Languages — Open Access Journal

In verbal irony, the speaker’s intended meaning can be counterfactual to the literal meaning of their words. This form of figurative language can help speakers achieve a number of communicative aims, but also presents an interpretive challenge for some listeners. There is debate about the skills that support the acquisition of irony comprehension in typical development, and about why verbal irony presents a challenge for many individuals, including children with a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorders and second-language learners. Researchers have explored teaching verbal irony in a very small number of training studies in disparate fields. We bring together and review this limited research. We argue that a focus on training studies in future research could address a number of theoretical questions about irony comprehension and could help refine interventions for individuals who struggle with this form of social language. Full article

Two fundamental aspects of conceptual and linguistic structure are examined in relation to one another: organization into strata, each a baseline giving rise to the next by elaboration; and the conceptions of reality implicated at successive levels of English clause structure. A clause profiles an occurrence (event or state) and grounds it by assessing its epistemic status (location vis-à-vis reality). Three levels are distinguished in which different notions of reality correlate with particular structural features. In baselineclauses, grounded by “tense,” the profiled occurrence belongs to baseline reality (the established history of occurrences). Basic clauses incorporate perspective (passive, progressive, and perfect), and since grounding includes the grammaticized modals, as well as negation, basic reality is more elaborate. A basic clause expresses a proposition, comprising the grounded structure and the epistemic status specified by basic grounding. At higher strata, propositions are themselves subject to epistemic assessment, in which conceptualizers negotiate their validity; propositions accepted as valid constitute propositional reality. Propositions are assessed through interactive grounding, in the form of questioning and polarity focusing, and by complementation, in which the matrix clause indicates the status of the complement. Full article

Previous research has shown that sound symbolism facilitates action label learning when the test trial used to assess learning immediately followed the training trial in which the (novel) verb was taught. The current study investigated whether sound symbolism benefits verb learning in the long term. Forty-nine children were taught either sound-symbolically matching or mismatching pairs made up of a novel verb and an action video. The following day, the children were asked whether a verb can be used for a scene shown in a video. They were tested with four videos for each word they had been taught. The four videos differed as to whether they contained the same or different actions and actors as in the training video: (1) same-action, same-actor; (2) same-action, different-actor; (3) different-action, same-actor; and (4) different-action, different-actor. The results showed that sound symbolism significantly improved the childrens’ ability to encode the semantic representation of the novel verb and correctly generalise it to a new event the following day. A control experiment ruled out the possibility that children were generalising to the “same-action, different-actor” video because they did not recognize the actor change due to the memory decay. Nineteen children were presented with the stimulus videos that had also been shown to children in the sound symbolic match condition in Experiment 1, but this time the videos were not labeled. In the test session the following day, the experimenter tested the children’s recognition memory for the videos. The results indicated that the children could detect the actor change from the original training video a day later. The results of the main experiment and the control experiment support the idea that a motivated (iconic) link between form and meaning facilitates the symbolic development in children. The current study, along with recent related studies, provided further evidence for an iconic advantage in symbol development in the domain of verb learning. A motivated form-meaning relationship can help children learn new words and store them long term in the mental lexicon. Full article

The development of the definite and indefinite articles in Castilian may be regarded as an instance of capitalization or adfunctionalization, following partial exaptation of the Latin demonstrative ille, which involves progressive widening without significant loss of function, the rendering of overt distinctions which were previously covert through the contrast between definite article, indefinite article and the “zero” determiner, the creation of new expressive possibilities and the facilitating of further distinctions in the grammatical system in combination with other determiners (usage with possessives, demonstratives and tal is examined). Full article

The use of the native language in the foreign language learning process has evoked controversy since the last century. The present research will argue for the use of translation by foreign language learners by investigating the correlation between translation equivalence as a vocabulary learning strategy, and the learners’ level of foreign language speaking anxiety. A sample of 258 Tunisian students, chosen randomly from different preparatory schools, participated in this project. Four research instruments were used to investigate this correlation: the inventory for translation as a learning strategy (ITLS), the classroom-related foreign language speaking anxiety scale (CRFLSAS), a receptive Translation Equivalence (TE) vocabulary test, and a productive TE vocabulary test. The findings revealed that the majority of the participants reported relying on their mother language to learn English vocabulary. Furthermore, a strong linear negative correlation was found between the use of this strategy, at both the receptive and productive levels, and the learners’ foreign language speaking anxiety. Full article

The brevity maxim of Gricean pragmatics states that unnecessary prolixity should be avoided. We report a case in which 5-year-old children’s performance conforms better to Grice’s maxim than adults’ behavior. Our data come from a semi-spontaneous German relative clause production study that we carried out with 5- and 7-year-old children as well as adults. In particular, we focus on the pragmatics of the passive predicates that were produced. These constituted about a third of both child and adult productions in items that targeted an object relative clause structure. Since the expression of the agent is syntactically optional with passive predicates, the brevity maxim predicts that the agent should only be expressed when it is informative. We compare two conditions to test this prediction: one where the agent is informative and one where it is not. We find that 5-year-old children display significantly greater sensitivity to the brevity maxim than adults do. In two follow-up studies, we show that adults’ violations of brevity cannot be explained by priming of by-phrases expressing the agent and that there is an effect of age within children as well. Full article

Negation hardly comes up as an issue in English–Arabic translation studies. The general assumption is that the translation of English negation into Arabic poses no serious problems to the translator. While this is generally true when it comes to rendering negation marked by generic negative particles/affixes (John is not happy and John is unhappy, respectively) and even lexical and rhetorical implicit negation (John denied having cheated on the test and Can a person like John make such a mistake?), the present paper aims to show that the appropriate textualization into Arabic of English adverbial and determiner negation (e.g., by the adverbials too and hardly, and the determiners little and few) can be a problematic area for Arabic translators. The textual data (270 examples) is extracted from several published translations (belonging to literary, popular science/journalistic, and economic discourse), in an attempt to show what strategies translators follow when encountering such negation and how successful they are. While the findings provide solid evidence for the serious mishaps (about 42% of the renderings involve one kind of problem or another) that Arabic translators experience in this area, the critical discussion unravels several textual strategies that can capture the subtleties inherent in adverbial/determiner negation. It is hoped that the investigation of this subtle, neglected area in English–Arabic translation studies offers significant insights for both student and professional translators. Full article

In co-speech gesture research, embodied cognition implies that concepts are associated with haptic and motor information that provides a framework for a gestural plan. When speakers access concepts, embodied action images are automatically activated. This study considers situations in which speakers need to create online concepts of events to investigate the aspect of the event that forms the basis of a new concept. Speakers watched short event video clips with familiar or unfamiliar attributes. They described those clips to partners who had to perform a matching task. Experimental results show that speakers gestured less and produced shorter gestures when relaying longer event descriptions. Speakers were more likely to produce gesture when some aspect of the event was unfamiliar, and they were most sensitive to the familiarity of the event’s main action. Further, when speakers did gesture, they were most likely to gesture to represent the action of the event over the physical attributes of it (the instrument used to enact or the object acted upon). These findings suggest that in creating an embodied concept for something unfamiliar, the motion of the event acts as a basis for their online embodied representation of the concept. Full article

This paper aims to contribute to the clarification of the linguistic and extra-linguistic circumstances that accompany the emergence and behavior of mediante in the first centuries of Spanish. To this end, the origin of the Latin participle medians, mediantis is examined and the evidence of its ablative form mediante in various contexts is also analysed and discussed. We conclude from our study that (1) the appearance of mediante in Latin takes place at a relatively late stage of Latin, it having entered the language as a grammatical calque from Greek; (2) in Latin, prepositional values of mediante, which do not necessarily originate from Latin absolute ablative clauses, are already detected; and finally, (3) discursive traditions and historical-cultural factors, in particular those developed in Patristic and Scholastic Literature, are fundamental for the understanding, not only of the evolution of mediante in Latin, but also of its introduccion into Spanish. Full article

Computer-mediated communication (CMC) and e-communication tools have introduced new pedagogical tools and activities that contribute to the development of language learners’ academic, multilingual, and intercultural skills and competences. Moreover, CMC has reinforced communication and collaboration between individuals and educational institutions through projects of intercultural language exchanges (ILE). Most of these exchanges idealise ‘nativeness’, and assert the L1 speaker as an expert ‘by default’. These models of ILE believe that the incorporation of a L1S is key to the creation of learning opportunities. This paper contests this belief. The one-to-one online video conversations took place on Skype between language learners of English and/or French over a period of four months. The dyads comprise the following speakers’ constellations: a L1S of French with a L1S of English, and a L1S of English with an Algerian (L2/LF of French and English). To assure equity in the use of languages, I scheduled two sessions every week, one in English and the second in French. This paper investigates the expert/novice dichotomy and how it is negotiated in the learning opportunities they have created. It also casts light on the speakers’ communicative strategies and linguaculture(s) included in overcoming intercultural misunderstanding and miscommunication when using or not using their L1, French and/or English. These intercultural interactions have uncovered that the novice–expert roles alternate between the speakers despite the language of communication and their L1s. The interactants used several strategies and channels, namely pragmatic strategies such as repetition, nonverbal cues to ask for clarification and signal intercultural misunderstandings, translanguaging and their multilingual repertoires in order to construct meaning, achieve their communicative goals or in case of the lack of linguistic resources. Full article

Learning a second language (L2) presents a significant challenge to many people in adulthood. Platforms for effective L2 instruction have been developed in both academia and the industry. While real-life (RL) immersion is often lauded as a particularly effective L2 learning platform, little is known about the features of immersive contexts that contribute to the L2 learning process. Immersive virtual reality (iVR) offers a flexible platform to simulate an RL immersive learning situation, while allowing the researcher to have tight experimental control for stimulus delivery and learner interaction with the environment. Using a mixed counterbalanced design, the current study examines individual differences in L2 performance during learning of 60 Mandarin Chinese words across two learning sessions, with each participant learning 30 words in iVR and 30 words via word–word (WW) paired association. Behavioral performance was collected immediately after L2 learning via an alternative forced-choice recognition task. Our results indicate a main effect of L2 learning context, such that accuracy on trials learned via iVR was significantly higher as compared to trials learned in the WW condition. These effects are reflected especially in the differential effects of learning contexts, in that less successful learners show a significant benefit of iVR instruction as compared to WW, whereas successful learners do not show a significant benefit of either learning condition. Our findings have broad implications for L2 education, particularly for those who struggle in learning an L2. Full article

Changes by elision—as well as those due to processes of adfunctionalization or refunctionalization—must be taken into account as explanatory mechanisms of linguistic change. In this paper, we study the role of elision in the theoretical overview of explanatory theories of language change by focusing on the evolutionary process of the Spanish adverb aparte. We analyze the consequences of the elision of an initial construction for the development of new functions as an exceptive or additive adverb, and as an additive connector with a specific meaning, conditioned by the evolution of the entire construction. We find that, in this case, the ellipsis of a verbal element has led to important modifications of the preserved item (aparte), not only at the semantic-pragmatic and functional levels but also in its category membership. Full article

(1) Background: Research in second language (L2) writing in the European context is an emerging tendency in L2 studies. European countries have become new hosts to immigrants in very recent years and new applied research is needed to aid schools in their inclusion process. (2) Method: This study examined differences in writing performance by comparing 99 immigrant students in Portugal between 7 and 17 years of age. They were assessed in six distinct aspects by means of a written essay in order to perceive how maturity and language groups impact competencies such as lexicon, grammar, sociolinguistics and use of strategies. (3) Results: The results were examined according to the competition model of MacWhinney and Bates (1989; MacWhinney 2005) and concluded that older students wrote more proficient essays. First language (L1) and parallel instruction in L1 were examined as covariates against their effects. (4) Discussion: Students who received parallel instruction in their L1 had better results in L2 writing, but only age-produced significant differences will be discussed. Full article

The paper shows that when grammatical words are involved, context is then the unit of language change. Certain changes consist in an active spreading of a form to new contexts, without changing the category or grammatical status of the form; in these cases, context must be considered the unit of language change. The empirical evidence is the diachrony of the Spanish preposition a ‘to’. Throughout history, this preposition pervasively extended to new and different contexts, but the form a never changed, remaining a grammatical preposition with a basic meaning of ‘directive telicity towards a goal’ (goal maybe locative, temporal, transitivity, finality, discursive, etc.). The paper labels this kind of change as ‘context construction’, and considers it an analogical extension induced by context. Finally, to test whether the diachrony of a is grammaticalization or not, the paper reviews fourteen related theoretical concepts, checking them against the diachronic evidence of the preposition a. Full article

This action research project aimed at evaluating and revising Actionthroughwords (ATW), an online course on language learning through content for high school English language learners. Our multifaceted purpose is to help English language learners in an English language arts class to enhance their academic English language and literacy, while learning online about the work of the UN for health and peace worldwide. A teacher and nineteen students in a public high school bilingual program acted as learner-consultants, with a shift of learners’ roles to one of authority and engagement. Using a mixed design, data came from questionnaires, classroom observation, and interviews with the teacher and eight of her students. All participants responded affirmatively to the ATW site and expressed appreciation not only for the content but also for focused activities to enhance vocabulary development and grammatical awareness. Results showed students’ view of the UN was somewhat positive to begin with and became more positive over time. Participants recommended revision of ATW to make content more accessible through scaffolding and first language support and to offer additional games and videos appropriate for teenagers’ interests and modes of learning. Differentiated instructional materials and strategies integrated with the school curriculum were also suggested for future implementation of the course. Full article

How does the bilingual child assemble her first multiword constructions? Can switch placement in bilingual combinations be explained by language usage? This study traces the emergence of frozen and semi-productive patterns throughout the diary collection period (0;10.10–2;2.00) to document the acquisition of constructions. Subsequently the focus falls on most frequently produced monolingual and bilingual combinations captured through 30 video recordings (1;10.16–2;5.11) which are linked to the diary data to confirm their productivity. First, we verify that like in monolingual development, frequency-based piecemeal acquisition of constructions can be reproduced in our bilingual diary data: in the child’s earliest combinations 87% are deemed as semi-productive slot-and-frame patterns. Second, video recordings show that productivity, understood as a function of type frequency, plays a role in determining the switch placement in early bilingual combinations only to some extent. A more accurate explanation for why frames from one language take slot fillers from another is their autonomous use and semantic independence. We also highlight limitations of input: while the child was raised with two languages separated in the input, she continued to switch languages which suggests that switching is developmental. Full article

The present article provides an overview of ongoing field-based research that deploys a variety of interactive experimental procedures in three strategically chosen bilingual contact environments, whose language dyads facilitate a partial separation of morphosyntactic factors in order to test the extent to which proposed grammatical constraints on intra-sentential code-switching are independent of language-specific factors. For purposes of illustration, the possibility of language switches between subject pronouns and verbs is compared for the three bilingual groups. The first scenario includes Ecuadoran Quichua and Media Lengua (entirely Quichua syntax and system morphology, all lexical roots replaced by Spanish items; both are null-subject languages). The second juxtaposes Spanish and the Afro-Colombian creole language Palenquero; the languages share highly cognate lexicons but differ substantially in grammatical structures (including null subjects in Spanish, only overt subjects in Palenquero). Spanish and Portuguese in north-eastern Argentina along the Brazilian border form the third focus: lexically and grammatically highly cognate languages that are nonetheless kept distinct by speakers (both null-subject languages, albeit with different usage patterns). Results from the three communities reveal a residual resistance against pronoun + verb switches irrespective of the subject-verb configuration, thereby motivating the application of similar techniques to other proposed grammatical constraints. Full article

In this paper, the first-person plural diachronic behaviour of the verb form habemos with an existential value is analysed to explore its recovery in current Spanish as a case of refunctionalization. The latter is understood as timely cooptation of a form, which begins with any of the form’s characteristics. It is known that the cooptation’s origin might be directly, indirectly or not at all related to the previous or original use of the form. Results shown here are based on the analysis of constructions in which the first-person plural verb form of haber is used with a possessive meaning, as an auxiliary, and as existential between the 13th and 21st century. While grammaticalization theory pays attention to processes that culminate with grammatical enrichment of words or constructions, the verb form habemos with an existential meaning does not show that behaviour. It is explained as a case of refunctionalization or, at least, specialization. Full article

This article explores how online videos with a pedagogical focus can possibly make an impact on our current language teaching and learning practices. The affordance of videos to create multimodal content that can be shared with the public allows content creators to use a wide range of resources, such as spoken and written language, gestures, screen layout, etc., to create learning environments that can promote an awareness of a multimodal perspective to the understanding of a particular kind of professional communication context, such as job interviews, as illustrated in this article. By analyzing a series of videos on job interviews using multimodal semiotic analysis, I argue that these videos, which I call pedagogical vlogs, are helpful not only in terms of teaching the language skills required for job interviews, but also to help create a multimodal understanding of job interviews through the strategic orchestration of multiple semiotic modes. The popularity of pedagogical vlogs, as well as their affordance to provide lesson content created by the public, offer new possibilities for language teaching and learning, but it has yet only received scant attention from applied linguistics and language education researchers. This article aims to start a dialog on the pedagogical implications of this new form of learning so as to uncover the potentials offered by pedagogical vlogs in education. Full article