scholarly journals Linguistic structures in social interaction

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ilana Mushin ◽  
Simona Pekarek Doehler
Keyword(s):  
Social Interaction ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Historical Overview ◽  
Interactional Linguistics ◽  
Language Structure ◽  
Introductory Paper ◽  
Theory Of Language ◽  
Linguistic Structures

Abstract In this introductory paper to the inaugural volume of the journal Interactional Linguistics, we raise the question of what a theory of language might look like once we factor time into explanations of regularities in linguistic phenomena. We first present a historical overview that contextualises interactional approaches within the broader field of linguistics, and then focus on temporality as a key dimension of language use in interaction. By doing so, we discuss issues of emergence and its consequences for constituency and dependency, and of projection and its relation to action formation within and across languages. Based on video-recorded conversational data from French and Garrwa (Australian), we seek to illustrate how the discipline of linguistics can be enriched by attending to the temporal deployment of patterns of language use, and how this may in turn modify what we understand to be language structure.

scholarly journals Efficiency in human languages: Corpus evidence for universal principles

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (s3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalia Levshina ◽  
Steven Moran
Keyword(s):  
Language Use ◽  
Human Language ◽  
Universal Principles ◽  
Language Structure ◽  
Universal Feature ◽  
Introductory Paper ◽  
Communicative Efficiency ◽  
Corpus Data ◽  
First Time ◽  
Different Levels

Abstract Over the last few years, there has been a growing interest in communicative efficiency. It has been argued that language users act efficiently, saving effort for processing and articulation, and that language structure and use reflect this tendency. The emergence of new corpus data has brought to life numerous studies on efficient language use in the lexicon, in morphosyntax, and in discourse and phonology in different languages. In this introductory paper, we discuss communicative efficiency in human languages, focusing on evidence of efficient language use found in multilingual corpora. The evidence suggests that efficiency is a universal feature of human language. We provide an overview of different manifestations of efficiency on different levels of language structure, and we discuss the major questions and findings so far, some of which are addressed for the first time in the contributions in this special collection.

scholarly journals EMPTY CATEGORIES IN TRANSFORMATIONAL RULES

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 66-83
Author(s):  
Ruly Adha
Keyword(s):  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Generative Grammar ◽  
Structure Theory ◽  
Empty Category ◽  
Language Structure ◽  
Empty Categories ◽  
Theory Of Language

There are three theories that are always developed in any study of language, namely theory of language structure, theory of language acquisition, and theory of language use. Among those three theories, theory of language structure is regarded as the most important one. It is assumed that if someone knows the structure of language, he/she can develop theories about how language is acquired and used. It makes Chomsky interested in developing the theory of language structure. Chomsky introduced a theory of grammar called Transformational Generative Grammar or Transformational Syntax. Transformational Syntax is a method of sentence fomation which applies some syntactic rules (or also called transformational rules). Transformational rules consist of three types, namely movement transformation, deletion transformation, and substitution transformation. When those transformational rules are applied in a sentence, they will leave empty categories. Empty categories can be in  the form of Complementizer (Comp), Trace, and PRO. This article will elaborate those empty categories; their appearance in the transformational rules; and the characteristics of each empty category.

scholarly journals Modularity and derivation in Functional Discourse Grammar

2017 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
Daniel GARCÍA VELASCO
Keyword(s):  
Central Issue ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Basic Principles ◽  
External Constraints ◽  
Language Structure ◽  
Maximal Depth ◽  
Linguistic Representations ◽  
Discourse Grammar ◽  
Theory Of Language ◽  
Different Levels

ABSTRACT Functional Discourse Grammar (FDG) is a typologically-based theory of language structure which is organized in levels, layers and components. In this paper, I will claim that FDG is modular in Sadock’s sense, as it presents four independent levels of representation with their own linguistic primitives each. For modular grammars, the relation between the different levels (more technically, the nature of the interfaces) is a central issue. It will be shown that FDG is a top-down grammar which follows two basic principles in its dynamic implementation: Depth-first and Maximal depth. Together with external constraints, these principles conspire to create linguistic representations which are psychologically adequate and which allow levels to be circumvented if necessary, thus simplifying representations and creating mismatches among them.

WIR im interaktionalen Gebrauch: Zur Verwendung des Pronomens der 1. Person Plural in der institutionellen Kommunikation – am Beispiel onkologischer Aufklärungsgespräche

2021 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 292-334
Author(s):  
Susanne Günthner
Keyword(s):  
Social Interaction ◽  
Major Research ◽  
Social Field ◽  
Person Plural ◽  
Plural Pronoun ◽  
Interactional Linguistics ◽  
Institutional Settings ◽  
The Way

Abstract This empirically oriented article focuses on uses of the pronoun “wir” (‘we’) in medical interaction – more precisely, in oncological consultations. After a brief presentation of major research on the 1st person plural pronoun in German, I will – based on methods of Interactional Linguistics – analyze interactional uses of this deictic pronoun in institutional doctor-patient conversations. This article aims at contributing to research of how grammar is used in response to local interactional needs within social interaction (Auer/Pfänder 2011). As the data show, participants in these institutional settings make use of various types of “wir” – beyond the prototypical forms of usage (a) “self and person addressed”; (b) “self and person or persons spoken of” and (c) “self, person or persons addressed, and person or persons spoken of” (Boas 1911: 39). These “alternative”, non-prototypical uses of “wir”, which partly override the “residual semanticity” (Silverstein 1976: 47), are found to be related to the way in which they are embedded within the particular “social field” (Hanks 2005: 18). Thus, the indexical anchoring of “wir” proves to be rather flexible and responsive to interactional contingencies.

The Principle of Indirect Means in language use and language structure

2006 ◽  
Vol 38 (4) ◽  
pp. 513-542 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zygmunt Frajzyngier ◽  
Bill Jirsa
Keyword(s):  
Language Use ◽  
Language Structure
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