scholarly journals Reviving the genitive. Prescription and practice in the Netherlands (1770–1840)

2020 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreas Krogull ◽  
Gijsbert Rutten
Keyword(s):  
Language Use ◽  
Extreme Case ◽  
Spoken Language ◽  
Interesting Case ◽  
Research Literature ◽  
National Language ◽  
Prepositional Phrases ◽  
Historical Sociolinguistics ◽  
The One ◽  
Genitive Case

AbstractHistorical metalinguistic discourse is known to often prescribe linguistic variants that are not very frequent in actual language use, and to proscribe frequent variants. Infrequent variants that are promoted through prescription can be innovations, but they can also be conservative forms that have already largely vanished from the spoken language and are now also disappearing in writing. An extreme case in point is the genitive case in Dutch. This has been in decline in usage from at least the thirteenth century onwards, gradually giving way to analytical alternatives such as prepositional phrases. In the grammatical tradition, however, a preference for the genitive case was maintained for centuries. When ‘standard’ Dutch is officially codified in 1805 in the context of a national language policy, the genitive case is again strongly preferred, still aiming to ‘revive’ the synthetic forms. The striking discrepancy between metalinguistic discourse on the one hand, and developments in language use on the other, make the genitive case in Dutch an interesting case for historical sociolinguistics. In this paper, we tackle various issues raised by the research literature, such as the importance of genre differences as well as variation within particular genres, through a detailed corpus-based analysis of the influence of prescription on language practices in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Dutch.

scholarly journals Cultural Integration and Export Variety Overlap across Countries

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter H. Egger ◽  
Andrea Lassmann
Keyword(s):  
Language Proficiency ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Native Language ◽  
Spoken Language ◽  
Cultural Integration ◽  
Common Language ◽  
Cultural Proximity ◽  
Export Variety ◽  
The One

This chapter assesses the role of a larger degree of common language use between the populations of two countries on the so-called extensive product margin of trade. We focus on the overlap of products exported or imported between any pair of countries. The results suggest that the effect of varying aspects of sharing a common language on the variety overlap is both positive and important. The effect of sharing a common spoken language exceeds the one of common native language, implying that a larger overlap in language proficiency is quantitatively more important than a higher cultural proximity.

scholarly journals Adverbials with Adjectival Basis in Brazilian Portuguese and Their Frequency in Spoken and Written Language

2020 ◽  
Vol 65 (4) ◽  
pp. 189-208
Author(s):  
Katharina Gerhalter ◽  
Stefan Koch
Keyword(s):  
De Novo ◽  
Spoken Language ◽  
Brazilian Portuguese ◽  
Written Language ◽  
Prepositional Phrases ◽  
Token Frequency ◽  
Written Texts ◽  
Different Types ◽  
The Difference ◽  
The One

Adverbials with Adjectival Basis in Brazilian Portuguese and Their Frequency in Spoken and Written Language. The present paper focuses on the use of adverbs with an adjectival lexical base in spoken and written present-day Brazilian Portuguese. We compare the frequencies of three different types of adverbials: adverbs in mente (e.g. absolutamente), adjective-adverbs (e.g. alto in falar alto ‘speak loudly’) and prepositional phrases with adjectives as the post-prepositional element (e.g. de novo), the latter being the main focus of this study. The analysis is based on the Discurso & Gramática-corpus, which consists of oral interviews of 170 informants and their written texts on the same topic as the one in the interviews. The data shows that prepositional phrases are less frequent (in terms of type and token frequency) than adjective-adverbs and adverbs ending in mente. Regarding the difference between spoken and written language, adverbs in mente occur remarkably more often in written texts while adjective-adverbs are more frequent in spoken language. Prepositional phrases, instead, occur equally in both codes. Finally, we draw the conclusion that prepositional phrases form a small but stable inventory of lexicalised forms, which are not marked for any code.

You’ve got to crack a few eggs to make an omelette. Linguistic complexity and instruction in SLA

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rick De Graaff
Keyword(s):  
Second Language Acquisition ◽  
Language Learning ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Teaching Practice ◽  
Task Complexity ◽  
Language Performance ◽  
Linguistic Complexity ◽  
Language Pedagogy ◽  
Instructed Second Language Acquisition ◽  
The One

In this epilogue, I take a teaching practice and teacher education perspective on complexity in Instructed Second Language Acquisition. I take the stance that it is essential to understand if and how linguistic complexity relates to learning challenges, what the implications are for language pedagogy, and how this challenges the role of the teacher. Research shows that differences in task complexity may lead to differences in linguistic complexity in language learners’ speech or writing. Different tasks (e.g. descriptive vs narrative) and different modes (oral vs written) may lead to different types and levels of complexity in language use. On the one hand, this is a challenge for language assessment, as complexity in language performance may be affected by task characteristics. On the other hand, it is an opportunity for language teaching: using a diversity of tasks, modes and text types may evoke and stretch lexically and syntactically complex language use. I maintain that it is essential for teachers to understand that it is at least as important to aim for development in complexity as it is to aim for development in accuracy. Namely, that ‘errors’ in language learning are part of the deal: complex tasks lead to complex language use, including lexical and syntactical errors, but they are a necessary prerequisite for language development.

First grammar books in the Habsburg Monarchy: individual initiative and regulatory interference by the state (1760s–1770s)

2020 ◽  
Vol 2019 (2 (11)) ◽  
pp. 137-157
Author(s):  
Olga V. Khavanova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
State Policy ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Linguistic Diversity ◽  
Mother Tongue ◽  
German Language ◽  
Habsburg Monarchy ◽  
Private Initiative ◽  
The One

The second half of the eighteenth century in the lands under the sceptre of the House of Austria was a period of development of a language policy addressing the ethno-linguistic diversity of the monarchy’s subjects. On the one hand, the sphere of use of the German language was becoming wider, embracing more and more segments of administration, education, and culture. On the other hand, the authorities were perfectly aware of the fact that communication in the languages and vernaculars of the nationalities living in the Austrian Monarchy was one of the principal instruments of spreading decrees and announcements from the central and local authorities to the less-educated strata of the population. Consequently, a large-scale reform of primary education was launched, aimed at making the whole population literate, regardless of social status, nationality (mother tongue), or confession. In parallel with the centrally coordinated state policy of education and language-use, subjects-both language experts and amateur polyglots-joined the process of writing grammar books, which were intended to ease communication between the different nationalities of the Habsburg lands. This article considers some examples of such editions with primary attention given to the correlation between private initiative and governmental policies, mechanisms of verifying the textbooks to be published, their content, and their potential readers. This paper demonstrates that for grammar-book authors, it was very important to be integrated into the patronage networks at the court and in administrative bodies and stresses that the Vienna court controlled the process of selection and financing of grammar books to be published depending on their quality and ability to satisfy the aims and goals of state policy.

Scribes, Repertoires, and Variation

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eitan Grossman ◽  
Jennifer Cromwell
Keyword(s):  
Language Variation ◽  
Spoken Language ◽  
Historical Sociolinguistics ◽  
Written Texts ◽  
Linguistic Practices ◽  
Culturally Embedded

As in spoken language, variation abounds in written texts. In the latter, linguistic and extralinguistic variation coexists: one finds variation in lexical and grammatical features, as well as in other textual parameters such as orthography, phraseology and formulary, palaeography, layout, and formatting. Such variation occurs both within the written output of individuals and across broader corpora that represent ‘communities’ of diverse types. To encapsulate this, we use the inclusive term ‘scribal repertoires’, a concept that is intended to cover the entire set of linguistic and non-linguistic practices that are prone to variation within and between manuscripts, while placing focus on scribes as socially and culturally embedded agents, whose choices are reflected in texts. This conceptualization of scribal variation, inspired by the relatively recent field of historical sociolinguistics, is applied to a range of phenomenon in the scribal cultures of premodern Egypt, across languages and socio-historical settings.

scholarly journals Finding What Is Inaccessible: Antimicrobial Resistance Language Use among the One Health Domains

Antibiotics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 385
Author(s):  
Lauren L. Wind ◽  
Jonathan S. Briganti ◽  
Anne M. Brown ◽  
Timothy P. Neher ◽  
Meghan F. Davis ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Antibiotic Resistance ◽  
Open Access ◽  
Antimicrobial Resistance ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
One Health ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Language Usage ◽  
Health Domains ◽  
Accessibility Issues ◽  
The One

The success of a One Health approach to combating antimicrobial resistance (AMR) requires effective data sharing across the three One Health domains (human, animal, and environment). To investigate if there are differences in language use across the One Health domains, we examined the peer-reviewed literature using a combination of text data mining and natural language processing techniques on 20,000 open-access articles related to AMR and One Health. Evaluating AMR key term frequency from the European PubMed Collection published between 1990 and 2019 showed distinct AMR language usage within each domain and incongruent language usage across domains, with significant differences in key term usage frequencies when articles were grouped by the One Health sub-specialties (2-way ANOVA; p < 0.001). Over the 29-year period, “antibiotic resistance” and “AR” were used 18 times more than “antimicrobial resistance” and “AMR”. The discord of language use across One Health potentially weakens the effectiveness of interdisciplinary research by creating accessibility issues for researchers using search engines. This research was the first to quantify this disparate language use within One Health, which inhibits collaboration and crosstalk between domains. We suggest the following for authors publishing AMR-related research within the One Health context: (1) increase title/abstract searchability by including both antimicrobial and antibiotic resistance related search terms; (2) include “One Health” in the title/abstract; and (3) prioritize open-access publication.

Die Macht der Bilder und Bilder der Macht: die sprachliche Konstruktion von Nationalismus und Konservatismus in der strategischen politischen Kommunikation von Vox España

2020 ◽  
Vol 136 (2) ◽  
pp. 538-566
Author(s):  
Sandra Issel-Dombert
Keyword(s):  
Language Use ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Multimodal Discourse ◽  
The Social ◽  
Core Elements ◽  
The Media ◽  
Right Wing Populism ◽  
The One ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractFrom a theoretical and empirical linguistic point of view, this paper emphasizes the importance of the relationship between populism and the media. The aim of this article is to explore the language use of the Spanish right wing populism party Vox on the basis of its multimodal postings on the social network Instagram. For the analysis of their Instagram account, a suitable multimodal discourse analysis (MDA) provides a variety of methods and allows a theoretical integration into constructivism. A hashtag-analysis reveals that Vox’s ideology consists of a nativist and ethnocentric nationalism on the one hand and conservatism on the other. With a topos analysis, the linguistic realisations of these core elements are illustrated with two case studies.

scholarly journals Evidence for a bimodal bilingual disadvantage in letter fluency

2016 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 42-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
MARCEL R. GIEZEN ◽  
KAREN EMMOREY
Keyword(s):  
Verbal Fluency ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Spoken Language ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Early Age ◽  
Vocabulary Size ◽  
Dominant Language ◽  
Frequency Of Use ◽  
Fluency Task

Many bimodal bilinguals are immersed in a spoken language-dominant environment from an early age and, unlike unimodal bilinguals, do not necessarily divide their language use between languages. Nonetheless, early ASL–English bilinguals retrieved fewer words in a letter fluency task in their dominant language compared to monolingual English speakers with equal vocabulary level. This finding demonstrates that reduced vocabulary size and/or frequency of use cannot completely account for bilingual disadvantages in verbal fluency. Instead, retrieval difficulties likely reflect between-language interference. Furthermore, it suggests that the two languages of bilinguals compete for selection even when they are expressed with distinct articulators.

Nacionālā valoda zinātnē: Latvijas piemērs

2020 ◽  
pp. 31-52
Author(s):  
Agnese Dubova ◽  
Diāna Laiveniece ◽  
Egita Proveja ◽  
Baiba Egle
Keyword(s):  
Online Community ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Language Choice ◽  
Doctoral Dissertation ◽  
National Language ◽  
Main Trend ◽  
Scientific Language ◽  
Lingua Franca ◽  
Scientific Excellence ◽  
Language Of Science

The aim of the paper is to show and describe the current situation in the Latvian scientific language based on a case study of the problem about the place of a national language and its existence in science in modern globalised time, when the dominance of English as the lingua franca of science grows. More specifically, the paper analyses the November 2019 conceptual plans of the Latvian Ministry of Education and Science about a new concept of doctoral study programmes that would lean towards using English as the doctoral dissertation language in hopes for scientific excellence, and the public reaction and opinion on this concept. The descriptive method is used within the paper, including the contemporary literature review focused on the language of science globally, issues of multilingualism and glocalization, and the problems caused by these issues. Via empirical discourse content analysis, the authors looked at various documents, including Latvian law that governs the rights and rules of the Latvian language use in various contexts. They examined a wide array of mainly online content and diverse online community discourse related to the question of what language should be used (Latvian or English) within the doctoral dissertation process. For a comparison of the situation, the paper also provides a brief insight into the regulation of the language used in the development of dissertations in Lithuania. During the study, 21 different sources, that is, articles posted on various Latvian news media sites and 304 online user comments, predominantly anonymous, under these articles relating to the issue of language choice in doctoral dissertations were analysed. All the mentioned sources, to a greater or lesser extent, discussed the issue of what place Latvian has as a language of science and whether English should be the dominant language in doctoral studies, what implications the choice and usage of a language could have, and what far-reaching impact this might have on science, education, and society. The material revealed a breadth of opinions, depending on what group a person is more likely to represent, ranging from the Ministry stance to organisations and the general public. Some had a very pro-English stance, and some showed significant concern for the Latvian language. The main trend in online community user opinions could be condensed as such: there is a variety of language choices for a doctoral dissertation – a dissertation written in Latvian; a dissertation written in English; or leaving the language choice up to the doctoral student. This would ensure that the language choice fits the doctoral students’ goals and field of research. Making English mandatory would not likely lead to guarantee scientific excellence as what matters is the research content itself, not the language used. The national language in science is a current and important issue in Latvia, as there is a need for state language use in a scientific register, and this usage should be developed further. The Ministry document discussed is still a draft report, and it is not yet known what final decisions on the PhD process and dissertation language will be taken by policymakers in the future. This paper shows that language choice and use in science is not just a matter for scholars and PhD candidates, but an issue that can and does gain interest from various groups of society and gets discussed online in multiple ways, allowing people to express their opinion on policy and societal issues. Latvian is a scientific language, and it has a place within the international scientific discourse, and it should not be made to step aside for the dominant lingua franca.

A case-study in historical sociolinguistics beyond Europe: Reconstructing patterns of multilingualism in a linguistic community in Siberia

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 221-251
Author(s):  
Olesya Khanina ◽  
Miriam Meyerhoff
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Life Stories ◽  
Social Power ◽  
Language Choice ◽  
Linguistic Community ◽  
Oral Histories ◽  
Northern Siberia ◽  
Historical Sociolinguistics

AbstractA collection of traditional and ‘old life’ stories recorded in the late 1940s is used to reconstruct the sociolinguistic situation of the Enets community in Northern Siberia from the 1850s until the 1930s. The Enets had regular contacts with a number of neighbouring indigenous peoples (Nganasans, Tundra Nenets, Selkups, Evenkis, Dolgans) and later with Russian newcomers. The oral histories often comment on language use, and as a result we can reconstruct not only the languages that the Enets people used in this period, but also the contexts in which they used them. The Enets community’s multilingualism was typically characterized by command of key neighbouring languages, with the occasional command of other more (geographically and socially) remote ones. With close neighbours, language choice seems to have had limited social load, while in cases of trade or agonistic contact, the choice of language in interethnic communication seems to have followed a principle of asymmetric convergence towards the language of the party with the greatest contextual social power. The analysis is founded on a database of dozens of communicative events mentioned in the oral stories (over 50 are analyzed). Ongoing fieldwork on the modern sociolinguistic situation suggests that until quite recently there was considerable stability in the sociolinguistic norms governing multilingual interaction among the Enets.

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