reduction or elimination of morphological proliferation. Of course, before reduction or elimination take place, a more or less extended period of time may elapse during which a preference for some paradigmatic options may arise. Full article

This paper uses facts about case allomorphy and possessive morphology in Balkar, a Turkic language spoken in southern Russia, to contribute to the examination of the internal structure of case. A number of recent findings in morpho-syntactic research indicate that case markers have a richer internal structure than their surface appearance typically suggests. Specifically, many works in this vein argue based on cross-linguistic facts about phenomena such as suppletion and syncretism that case features are organized into an implicational containment hierarchy. In this hierarchy, accusative case contains the features of the nominative, and the accusative is itself a sub-part of oblique cases. Many arguments for case containment have relied on diagnostics that are less direct than surface-level morpho-syntactic analysis. In this paper, I argue that there is a part of Balkar grammar that shows the containment of accusative case by obliques in a surface-evident way. While such containment is not normally evident in Balkar, I argue that in certain possessed oblique NPs we see an overt expression of the accusative, except when phonological factors interfere. I go on to discuss other related topics about Balkar and the case containment hypothesis more generally. Full article

Bilingual students do not always use language exactly the way teachers expect. This is especially true for deaf students who use a signed language and a spoken language. When students mix languages, they are often told they are making mistakes. Instead of forcing students to keep languages completely separate, teachers can let students use any and all of their language tools. When students can practice language with all of the languages they know, they feel better about their language skills. This article describes the language of one deaf bilingual student over one year. The author taught the student how to carefully examine and discuss his own language. The student then wrote about pictures and videos that he was interested in. At the end of the year, the student was comfortable using many types of language tools. He also felt powerful about his own language skills. Full article

Based on sociolinguistic data collected from 29 Chinese L1 speakers of English in the US, this article investigated the quotative markers used by non-native speakers in their direct speech reporting. By conducting regression analysis, both linguistic factors (the tense of the verb, the subject pronouns, the mimetic status of the quotation, the content of the quotation, and the presence of discourse markers) and extralinguistic factors (gender, extracurricular contact with native speakers, and length of stay in the target country) were examined and further discussed. Our results revealed that factors such as the content of the quotation, the tense of the verb, and the presence of other discourse markers significantly influence the choice of quotative markers in non-native speech. We demonstrated that non-native speakers use a variety of quotative verbs in their direct speech reporting. Nonetheless, because of L1 impact, they rely primarily on the dominant form say. We also noticed that while non-native speakers might not be accurate in their words when reporting direct speech, they use prosodic cues to make their storytelling more convincing and authentic. Full article

Lexical expletives can be divided into two main classes: (i) CP expletives required by the V2 constraint and, hence, by the necessity to lexicalize the position on the left of the inflected verb and (ii) TP expletives connected with the negative value of the pro-drop parameter and, therefore, with the necessity to lexicalize the ’structural‘ subject position, specifically, [Spec, TP]. The latter can, in turn, be divided into two subclasses: impersonal subjects and positional expletives, which occur with postverbal/low subjects and extraposed subject clauses. While CP expletives only appear in Germanic varieties that maintain V2, the subclassification of TP expletives yields interesting results when comparing Cimbrian and the Venetan varieties in Nord-East Italy, where the gradual disappearance of the positional expletive in free inversion structures and the residual maintenance of impersonal subjects from North to South along the Adige River confirms the distinction between two classes of subject expletives; furthermore, the resilience of impersonal subjects and their distribution in the northwestern part of the area under consideration sheds light on the role of language contact which is confirmed along the same axis—but crucially in the opposite direction—by the increasing employment of cleft constructions in WH-clauses replacing enclisis (i.e.,: pronominal subject inversion with the finite verb). Full article

In this work we examine the distribution of wh-in-situ and short (i.e., clause internal) wh-doubling in Northern Italian dialects with the purpose of showing that wh-in-situ and wh-doubling are not unitary phenomena, since they are subject to different distributional properties across dialects. We show that wh-doubling cannot be reduced to a single analysis but rather corresponds to a family of phenomena which have in common the basic procedure of feature doubling, within which the copying mechanism applies to different subsets or packages of features and is constrained in different ways. Furthermore, some types of doubling correspond in their distribution with some types of wh-in-situ, which shows that the two phenomena must be related and that different types of wh-in-situ are the null counterpart of different types of wh-doubling. However, in the languages in which wh-in-situ is generalized, wh-in-situ has nothing to do with wh-doubling. Full article

With the rapid development of science and technology, many new concepts and terms appear, especially in English. Other languages try to express these concepts with words from their vocabulary. In Arabic, there are many ways to find a counterpart for a particularly new concept, such as using an existing word to denote the new concept, derivation, and blending. When these methods fail, the new concepts are phonetically transliterated. Unfortunately, most of the transliterated terms do not conform to the rules of the Arabic language, and many languages, including Arabic, avoid the use of such terms. Some modern linguists call for using the generation strategy to translate new terms into Arabic based on the idea of the meanings of the Arabic letters. Therefore, it is necessary to provide a resource that contains all Arabic roots with a categorization of what is used, what is available for use, and what is rejected according to the phonetic system. This work provides a comprehensive lexicon that contains all possible triliteral roots and determines the status of each root in terms of usage and acceptability. Additionally, it provides a mechanism for giving preference to roots when there is more than one root that indicates the desired meaning. Full article

Ishigaki Yaeyaman, a heavily minoritized Southern Ryukyuan language, is not a language of commerce, education, media, or government validated by the socioeconomic center. Nevertheless, it holds a certain value for a group of people in Ishigaki City that is intangible and deeply personal. In keeping with the goal of this special issue—to step out of the established dichotomies that impede the vision and practice of Ryukyuan language learning—this work sheds light on the ideologies and practices of new speakers of Ishigaki Yaeyaman, who traverse a ‘third space’ in their use of the language between public-and-private, polite-and-rude, spoken-and-written, and Japanese-and-Ryukyuan. It builds on the author’s findings, including field observations made during doctoral research at University of the Ryukyus. A participatory action research methodology is employed, drawing upon qualitative data from semi-structured personal interviews and the in-person observation of Master–Apprentice language learning sessions within a local grassroots initiative begun in December 2019. The analysis suggests a need to break away from the dichotomies dictating the environment and situations in which new speakers may interact with traditional speakers and among themselves. This is recommended to take the form of Master–Apprentice training in a context that encourages the transformation of language attitudes and awareness, creating a ‘safe space’ that is dialogic, collaborative, and transdisciplinary. Full article

The observation that not all grammatical realizations in heritage languages can be attributed to transfer from a dominant language has been emphasized in several recent works. This paper provides further arguments in this direction from heritage Romanian. As opposed to standard Romanian, the heritage Romanian data examined here do not exhibit a restriction which blocks overt definiteness on a differentially marked object (DOM), when the latter is unmodified but interpreted as definite. Moreover, in heritage Romanian there appear to be differences between the differential marker and (other) prepositions when it comes to interactions with overt definiteness. It is shown that the preservation of overt definiteness cannot be reduced to transfer; some of the dominant languages at stake, namely Serbian and Russian are determinerless, with nominals being used bare regardless of their syntactic function. The heritage data in turn give support to a theory under which the differential marker must be structurally set aside from (other) prepositions. If the latter spell out a P projection, the differential marker is the spell out of complex internal structure of certain classes of objects, which must project at least a DP. This structural complexity for DOM is transparent in other Romance languages, where definiteness is equally obligatory on the surface, if a definite interpretation is intended. Thus, the DOM-overt definiteness setting in the heritage data follows from predictable paths of language variation. Full article

Three distinct anaphoric functions and one deictic function are, with fair confidence, associated with the Italian Pluperfect in the existing literature. In recent studies, it has been hypothesized that the Italian Pluperfect may also have an aoristic use. The present study attempts to assess the semantics of the Italian Pluperfect, by a corpus-based methodology. It will be shown that the data do not support the hypothesis of an aoristic use of the Pluperfect: rather, they suggest the need to extend the analysis of the Pluperfect’s semantics to domains other than tense and aspect. It will be argued that (inter)subjectification may have a key role in describing the layered semantics of the Italian Pluperfect, especially concerning its possible modal-evidential developments. Full article