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Foreword First of all, a very warm welcome to CamLing. Today’s conference is the first Postgraduate Conference in Language Research to be held at the University of Cambridge, and has the aim of bringing together the many different threads of postgraduate research in the field to encourage discussion, learning and the sharing of ideas. We very much hope that it will be an enjoyable and worthwhile experience for participants and delegates alike. The range, quality and quantity of abstracts submitted to us for review was wonderful and greatly encouraging, and we are glad to have been able to help create a much-needed additional forum for the presentation of such research. The conference organisers are greatly indebted to our reviewers for the time they gave to the very difficult selection process, which resulted in the original and thought-provoking presentations that we look forward to today. This booklet contains the abstracts of the 86 papers being presented, of which 48 are oral presentations, arranged into 4 parallel sessions, and 37 are poster presentations, on display throughout the day. Our presenters represent 36 institutions from around the UK and beyond, and we would like to extend our thanks, good wishes and a special welcome to them! We are delighted that Professor Neil Smith of University College London was able to accept our invitation to be CamLing’s inaugural keynote speaker. Professor Smith’s long-term interest in and research into many aspects of linguistics have earned him a distinguished international reputation, and his current research into the first and second language-learning abilities of an idiot savant, which forms part of his keynote address, touches issues which are cornerstones of language research. Of course, CamLing would not have been possible without the assistance of many people. In addition to our presenters and review board, we would like to extend our grateful thanks to the CamLing session chairs, conference assistants and technical helpers; to our accommodation coordinator, Napoleon Katsos; to the dedicated members of the proceedings editorial team; to the Law Faculty for their help and patience; and to our supervisors for their understanding. We would also like to thank in particular Ian Roberts, Teresa Parodi, David Willis, Theresa Biberauer, Paul de Lacy, Geoff Potter, Nicholas Meanley, Norma Weir, Ariel Knapman, Binnie Macellari, Susan Rolfe, Kelly Challis, Jackie Graves, John Seymour, Steve Burdett and Neil Greenham for their support. Special mention must go to Boping Yuan for the conception of the original idea, and to our PhD colleagues for their confidence in us and their encouragement. Finally, as you may know, CamLing has been organised by and for postgraduate students engaged in language research and is run under the auspices of CILR, the Cambridge Institute of Language Research. CILR was formed in 2001 to promote intellectual exchange between language researchers in many departments throughout the university, and CamLing is an extension of this at post-graduate level and on a broader scale. We hope that today’s forum for interdisciplinary discussion and friendly exchange will be the first of many to come. With our best wishes for an enjoyable day, Helen East and Kirsty McDougall on behalf of the CamLing Organising Committee

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Organising Committee Session Chairs Eva Liina Asu Debbie Anderson Helen East Eva Liina Asu Stavroula Kousta Hildegunn Dirdal Rachael-Anne Knight Helen East Kirsty McDougall Linet Frey Nadezda Novakovic Limin Jin Napoleon Katsos Review Board Stavroula Kousta Rachael Knight Theresa Biberauer Theodore Markopoulos Jim Blevins Kirsty McDougall Richard Breheny Jonathan Midgley Ted Briscoe Nadezda Novakovic Gillian Brown Angeliki Salamoura Denise Chapelle Efthymios Sipetzis Paul de Lacy Mark Wainwright Sarah Hawkins Henriette Hendriks Conference Assistants Anne Ife Kasia Jaszczolt Debbie Anderson Mari Jones Linet Frey Teresa Parodi Katherine Ketner Ian Roberts Limin Jin Aline Villavicencio Nicholas Meanley Sheila Watts Jonathan Midgley John Williams Peggy Mok David Willis Sophia Skoufaki Boping Yuan Rachel Smith

Helen Thawley Sponsorship CamLing is pleased to acknowledge the support of the Linguistics Association of Great Britain and Cambridge University Press.

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Keynote Address

Modularity and Modality in ‘Second’ Language Learning: The Case of a Polyglot Savant

Neil Smith University College London

Modularity and Modality in 'second' language learning: The case of a polyglot savant.

For the last dozen years my colleagues and I have been studying a polyglot ‘savant’, known as C (see Smith and Tsimpli 1995, and references therein; Morgan et al. 2002). C lives in sheltered accom-modation because he cannot look after himself, he is mildly autistic, severely apraxic, and of limited intellectual ability; yet he can read, write, speak and understand about twenty languages. I will outline his abilities in a variety of domains, both verbal and non-verbal, spelling out two kinds of asymmetry: that between his linguistic ability and his general intellectual inability and, within the former, that between his apparently unlimited morphological and lexical prowess as opposed to his more limited syntax. I will then indicate what the implications of these findings are for modularity, for the theory of intelligence, and for the nature of UG. C’s unique profile suggested a further project: a series of experiments in which we have taught British Sign Language to him and a comparator group of talented second language learners. I will report on this more recent, largely unpublished, work, paying particular attention to the learning and use of classifiers, and discuss its relevance to the issue of modality: specifically, whether the human language faculty is preferentially tied to the oral domain, or is ‘modality-neutral’ as between the spoken and the visual modes. Classifiers in general incorporate several layers of information. They specify a referent belonging to a particular class of animate/inanimate nouns, where this classification is based on perceived physical characteristics, such as length, width and density for objects, and a particular posture for animates. Further, classifiers are used to encode the location and movement of nouns; and they may also serve an anaphoric function. Sign language classifiers crucially involve the interaction of language and space – the two domains where C is respectively at his strongest and his weakest. That is, while classifiers are a part of BSL grammar, they simultaneously use non-linguistic cognitive modules for their successful comprehension and production. Space is used both syntactically and topographically. A comparison of different areas of BSL suggests that spatial cognition plays a greater role in determining the use of the classifiers than the linguistic information carried on negation and verb agreement, which uses space in an abstract linguistic fashion. C has learnt the lexicon and, to a lesser extent, aspects of the BSL morphological system to within normal limits. He has acquired knowledge of negation and verb agreement to within normal limits for learners of BSL, even though this has involved overcoming severe difficulty in the movement and co-ordination of his head and hands. When it comes to classifiers, C has had some success in unpacking the linguistic contrasts they carry in those contexts where their function is purely syntactic, and he shows some understanding of the lexical basis of classifier signs when they involve few morphemes. But once they are used for spatial – topographic - mapping, he shows very limited learning. I will spell out the implications of these findings for our understanding of the human language faculty and the human mind more generally.

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Abstracts of Oral and Poster Presentations

The Problem of Translation English Linguistic Terminology into Arabic

Antar Abdellah SOAS, University of London

Arabic Linguistics has been a full-fledged descriptive science for long ages, however modern Linguistics as a distinct empirical science implied that Arab linguists review their methods of dealing with the linguistic phenomenon. One of the major challenges for this new approach was to present equivalent genuine Arabic terms for the modern science terminology. Transliteration is not always recommended as a straightforward strategy, and Arab linguists seek to present linguistic terms that represent the long history of Linguistic research in the Arab culture. The present paper deals with strategies used for translating major linguistic terms into Arabic and investigates problems involved in this process. The terms addressed in this paper are broad terms - including titles of the linguistic sciences - and limited terms - including terms within the domain of some of these sciences. Of the broad terms the following are analysed: Linguistics, Syntax, Semantics, Semiotics, Pragmatics, Phonology, Phonetics, Morphology and Dialectology. Of the limited terms, the study analyses the following: phoneme, morpheme, allophone, allomorph, bilabial, alveolar, fricative, vowel, consonant, geminating, parsing, theta role, case assignment, theme and rheme. li, Azra

Cross-Modal Fusion: Context Effects in Lexical Words

Azra Ali University of Huddersfield

The study focuses on response of participants to audiovisual presentations of talking heads, and examines the effect of noise and temporal misalignment of channels in English monosyllabic words. The results confirm that incongruence of audio and visual channels causes strange perception phenomena (McGurk fusion) and that the McGurk fusion is sensitive to the linguistic context of a segment: coda consonants elicit fusion more frequently than onsets consonants and short vowels elicit fusion more than long vowels. In all cases where the two channels are incongruent, subjects are found to take more time to reach decisions. Where fusion occurs, however, decision time is significantly lower than in cases where the subject decides for the visual or for the acoustic channel.

Also, successfully achieved to relate the fusion phenomena of McGurk effect to cognitive models of speech sounds established amongst phonologists. Government Phonology (GP) framework is based on cognitive primes and is known for its power in modelling coarticulation phenomena as assimilation of speech primes. GP framework provided detailed models of instances of the McGurk effect and was able to pinpoint the fusion, in terms of place and manner of articulation, for consonants and for vowels using the vowel cardinal diagram. Asprey, Esther

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Language and Identity in the Black Country

Esther Asprey University of Leeds

The Black Country area of the West Midlands of England is notoriously difficult to define, since its boundaries are not clearly delimited by any administrative borders such as county boundaries. Hand in hand with this lack of physical boundaries comes a reluctance among its residents to place their own towns within the borders of the Black Country.

Closely allied to this difficulty is the issue of speaker identity in the Black Country, and the related problem of defining those who speak Black Country dialect. In this presentation, the focus will be on defining Black Country speakers as a community, and drawing parallels between the reluctance to acknowledge that one speaks Black Country dialect.

Through examination of qualitative data recorded using the SuRE (Survey of Regional English) methodology which is currently in use at the University of Leeds, this presentation will use linguistic and paralinguistic data to uncover the issues surrounding this reluctance among residents and speakers, as well as the strong positive identity as both Black Country resident and Black Country speaker which some informants show.

The Moral Aspect of Linguistic Politeness

Matteo Beltrami SOAS, University of London

This paper aims at rousing the interest of linguists in the moral aspect of linguistic politeness and to provide a first appraisal of its significance. The study takes a novel approach and does not fit into any existing framework. Politeness has a strong moral component, but scholars seemed to overlook the ethically-inspired nature that characterises many politeness acts. It is generally assumed that the motives prompting politeness acts are of the same nature (e.g. ‘face needs’ are invariably ‘egoistic’); such nature, however, has been differently identified by the various studies. Different types of driving motives (viz. ‘selfish’, ‘normative’ and ‘moral’) capable of triggering politeness devices are investigated. Moral motives acting alone are able to trigger politeness devices (hence ‘moral politeness’), as demonstrated through the analysis of data from Panjabi, in given circumstances where the moral drive is the only possible trigger. Honorific politeness is identified as the prime instantiation of moral politeness. The notion of respect is subdivided into ‘deep respect’, ‘surfaced respect’ and ‘mock respect’. Both surfaced and mock respect are expressed through honorific politeness, but only surfaced respect is an instantiation of moral politeness. It is also suggested that all honorifics are, in origin, expressions of genuine respect. Bonthuis, Fioreneke

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Combining Syntactic and Logical Analyses of Negation

Fiorieneke Bonthuis University of Cambridge

The aim of the paper is to show how the structure and the interpretation of sentences involving negation in language might be explained in terms of the nature of negation in logic. The guiding idea is that negation as expressed in language is in fact the same thing as negation as understood in logic. With the huge variety of negative expressions and the ongoing controversy over the interpretation of negative judgements, negation is not easy to capture. However, in syntax ‘negative sentences’ can be shown to share certain distinctive structural properties. In logic negation is essentially connected to contradiction: the presence of negation in a judgement creates a true/false opposition with an otherwise similar judgement from which it is absent. Crucially, negation also has the property of scope: applied to different parts of the judgement, negation results in different oppositions. Distinctions in the scope of negation are evident both logically (in terms of the implications of the negative judgement) and syntactically (in terms of the structural position of the negative element). The possibility is explored of combining insights from logical and syntactic theory in order to give a principled account of negation in language. In particular, it is considered how these combined insights could be accommodated in Minimalist syntax. Booth, Paul

What is the Relationship Between Second Language Learners’ Beliefs about Writing and their Writing Product in an Academic Environment?

Paul Booth

Kingston University More and more UK universities are beginning to offer English language support programmes because overseas students are often unable to follow the courses of their choice in their local institution. These second language (L2) writers are not only struggling with a developing linguistic code, but are also being called on to meet the demands of composing in an another language. While pedagogical research into second language writing has produced many insights into why some learners are more successful than others, an explicit model of the L2 writing processes is still lacking. Therefore researchers and teachers have met with only limited success in helping learners acquire proficiency in L2 writing. One notable issue here concerns the mismatch between the beliefs of the EAP tutor and those of the learners concerning the value and nature of learning to write in L2. This discrepancy can lead to a number of problems concerning teaching and learning strategies. This study uses questionnaires and interviews with learners and tutors at Kingston University in order to focus on second language learners’ beliefs about their writing and how this impacts on the quality of their written texts. A number of central questions are addressed by the study: are these beliefs shaped by the learners’ backgrounds; do learners’ reported beliefs parallel those of their tutors from in-sessional support; what are the pedagogical implications in these findings? Bozic, Mirjana, William Marslen-Wilson, and Lo rraine K. Tyler

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The Time-Course of Morphological and Semantic Activation

Mirjana Bozic†, William Marslen-Wilson‡, and Lorraine K. Tyler† †University of Cambridge; ‡MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, Cambridge

A central issue in research on word recognition is whether the morphological structure of polymorphemic words is an aspect of a word's representation. Different theoretical approaches have provided different answers to this issue. Traditional approaches postulate that morphemes are explicitly represented in the lexicon and play a distinctive role in the word recognition process. Distributed connectionist theories argue that morphological effects only reflect inter-level representations that arise from correlations among orthography, phonology and semantics. This experiment investigated the role of morphological structure in lexical access, evaluating the different predictions made by these two approaches. Morphological effects were contrasted with the effects of shared meaning and shared form in masked priming experiments at three prime exposure durations (36, 48, and 72 ms), which allowed us to investigate the time-course of activation for these different information types. The results suggested that pure form overlap crucially affects priming at the earliest stage probed by this experiment (36 ms), whereas semantic and morphological information only become available at later stages. Genuine morphological effects were not observed in the absence of semantic similarity at any SOA. These findings will be discussed in terms of the two approaches to morphological processing. Butterfint, Zoe

Intra-Speaker Variation in Fundamental Frequency

Zoe Butterfint University of Manchester

Fundamental frequency has attracted a great deal of attention in the field of speaker identification, on the basis that organic structures, such as the larynx, could be expected to show considerable inter-speaker variation. However, large amounts of intra-speaker variation have also been noted in F0 measures, due to both extrinsic sources – including emotional state of the speaker - and also the inherent plasticity of the vocal tract. This paper examines the extent to which the range of variability itself varies between speakers, and may thus be useful as a tool with which to characterise individuals. F0 was analysed in speech representing different styles and emotional content from three speakers. In initial investigations the effects of extrinsic sources of variation were found to be different between speakers, suggesting some individuality in the way F0 varies. Correlation analysis examined whether the range and distribution of F0 values could be used to distinguish between speakers. Preliminary results indicate that discrimination is most successful when equivalent passages are compared. Further study is required to determine whether large numbers of speakers can be discriminated in this way, and also whether the technique can be extended to other parameters in speech. Carmichael, James

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Devising a System of Computerised Metrics for the Frenchay Dysarthria Assessment Intelligibility Tests

James Carmichael

University of Sheffield This study reports on the development of a computerised system of isolated-word intelligibility metrics designed to improve the scoring consistency of the intelligibility assessment component of the Frenchay Dysarthria Assessment Test (FDA).

The proposed intelligibility measurements are based on the goodness-of-fit probability scores derived from the forced alignment of the dysarthric speech to corresponding automatic speech recognition hidden Markov models (HMMs) trained on data from a variety of normal speakers. We conjecture that since these HMMs attempt to model variability in normal speech, the extent to which dysarthric speech matches them will be related to its intelligibility.

Baseline results reveal a distinct separation of probability score clusters for normal and dysarthric data along with a definite correlation between the recogniser’s and the human listeners’ assessment of a given speaker’s intelligibility. This correlation holds true both in terms of ‘raw’ scores (the percentage of correct interpretations) and the naïve listener’s perception of the degree of effort taken to successfully decode a particular utterance. Furthermore, the HMM-based recogniser performs consistently over repeated sessions, unlike human listeners whose assessment – as one of the experiments demonstrates – is often affected by their subconscious adjustments to the dysarthric’s initially unfamiliar speech patterns (learning effect). Chang, John C.Y.

The Interpretation of Metaphor from a Semantic and Conceptual Perspective: Evidence from Mandarin Chinese in Taiwan

John C.Y. Chang

University of Cambridge The study is based on the semantic approach developed by Leezenberg (2001). The evidence used to demonstrate the application of the Leezenberg framework is gathered from a range of data in Mandarin Chinese spoken in Taiwan for the past four years. There are five pieces of data: one poem, lyrics of one contemporary song, two news review articles, and sections from one book. The study deals with how metaphors are constructed and interpreted, and how cultural aspects and context-dependence affect the interpretation of metaphor. The objective of this study is to show (1) that the interpretation of metaphor has much to do with culturally determined practices and (2) that when the semantic approach incorporates the notions of ‘concept formation’ and ‘folk theory’, it can yield a more powerful account on how metaphors are created and understood. The overall aim of the study is to demonstrate a theoretical account that can capture the interpretation of metaphorical concepts in a society. Choi, Seongsook

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Serial Verbs and Adjuction

Seongsook Choi University of Sussex

In this presentation, I investigate the underlying structure of Korean complex predicates formed of two or more verbs. I will argue that Korean serial V-V involves an adjunction structure similar to that proposed by Baker and Stewart (2002), who argue that CSVCs (Consequential Serial Verb Constructions) involve a vP adjunction, [vP [vP vP]]. I will provide the underlying adjunction structure for Korean serial V-V constructions by comparing two types of V-V in Korean: aspectual auxiliary construction and serial construction. The aspectual auxiliary construction is formed of a main verb and a 'helping' verb (mostly aspectual) and the serial construction is formed of two transitive verbs. I will show that the aspectual auxiliary V-V formation is event-bound as shown in (Choi 2003), whereas the serial V-V is not. Hence the serial V-V forms an adjunction structure [vP2 [vP1 vP2]]. This is supported by looking at verb classes and morpho-syntactic properties in Korean, and how they combine to yield different interpretations between the auxiliary and the serial V-V. The proposed adjunction structure will provide a basis for the nature of empty category involvement in serial constructions.

Pragmatic Competence in Post-Graduate EAP Students: Seminar Participation.

Susan Derry-Penz Anglia Polytechnic University

This paper sets out to investigate aspects of spoken discourse which are problematic for non-native post-graduate students participating in humanities seminars. While much published EAP material has focussed on linguistic content, recent research has pointed out the need for a broader type of speaker competence by highlighting the difference between conversational and academic discourse in terms of such features as the complexity and length of turns (Lynch 2001, Clennel 1999).

Researchers now advocate the relatively difficult task of sensitising students to the pragmatic aspects of discourse. Pragmatic failure, both linguistic and social, has moreover been viewed as evidence of cross-cultural breakdown, and recent studies hold with developing meta-pragmatic ability in learners by encouraging them to analyse their own discourse (Lynch 2001, Basturkmen 2002, Clennel 1999).

In the light of such research a study was carried out with a group of Cambridge post-graduate students to ascertain students' perceptions about their needs in terms of pragmatic performance in seminars. It was found that seminar participation problems primarily related to students’ uncertainty regarding the appropriate expression of illocutionary force and to extra-linguistic behaviour, as well as interpreting native speaker behaviour. These findings prompted the design of a set of pre-sessional materials aimed at clarifying the purpose, patterns of interaction and culturally conditioned behavioural expectations of seminar participation. These materials will be presented, and their purpose and anticipated use described. East, H elen

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The Auxiliary Doubling “Error” in English First Language Acquisition: Is you is, or is you ain’t my baby?

Helen East

University of Cambridge The phenomenon of "auxiliary doubling" in question forms is an attested developmental error in child first language acquisition of English (e.g. Do you don't like bananas?). This has been considered in the generative framework as spell-out of trace (Erreich et al. 1980, Guasti et al. 1994a), indicative of a rule-based symbol processing system. This paper presents a model of this phenomenon using a statistical learning and processing system, a connectionist network. Through distributional analysis of 18 clause types based on English and presented word-by-word (though not coded for word category) as input, a standard connectionist SRN network (Elman 1993) learns to predict the correct word category at each instant for each clause type, with a low percentage error. One error the network does make, however, is to exhibit a marked tendency for auxiliary doubling in questions. The relative frequencies of the types of auxiliary doubling error produced by the network are compared

(a) to those attested in the literature; and (b) to those predicted by different spell-out of trace models.

The input of the network was manipulated to establish how these errors may arise. Discussion of the findings will question some of the assumptions behind using other spell-out of trace

errors as evidence for Universal Grammar, and, finally, this paper will speculate on the conformity of errors and interlanguage to the principles of UG.

Edwardes, Martin

I Like both Myself and Me

Martin Edwardes University of East London

The reflexive nature of pronouns varies with person, but only in the first person does the subject always co-identify with the object. Thus I like me has effectively the same meaning as I like myself. Grammatically, I like myself is considered marked, while I like me is unmarked. However, is the unmarked form the most used? A corpus study was undertaken, involving three separate surveys of the Internet. These were carried out in September 2001, February 2002 and December 2002. The same search engine (Alta Vista) was used for all three to give comparative figures. The results of all three surveys were consistent, and quite surprising: I like me is, indeed, more common than I like myself, so can be considered the pragmatically unmarked form. However, when any factor in I like me is varied (pluralisation, past tense, different verb) the resulting construct proves to be less common than the reflexive –self version. Additionally, the more factors that were varied, the more common the reflexive form became. It seems that I like me may have an idiomatic force which creates a “shadow” in related forms. This effect will be considered in relation to pragmatic speech forms and idiomatic usage. Evans, Bronwen G.

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Vowel Normalization for Accent: An Investigation of Best Exemplar Locations in Northern and Southern British English Sentences

Bronwen G. Evans

University College London Two experiments investigated whether listeners change their vowel categorization decisions to adjust to different accents of British English. Listeners from different regions of England gave goodness ratings on synthesized vowels embedded in natural carrier sentences that were produced in either a northern (Sheffield English) or southern (Standard Southern British English) accent by a single male speaker. A computer minimization algorithm adjusted F1, F2, F3, and duration until the best exemplar of each vowel was found. The results demonstrated that some listeners normalize their vowel categorization decisions based on the accent of the carrier sentence, and that patterns of normalization are affected by individual differences in language background (i.e., the degree of experience an individual has had living in multidialectal environments, and whether the individuals grew up in the north or south of England). The patterns of normalization corresponded with the changes in production that speakers typically make due to sociolinguistic factors when living in multidialectal environments (e.g., when an individual moves from the north to the south of England). However, the results could not be readily explained by existing exemplar or category assimilation models. Fosker, Tim and Guillaume Thierry

Electrophysiological Investigation of Phonological Processing in Normal Adult Readers and Dyslexic Adults

Tim Fosker and Guillaume Thierry

University of Wales, Bangor Developmental dyslexia is a disorder characterised by reading difficulties. Among other explanations, a deficit in phonological processing (especially in phoneme discrimination) has been proposed. A major question is to what extent this impairment relates to implicit phoneme processing. We present the results of an Event-related Potential (ERP) experiment that was designed to examine automatic attentional shifts towards phonological cues in normal adult readers and dyslexic adults. Participants were asked to perform a lexical decision task ('is this a word or not?') on spoken stimuli. Eighty percent of the stimuli started with the same phoneme (standard), and 20 percent started with a different phoneme (deviant), although participants were not informed of this manipulation. A P300 waveform was expected in response to 'deviant' stimuli, indicating that participants had processed the first phoneme of the stimulus presented sufficiently that their attention was 'captured' by this surprise change. A P300 was shown for control adults, but not for dyslexic adults. This result suggests that dyslexic adults do not make automatic shifts in attention to phonology in the same way that normal adult readers do. Foth, Roberto and Hully Wolderufael

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The Role of Scripts for the Successful Management of Communicative Events with Particular Reference to Job Interviews

Roberto Foth and Hully Wolderufael

Birkbeck College, University of London; Tower Hamlets College Many ESOL students at further education colleges encounter barriers to employment that are not primarily rooted in a lack of grammatical but rather sociolinguistic and discourse competence. Schemata and scripts provide a platform for the exploration of pragmatic and genre knowledge as well as intrapsychic phenomena. Building on previous research into medical consultations (Ranney 1992), this study elicits, compares, and observes the realisations of stereotypes about job interviews in the UK. Participants' native language and culture, previous job interview experience and training as well as length of stay in the UK are some of the independent variables that may be related to elicited job interview scripts and actually observed and recorded behaviour in pre-interviews, mock job interviews, exit interviews, and discourse completion tasks. The research combines qualitative and quantitative methods and looks for patterns that may explain differences in script length, selection of script elements, linguistic realisations of speech acts, and speech event outcomes. Findings may have significance for L2 instruction and equal opportunities in recruitment. Gagnon, Chantal

Institution in Translated Political Speeches: a Canadian Example

Chantal Gagnon Aston University

In Canada studying the translations of political speeches raises a number of problems, particularly the linguistic, political, and social questions that have long been associated with Canadian society’s search for identity. This paper illustrates these issues through the examination of the translations of two important speeches, one delivered by René Lévesque (Premier of Québec, 1976-1985) and the other by Pierre Elliott Trudeau (Primer Minister of Canada, 1968-1984). More specifically, the paper analyses the sociopolitical issues involved in these speeches using a theoretical model partly based upon Christina Schäffner’s and Teun A. van Dijk’s work (context, syntax and semantic). Our main hypothesis relies on the fact that at first, both speakers appear to represent their respective nation in their speech, Québec for Lévesque and Canada for Trudeau. In other words, it seems that at the time of the speech, each prime minister was naturally speaking for the entire population they had to represent. However, our research proves that in the translation, the two prime ministers were not necessarily speaking for all citizens: they were addressing only those who had voted for them. Furthermore, the research shows that in Canada, the translation of political speeches is an effective tool used for the dissemination of ideologies. Galani, Alexandra

Allomorphy: Theme Vowels in Modern Greek

Alexandra Galani University of York

Theme vowels (TV) are traditionally seen as markers of the conjugational classes (Slavic, Romance languages, Modern Greek (MG)). Previous analyses assume that TVs are empty morphemes appearing next to a root to form an uninflected stem to which inflectional suffixes are attached. More recently, TVs are treated as independent -empty- morphemes. By comparing gr`af-ome (write.1SG.IMP.PRSN.AC) versus kal-`ume (invite.1SG.IMP.PRSN.AC), we are forced to suggest that there are no TVs in MG. On the contrary, the vowels which follow the roots, differ (-o-, -u-). Consequently we treat them as TVs showing that these verbs belong in different conjugational classes and predicting that they - morphologically- behave in a different way. Nonetheless, TVs can only be seen as part of the morphological cluster representing aspect, voice, agreement and tense (cumulative exponence) - not independent morphemes - enabling us to interepret the allomorphy: gr`af-ese, kal-`ise (2SG). However, this contradicts the claim on empty morphemes. Further

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evidence for the dependence of TVs on semantic features derives from the perfective forms -gr`af-tika (1SG.NA): TVs are not spelled-out overtly which suggests that TVs in MG are sensitive with respect to the imperfective aspect. Finally the last piece of empirical data (on position and features of TVs) derives from verbs such as pl`en-o (wash.1SG.IMP.PRST.AC), `eplin-a (wash.1SG.IMP.PST.AC), where the TV is realised within the stem. This alternative account is formulated within Distributed Morphology. García de la Maza, Casilda

“Does your car share?”: The Spread of the English Middle Construction

Casilda García de la Maza University of Cambridge

Research on the English middle construction (EMC) (This book reads well) has so far concentrated on its grammatical derivation, argument structure and the restrictions on the class of verbs that can appear in middles. No work has previously been done on the diachronic side of the phenomenon of middles. Firstly, my study highlights the fact that the EMC is spreading and being used with an increasing number of verbs. In addition to the traditional or core verbs that give middles (sell, cut, wash, translate etc…), novel and idiosyncratic middle usages are arising (She interviews well, It packs up nice). Data from a pilot survey proves that change is at work and that familiarity and use influence the way middles are spreading. Secondly, it seeks to accommodate theoretically this process of change. I show that standard theories of syntactic change, viewed as parametric change, are inadequate. I propose a gradual, lexical model of change, inspired by Robert’s (1993) notion of “steps” and Bauer’s (2001) proposals of productivity in terms of availability and degrees of profitability (acceptability), which allows both for the idea of spread rather than elimination of structures from the language and for the effect of language external forces, such as frequency of use. Glowacka, Dorota

Truncation in Polish

Dorota Glowacka Univeristy College London

The paper provides an Optimality Theoretic (Prince and Smolensky 1993) analysis of truncation in Polish. Truncation processes (i) provide significant evidence for a minimal phonological word in Polish and (ii) shed new light on the unresolved question of syllabification of word-medial consonant clusters.

Polish truncated forms conform to a left-headed disyllabic foot, contra Szpyra (1995). This foot constitutes a minimal Polish word, which confirms McCarthy and Prince's (2001) proposal that in languages without quantity distinctions, such as Polish, the minimal phonological word must be bisyllabic at some level.

There are two types of truncates in Polish. In Type A truncates the left edge of the stem coincides with the left edge of the base stem. In Type B truncates the right edge of the stem coincides with the right edge of the base stem.

Type B truncates do not fully incorporate medial consonant clusters present in the base even in cases where the resultant cluster would constitute a well-formed word onset. I propose that Type B truncation reflects the base syllabification of word medial clusters. Polish truncates show two TETU effects: avoidance of voiced obstruents in coda position and of branching onsets in unstressed syllables. They determine how much base material can be preserved in the truncate. Hasler, Laura

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Annotation for Summarisation: Marking Important Information in Similar Texts

Laura Hasler University of Wolverhampton

Whilst much is made of the importance of multiple annotations of documents for summarisation allowing interannotator agreement to be computed, there is no research regarding what happens when an annotator is faced with several versions of a text which is primarily “about” the same topic.

This presentation details how human annotators mark important information in a corpus of texts that are concerned with the same story, but are written from a different perspective, and the impact this has on those sentences which are considered important. The analysis comprises three levels: lexical, syntactic and discourse and aims to prove the hypothesis that stylistic factors do indeed affect the importance associated with certain textual units.

Preliminary results show that when the same annotator is instructed to mark the important information in different versions of the same story, the similarity between them is lower than the similarity between the same texts annotated by different people. These results seem to support our hypothesis and therefore it is worth pursuing the investigation on a larger scale.

This research could have implications for multidocument summarisation, where very similar documents are often the sources of a single summary. Haunz, Christine

Grammatical and Non-Grammatical Factors in Loanword Adaptation

Christine Haunz University of Edinburgh

This study examines strategies in dealing with conflicting phonologies, specifically conflicts between different phonotactic systems, which frequently occur in loanword adaptation processes. The specific case studied are hypothetical Russian loanwords containing onset clusters which are illegal in English, such as /fp, vl/. The correct response rates shown by English listeners when asked to, respectively, repeat and give an orthographic representation of the target words differ considerably between clusters, as do the adaptations, with varying rates of epenthesis, deletion and segment changes. Since this variability cannot be explained with mere non-grammaticality or the traditional measure of rating clusters, Minimal Sonority Distance, I am currently investigating the role of three further factors, which not only depend on grammatical differences between English and Russian, as assumed by traditional loanword research: (1) degree of illegality, as predicted by the hierarchy of violated constraints within the framework of Optimality Theory (including sonority distance as well as e.g. the Obligatory Contour Principle and RELEASE) (2) phonetic similarity, as predicted by consonant similarity values which are calculated from structured specification (Frisch 1997) (3) frequency of potential cluster adaptations in the English lexicon, as measured in the CELEX database. Preliminary results suggest a key role of perceived similarity.

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Recovery of Language Function in Acquired Childhood Aphasia: The Influential Case of Thomas Barlow (1877)

Paula Hellal

Birkbeck College, University of London In 1877 Thomas Barlow published a "case of double hemiplegia with cerebral symmetrical lesion". The patient, a 10-year-old boy, had suffered right-sided hemiplegia and aphasia, recovering both language function and muscular control within one month. Three months later he developed left-sided hemiplegia and was again aphasic. His condition changed little before his death a few weeks later. Barlow attributed the boy’s condition to the loss of voluntary power over the mouth and tongue muscles. After the first attack of hemiplegia the right motor cortex was still able to control the bilateral mouth musculature. The second attack, though, damaged this region leaving the child "irretrievably deficient".

Despite Barlow’s analysis, the case is cited in the contemporaneous medical literature as providing support for a different hypothesis; the "take over" of language function in aphasic patients by the homologous region in the undamaged hemisphere. In particular the case interested his contemporaries seeking explanation for the perceived transient nature of the aphasic syndrome in children. Twentieth century retrospectives of the early history of ACA research have focused almost entirely on the work of European physicians. This paper will consider Barlow’s case in the light of the debate played out in the English language journals. Inagaki, Noriko

An Alternative Approach to Linguistic Politeness

Noriko Inagaki SOAS, University of London

The search for a universal theory has been the mainstream of politeness studies since Brown and Levinson’s (1978/1987) seminal paper. Although many researchers have attempted to construct a theory of politeness, their notions of politeness are inevitably bound to their cultural and linguistic presuppositions. Politeness may be interpreted broadly as appropriateness in social interaction. However what is deemed appropriate depends entirely upon the particular community to which the interlocutors belong. The evaluation of politeness is essentially an individual matter and therefore, inevitably, subjective. Parameters pertaining to politeness in language differ according to the particular language concerned. For instance, an alternative politeness theory based on wakimae (Ide 1989), acknowledging sense of place in relation to social context is a reflection of the typological characteristic of Japanese, which employs explicit devices for social indexing. This raises the issue whether it is possible to develop a "neutral" theory of politeness at all. This paper takes an alternative approach to linguistic politeness, asserting a broader version of the Sapir-Whorf linguistic relativity hypothesis, i.e. relativity in language use (cf. Lucy 1992). The discussion considers social theorists such as Bourdieu, and Foucault out of epistemological necessity for a broader paradigm for the understanding of politeness.

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Caryl Churchill's Dialogue: Some Discursive Features

Andriy Ivanchenko University of Cambridge

Caryl Churchill's post-1979 plays present a special interest for the discourse stylistic study because of the playwrigh's artful exploitation of such discursive features as overlaps and pauses. Overlapping speech can often be regarded as performance feature resulting from an interpretation of the play script; but when it is notated in the script, as pauses are, it can influence the reader's interpretation of the play script and thus influence possible performances. I suggest that characters' interactional strategies based on combinations of discursive features together with co-participants' ostensible reactions provide an interpretative resource for the analyst with regard to the dramatic situation and character. I shall ask in what ways combinations of discursive features (including overlaps and/or pauses) can be interpreted by the script reader on the micro level of inter-character interaction. I shall consider what import that may have on the macro level of the play as a whole. Izwaini, Sattar

How the Arabs and Swedes Click The Translation of the Language of Information Technology

Sattar Izwaini

UMIST The language of information technology (LIT) is the variety that is used in computer literature, on-line help and user interface as well as the Internet. The new technology introduced a special kind of linguistic usage in the form of menus, dialogue boxes, and error messages. The paper investigates how the vocabulary of computing and the Internet is translated into Arabic and Swedish.

The study is based on specialized corpus in English and translational corpora in Arabic and Swedish. Texts are taken from online help, manuals, IT journalistic texts, and web sites. Key words of English LIT are extracted by using Wordsmith tools. The translation equivalents are traced by using ParaConc program which gives hits of the key words and the sentences where corresponding words occur.

LIT has been translated by different strategies such as loan (calque) translation, derivation, expanding, borrowing, and cultural adaptation. In Arabic we find loan translation: qurS marin (disk flexible) for floppy disk; derivation: musstaCriD (viewer) for browser; expanding: shabakat al-itiSAlAt al-mahaliyah for the acronym LAN; borrowing: modem, and cultural adaptation of shariiT al-?adawAt (ribbon the-tools) for Toolbar. The latter is culturally adapted as Verktygsfält (tool-field) in Swedish which also borrows modem and renders hard disk by loan translation as hårddisk. Metaphors, e.g. menu, are rendered literally in both languages thus maintaining the figurative usage. Jamin, Mikaël

Sociolinguistic Variation in the Paris Inner Cities

Mikaël Jamin University of Kent at Canterbury

The research reported derives from the first quantitative study of what can be referred to as 'inner city French'. The focus of the study is the innovative phonological features that are emerging in the speech of working-class youths living in the Paris banlieues or inner cities. The distribution of one of these non-standard features (palatalisation of velar and dental plosives) shows an age-grading pattern, suggesting a change in progress in Metropolitan French towards affrication of these plosives (Armstrong and Jamin 2002) – a phenomenon that is more commonly found in Canadian varieties of French. More recent results still (Jamin forthcoming) suggest that the adoption of affricated forms is being led by young speakers of North-African origin and that it is strongly linked to the influence of the street culture found in the Paris grands ensembles (large-scale housing estates, typically built in the 1960s). Using the same variationist method, applied to a social-network

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informant sample, this paper will try to shed light on a further innovating linguistic feature of inner city French, a glottalised realisation of /R/. Jendraschek, Gerd

Three Ways of Expressing Possibility: The Semantic Effects of Morphological Change in Basque

Gerd Jendraschek Universite de Toulouse-Le Mirail

Basque illustrates the problem of describing semi-standardized languages, where variation plays an important role, and where interdialectal contact leads to the emergence of supradialectal varieties. The comparison of northern and southern varieties leads to interesting conclusions, as we can observe differences in the morphosyntax of the southern and northern standard. Interestingly, speakers from the South use more morphological, synthetic forms, whereas northern speakers prefer analytical forms. Although the loss of synthetic forms has been observed for centuries, the dramatic loss of morphological complexity in the north seems to be a recent phenomenon, as more conservative grammars report many forms which are no longer used today by young speakers. Morphologically more complex forms and those representing marked categories are eliminated first, whereas shorter and more frequent forms are retained longest. In some cases, old and new forms co-exist with semantic differences. If you take the example of the three different ways to express possibility in Basque, it is interesting to see that the oldest form is most often used for the expression of epistemic possibility, whereas the more recent, periphrastic form, has only few epistemic readings. However, these differences are neutralized when the old forms fall into oblivion.

L1 Transfer Effect on L2 Acquisition of Functional Categories

Jongdo Jin

University of Reading Concerning the L1 transfer effect on Second Language Acquisition within the generative study, there have been three claims: lexical transfer (Vainikka and Young-Scholten 1994, 1998), partial or weak transfer (Eubank 1993/4) and strong or absolute transfer (Schwartz and Sprouse 1996). Lexical transfer proponents maintain that only lexical categories (with the Minimal Tree Structure) transfer whereas the other two transfer theorists claim both functional and lexical categories transfer simultaneously. The difference between the weak and strong transfer theorists is the extent of transfer. Can some functional categories be transferred while some are not or are all the L1-instantiated functional categories transferred? To address this issue, we have studied Korean children (two groups, 5-6 year group and 7-8 year group) picking up English as their L2 in English immersion setting, i.e. local primary schools. We also have two English control groups to compare the performance data with. We will present relevant data concerning the development of functional categories; Determiner Phrase, Infl Phrase and Comp Phrase. We will have a discussion on the basis of our data.

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The Loss of Negative Concord and the Rise of Polarity Item Any in Early Modern English

Amel Kallel University of Reading

The loss of negative concord (NC) in Early Modern English is one of the issues that have been given little consideration. The rise of polarity item any in contexts where the n-word series were used instead, also received little attention in the literature. Linguists have generally attributed the loss of NC to prescriptive views in the 17th and 18th centuries (Baugh and Cable 1978; Fischer 1992). However, on analysing data, figures suggest that the transition in the frequency of use of these two variants is already established well before the 17th century. We look at the observed change in terms of Kroch’s Constant Rate Hypothesis which predicts that the rate of use of any should rise as the rate of loss of NC. Our data indicate that both rates follow and S-curve shape. Another relevant issue to our research is why the change took place when it did. There are a variety of internal and external factors that could have triggered the change in one way or another. Can the rise of do-auxiliary be the trigger behind the observed change? Some external factors such as age and gender are also considered.

Women, Sex and Ads: A Study that Employs the Concept of Metaphor

Vasiliki Kanellou and Sakis Kyratzis Kingston University

The principal aim of the study is to obtain a detailed description on the use of metaphors in magazine advertising. In my presentation, I intend to focus only on one of the research questions that guide this project.

Research question: From which fields do adverts of consumer goods in popular women’s magazines draw their metaphors and why?

Methodology: I have selected six different advertisements from some of the most popular young women’s magazines in Britain nowadays. The latter are the following: Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire and SHE. I intend to identify the metaphor/s in each case, to discover the ways in which the images, captions or surrounding texts guide their interpretation and to demonstrate their functions. I shall also analyse my data in terms of the processing time possible or presumed to be possible to the addressee.

Indicative Outcomes: (a) Many metaphors have sexual allusions; women are invited to experience certain products, such as food and clothes, in terms of sex. (b) Advertisers draw metaphors from fields that are familiar to the addressees in order to ensure minimal processing effort and quick processing time. If women are interested in exploring their sexuality and in the relationships they form with men, it is only natural that advertisers will follow the same pattern when devising their adverts. (c) Men’s qualities are ascribed to products. Analogies are drawn between certain products and men and attention is drawn to the advantages that the former have over the latter. This is usually presented in a comical way and thus the metaphors contribute in yielding laughter.

U

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The Facilitative Role of Interruptions in Thai and Japanese Business Meetings

U-maporn Kardkanklai University of Reading

This presentation explores how Thais and Japanese use interruptions as a facilitative device in business meetings. It also reveals some significant cultural values underlying the use of these interruptions by both groups.

The data obtained were 446-minute tape-recorded business meetings between the Thai and Japanese business persons working in two large Japanese companies in Thailand. In these meetings, English was used as the language of communication. The SPEAKING grid suggested by Hymes was used to capture the relevant social background of the participants in the meetings. The proposed framework, consisting of four types and two main functions, was used to classify and categorize interruptions. Politeness theory and rules of rapport were used to analyze the functions of interruptions in particular contexts.

Analysis of the qualitative data suggests that facilitative interruptions used by Thais and Japanese can be grouped into three categories: task-focused, rapport-creating and deference-mitigating interruptions. These facilitative interruptions were used as a device to achieve transactional and interactional goals in the meetings.

The findings also indicate that (i) facilitative interruptions may be acknowledged as a norm of interaction between people from similar cultural background (ii) an understanding of facilitative interruptions may minimize misinterpretation of social behaviour (iii) facilitative interruptions may be one of the significant factors in skilfully-managed conversations.

Experimental Pragmatics: The Default Generation of Implicatures

Napoleon Katsos University of Cambridge

In this paper I present experimental data that suggest that Generalised Conversational Implicatures (GCIs) cannot be inferences that are generated by default. In theoretical pragmatics Levinson (e.g. 2000) claims that GCIs are inferences that are drawn by default, regardless of contextual assumptions, whereas according to Relevance Theory (e.g. Sperber and Wilson 1995) GCIs are drawn only when warranted by the context. Both theories explicitly state that their predictions should hold for the on-line processing of GCIs as well.

Phrases like ‘some of the students fell asleep’ have the GCI ‘not all of the students fell asleep’. In artificial short texts, I measured reading time of the phrase ‘not all of the students’ when the trigger phrase ‘some of the students…’ preceded it either in subject or object position. I observed that reading times were significantly slower when the trigger ‘some of the students’ was in object position. This is not predicted by theories that postulate that GCIs are generated by default, without taking into account contextual factors such as sentence information structure. I further discuss the implications of my study for both pragmatic theories and psycholinguistics.

The present research could be considered a contribution to the recent trend of using psycholinguistic models to investigate issues of theoretical linguistics (e.g. Bezuidenhout and Cutting 2002, Noveck and Sperber forthcoming). Kert, Gorazd

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Dative Alternation as a Semi-Productive Process

Gorazd Kert University of Cambridge

In the recent years, an increasing interest of computational linguistics in natural language and linguistic theory has been noted, which but finds very little linguistic research devoted specifically to natural language processing applications.

I discuss the possibilities of incorporating the theory behind NLP applications into linguistic theory and look specifically at linguistic motivation for treating dative alternation in the form of a semi-productive lexical rule. I suggest that lexical rules allow for an opposition between productive and non-productive rules and assume that dative alternation can be accounted for by a derivational relation between the two frames. The derivational relation between the alternating frames but is subject to constraints and as such cannot be regarded as fully productive. In the case of dative alternation, constraints on productivity also cannot be interpreted as a uniform class, and thus cannot be treated as redundancy relations on full productivity. In order to solve this problem, the theory behind natural language processing applications interprets semi-productivity with respect to probability of the occurrence of a lexical rule.

The presentation aims to find a way of how probabilistic accounts of semi-productivity can be incorporated into linguistic theory and reviews how a range of linguistic theories can be incorporated in natural language processing applications. Ketner, Katherine

A HoT-HoP Problem: The Czech Adjectival Suffix _sk}

Katherine Ketner University of Cambridge

In this talk, I will present a novel account of Czech allomorphy, focusing on the suffix _sk}. The addition of _sk} is treated as a case of homogeneity of target, heterogeneity of process within Optimality Theory. The target is to produce a well-formed consonant cluster, and Czech has five methods of doing so. The first approach is to devoice a voiced root-final consonant. The second is to avoid geminate consonants by deleting. Yet a third involves assimilation to place while maintaining continuant identity given a root-final velar or glottal consonant. The fourth tactic emerges when the item is viewed as a loanword: a separate set of loanword-specific faithfulness constraints exist. The fifth and final instance is when the cluster is already optimally-formed and the root undergoes no change. While the data at first seems to stem from many different unrelated processes, my analysis provides a reductionist account incorporating them into the larger phonology of the language. An integrated model such as this would not be possible within a serialist framework. The investigation also yields an important prediction for the Czech language: because the processes for assimilating loanwords have changed, any future borrowing would be expected to follow the new paradigm. Kolko, Maha

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VP-Ellipsis in Arabic

Maha Kolko University of Reading

The purpose of this paper is to examine the nature of VP-ellipsis in Standard Arabic and Syrian Arabic (abbreviated as MSA and SA, respectively) within the dependency theory framework developed by Fiengo and May (1994).

Fiengo and May assume that a sentence such as ‘Max saw his mother’ is structurally ambiguous, the ambiguity being attributed to a distinction in the representation of anaphoric pronouns that indicates whether the pronoun is formally dependent on its antecedent or not. This is similar to Arabic, for example:

(1) raʔā al-walad-u ʔmah-u wa kādlīka Maher

(MSA)saw.past.ms the-boy mother-his and so did maher-nom “The boy saw his mother and so did maher”

Although the data in Arabic does show a similar correspondence to English as far as the ambiguity problem in example (1), it differs in how the eliminative puzzles are accounted for, particularly in the case of the many-clauses puzzle. Following Huang (2000), I will demonstrate that the ambiguity problems aroused in different constructions of Arabic cannot be analyzed on a par with VP-ellipsis in English where a revised model would be applied to the original one of Fiengo and May (1994) to resolve VP-ellipsis in MSA and SA. Larm, Lars Ingemar

The Inferential Present Perfect in Swedish

Lars Ingemar Larm University of Oxford

The first theme of my research is that of evidentiality, and in particular inferential uses of the present perfect. This presentation concerns inferential and reportative uses of the present perfect in Swedish. In its primary uses, the Swedish present perfect does not differ much from that of English. However, in inferential or reportative contexts the present perfect can replace the preterit, and, if the inferentiality or reportativity is highlighted enough, it can even co-occur with time adverbials which have definite past time reference, as in:

Jag har tydligen varit sjuk i mars förra året. ‘(lit.) I have obviously been sick in March last year.’ ‘I was obviously sick in March last year.’

There are two essential aims of this presentation, which can be summarised as follows: (1) I will present a framework for analysing inferential and reportative contexts. (2) I will show that the present perfect in Swedish, if it is combined with a definite past time adverbial, is

dependent on assistance of certain expressions, e.g. modal adverbs. Lee, Amy Pei-jung

On Sociophonology of the English Glottalling

Amy Pei-jung Lee University of Essex

This paper studies the linguistic phenomenon - glottalling, which has been considered the most distinguishing characteristic of British English. Glottalling, by definition, substitutes the affected oral segments by [/]. The most replaced segment is [t], hence it is also well known as [t]-glottalling. As an integrated study on the English glottalling, the discussion is divided into historical, sociolinguistic, phonetic and phonological aspects. Historically we suggest that the local accent of London, or Cockney, might have been responsible for the prevalence of this variable, though mutual influence between the London area and the neighbouring

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counties are also possible. Several sociolinguistic studies reflect the changing attitudes towards glottalling, which is now more often heard in the RP accent. These studies also show that this change is ongoing and prevailing as it is the norm of younger speech, and often led by female middle-class speakers in many places. Phonetically we conclude that glottalling is natural in a language such as English, where the glottal stop is of only an allophonic status and serves as a hiatus bridge or breaker between segments. This essay also provides phonological theoretical account to show that the glottalling process involves the interaction between segmental features, syllable structure and stress. Lekakou, Maria

Middles Across Languages

Maria Lekakou University College London and Utrecht Institute of Linguistics-OTS

In this paper, I address the question of the cross-linguistic variation in the realization of the middle semantics, and its implications for the syntax-semantics interface. In Dutch/English, middles pattern with unergatives, whereas in French/Greek, they are parasitic on raising structures. Moreover, in the former type of language, the agent is syntactically inert, whereas in the latter it is syntactically active. I will argue for the following: (1) A language will employ an unaccusative structure iff imperfective aspect is morphologically encoded. (2) A language has imperfective morphology iff in at least one tense it has two distinct verb forms for

episodic and nonepisodic uses, i.e. iff genericity Þ imperfectivity. (3) The agent in middles is a covert form of the free-choice item any(one)— ANY*—licensed by

genericity (GEN). (4) a. Morphologically overt GEN licenses a syntactically active ANY*

b. Morphologically covert GEN licenses a syntactically inert ANY* I make use of Aloni’s (2002) suggestion for the modal semantics of GEN (5), which is designed to capture free choice readings of (overt) any: (5) GEN(j) = "a"f(w)w’||j||w’ GEN universally quantifies over alternative propositions obtained by varying the assignment to existentially quantified variables. In our case, the existential quantifier is ANY*. Lunan, Iona

Pragmatic Competence in Service Encounters: A Cross-Pragmatic Comparison with English, Spanish and Catalan

Iona Lunan

Anglia Polytechnic University Pragmatic differences between languages can lead to problems ranging from relatively harmless hesitation to face threatening acts such as embarrassment, awkwardness, even appalling faux-pas. Judd (1999), ‘…can result in frustration and ridicule’. The effects of, and reasons behind such sociopragmatic failure are discussed. (Cohen 1996, Ronowicz 1985, Cook 1989).

To ascertain the need for a focus on requests in service encounters for bi-lingual Spanish (L1) and Catalan (L2) speakers, a cross-pragmatic comparison of the speech acts of requests in Spanish, Catalan and English (L3) are examined. Aspects of speech act theory (felicity conditions, illocutionary and perlocutionary force and effect), dialogues and scenarios are used to illustrate how such learners, if they are to become pragmatically competent, need to focus on the aforementioned speech act of requesting.

Findings suggest a strong likelihood of pragmatic failure in speakers of Spanish, L1 and Catalan, L2, leading to FTAs of rudeness, irritation and confusion. It is suggested that pragmatic failure may be greater in bi-lingual speakers of L1 and L2. One reason for this may be that as L1 and L2 share many sociopragmatic and pragmalinguistic features, negative transfer from L1 and L2 may occur more frequently, resulting in a greater need for focus than those Spanish speakers who do not speak Catalan.

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Metaphor in T. S. Eliot’s ‘The Burial of the Dead’

Aneta Mancewicz Nicholas Copernicus University

The abstract proposes an analysis of T. S. Eliot’s ‘The Burial of the Dead’, the first part of The Waste Land, with reference to cognitive theory of metaphor as advocated by G. Lakoff, M. Johnson, M. Turner. It will focus on image schemas – their function and axiological value. Several container schemas in the poem will be analysed with reference to such themes as: life versus death, consciousness versus unconsciousness, “memory and desire” versus “fear.” The ambivalent meaning of these themes will be further suggested by their comparison to the verticality schema in ‘The Burial of the Dead.’ Furthermore, the issue of metaphorical coherence will be examined to allow for a comprehensive interpretation of the literary work. The linguistic approach will include some reference to cultural, literary and personal overtones of the poem, building them into a radial network, centred on the image schema and its theme. The analysis will clarify and systematise certain already existing critical interpretations (by E. Drew, H. Kenner, M. Heydel and others), leading to conclusions about T. S. Eliot’s work, the role of image schemas in poetry, and – last but not least – the possible connection between literary studies and linguistic research. Markopoulos, Theodore

On the Periphrasis ‘eho (have) + Infinitive’ in Hellenistic Greek

Theodore Markopoulos University of Cambridge

In this paper I investigate the properties of the Ancient Greek construction ‘eho (=have) + Infinitive’ as a member of the various, future-referring periphrastic forms which ‘competed’ during the Hellenistic period (4th c. BC- 4th c. AD), due to the gradual loss of the Ancient Greek Future Tense. Even though this particular change has been noted and described before (cf. Jannaris 1897, Banescu 1915, Horrocks 1997 i.a.), its actual details remain far from clear, and even more so from a modern linguistic perspective. Therefore, basing my analysis on low-register texts (previously unknown or not taken into account), I will propose a new chronology for the emergence of the futuristic meaning for the particular periphrasis. This issue will inevitably lead to the thorny problem of the source of this construction; I will argue that various cross-linguistic evidence (cf. Latin, English among others) provides strong support for an explanation along the basis of Heine’s (1993) cognitive schemata, with a modification arguably necessary to account for the actual Greek data. Finally, following assumptions of the Grammaticalization ‘theory’ (cf. Hopper and Traugott 1991, Lehmann 1995), I will investigate the co-relation between the status of periphrasis and the degree of grammaticalization of a particular linguistic expression. Marshall, Chloe

The Nature of Phonological Representations in Children with Specific Language Impairment

Chloe Marshall

University College London In this paper I present a hypothesis about the nature of phonological representations in children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI). I report results from a non-word repetition test designed to investigate the impact of syllabic complexity on repetition accuracy. Complexity is systematically varied along three parameters - onset, rhyme and word-end. SLI children have difficulty repeating non-words containing complex onsets, rhymal consonants and final clusters.

Three patterns stand out from the data: (1) SLI children find it easier to retain complex syllabic structures in shorter rather than in longer words, and have greater success on long words without complex structures. This suggests that long and complex words place particular strain on their phonological memory.

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(2) SLI children make analogies with real words and real word endings, suggesting they are substituting non-words and parts of non-words with sound chunks that are familiar to them. (3) It is not that SLI children are unable to produce complex structures – there is optionality in their productions. This suggests a heavy reliance on memory without the aid of a fully specified underlying abstract prosodic structure . From these data I hypothesise that SLI children have a syllabic template no more complex than CV. When presented with a word containing a consonant cluster, they are able to memorise only partially structured sound sequences.

Verbal Morphology in Broca’s Aphasia: Evidence for Spanish and Catalan

Silvia Martínez Ferreiro Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

The present study aims to explore the nature of agrammatism, the main symptom of Broca’s aphasia. The production of verbal inflectional morphology by native Spanish and Catalan patients is contrasted to demonstrate that functional categories are selectively impaired in agrammatism. The analysis of inflection in terms of functional categories follows the framework of the Generative Grammar, and more specifically Pollock’s (1989) Split INFL Hypothesis. In 1997, Friedmann and Grodzinsky examined this issue with Hebrew and developed the Tree-Pruning Hypothesis supporting a pattern of selective impairment based on the degree of severity of the agrammatism. Partially replicating their experiment, two experimental tasks were designed (repetition and completion of given sentences) to test whether the selective impairment hypothesis applies cross-linguistically. The final results are compared with those of previous research for other Romance languages such as French or Italian, Germanic languages such as German or English and also languages from different origins such as Hebrew or Palestinian Arabic to provide a wider picture of the phenomenon. Mitchell, Rebecca

"Pour être bon Occidental il faut connaître ce que tu as chez toi": Language and Cultural Maladjustment in Gabon

Rebecca Mitchell

University of Cambridge Gabon is somewhat unusual amongst sub-Saharan African countries in that the former colonial language, French, is the sole lingua franca and is progressively encroaching on domains formerly governed by the local languages, assisted by diverse factors such as the nation's multiethnic composition, the increasing incidence of interethnic marriages and indeed the tribal neutrality of French. This paper, which is based on findings arising from interviews with a judgement sample of over one hundred Gabonese informants, examines the apparently uneasy coexistence of French and the Gabonese languages and the somewhat contradictory attitude that many Gabonese have towards the continuing supremacy of French. The extent to which language in Gabon represents an overt marker of cultural identity is assessed, as well as the importance of the local languages to the individuals concerned. This paper also questions whether the linguistic hegemony of French can be regarded as a source of cultural maladjustment, in that while the informants in this study report difficulties in reconciling Gabonese and western culture, many nevertheless aspire to espouse western values and to this end regard their own ethnic awareness as an essential starting point.

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Employing Distributed Grid-Computing and Web-Services to Build Dynamic Corpora

Peet Morris University of Oxford

My research is centered on the use of massively parallel/distributed grid-computing in linguistics. My goal is to build n dynamic-sets of specialised corpora - and to provide a flexible component-model for their arbitrary-expansion and creation via web-services. For example: to monitor, over time, the contexts, usage and morphology of any word appearing on the World Wide Web.

A user of the system will be able to query/request a parameterised corpus – type, sub-category, markup etc., e.g. 'news', 'domestic affairs', 'XML'. The last parameter – the markup – may be selected from a 'standard set'. Additionally, via the system's web-services, one can 'add on' any markup (or whatever) required – a new subcategory perhaps? For example, one could easily 'add' a syntax-tree drawing capability as the markup, or select 'sports news' as a subcategory. Lastly, the system's data is distributed – existing corpora amongst user's machines (as used by United Devices – www.ud.com) and/or search engines/meta-search-engines like Google and Kartoo. In the former case, a distributed agent-based query language is used, as the data has to be distributed among many machines for redundancy/efficiency.

Clausal Structure in Cantonese and Mandarin

Evelynne Mui SOAS, University of London

In the Government and Binding Principles and Parameters framework, adverbs are generally considered to be recursively generated adjuncts to either IP or VP. This research argues that although treating adverb phrases as adjuncts can solve the problem of ‘free orderings’ of adverbials in languages, there are still problems remaining undealt with: (i) why some adverbs have ordering restrictions but some do not, (ii) the numbers and orderings of the semantic categories of adverbs, and (iii) whether there is a universal ordering of these categories.

In the research, both Cantonese and Mandarin adverbs are examined in light of Cinque’s (1999) proposal of the Universal Base Hypothesis. It is argued that adverbs in both Cantonese and Mandarin should not be considered as adjuncts. Instead, they should be treated as specifiers of distinct functional-semantic projections which have intrinsic properties related to aspects of their semantic interpretations. The analysis leads to a discussion of D-related projections and the left peripheral elements in Chinese. Based on the discussion, it is proposed that unlike English, there is no single subject position in both Cantonese and Mandarin. The Chinese subject can be raised to multiple landing sites such as focus, topic and quantificational force.

Turning Back the Clocks: Linguistic Identity Amongst Diasporic and Post-Diasporic Gujaratis in the West

Anjoom Mukadam† and Sharmina Mawani‡

†University of Reading; ‡SOAS, University of London This presentation examines the shaping of a distinct linguistic identity amongst second-generation Nizari Ismailis of Gujarati descent born and/or brought up in London and its environs. Ethnolinguistic diversity is increasingly recognised as a global societal asset, which should be valued and encouraged through language and education policies in all multilingual societies. Gujarati is interwoven into all aspects of everyday life in the Nizari Ismaili Gujarati community, ranging from religious songs (ginans) to cultural activities such as folk dancing and music (garbas) and

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annual celebrations such as Eid. Gujarati presents itself in the form of entertainment, such as music, drama, poetry, films, etc., and thus as a vehicle for passing on cultural patterns of behaviour as well as moral and ethical messages pertinent to the ethnic community. It is their cultural inheritance, a valuable asset that many have unfortunately been denied as a result of decisions made on their behalf, either by the host society or their parents. This research draws on in-depth interviews with first- and second-generation Nizari Ismaili Gujaratis in an attempt to gain insights into the role of Gujarati in the respondents’ lives in today’s multi-ethnic Britain. Sonia

The Polysemy of “on”— a Metaphor of Causation

Sonia Munteanu Intercollege, Cyprus

The cognitive-semantic analysis of the polysemy of “on” starts from the emergence of the preposition’s meaning from its spatial relations gestalt and surveys the consistent metaphorical mapping of its image and inferential schemas onto the abstract category of event-sustenance. Sustaining An Event Is Sustaining An Object is the conceptual metaphor that gives coherence to the idiomatic uses of “on” irrespective of the types of “forces” used to sustain events. Thus, the human body, mechanisms, substances, systems and events – including times and conditions - sustain events of psychological, technological and social nature respectively. The event-sustenance metaphor instantiated by the polysemy of “on” enriches the conventionalized inferential submappings of the “Object branch” of the Event-Structure Metaphor and contributes yet another metaphor to our extremely complex notion of causation.

Belief Reports and Mental Representation

Lorina Naci University of Georgia

Propositional attitude reports, i.e. belief reports, are problematic with respect to substituitivity salva-veritate of coreferential names, and with respect to truth-value assignment. Philosophers, from Quine and Kaplan to Searle (espousing the Descriptivist Theory of names) and Kripke (espousing the Causal Theory of names), have failed to adequately account for the phenomenon. Crimmins and Perry’s theory also fails to relate beliefs, as identical to the beliefs held by the speaker. While constraining conditions may account for the use of the non-referential name ‘Santa Claus’ by a mother: “Santa will not came tonight,” they do explain the disappointed child’s utterance: “Santa will not come tonight”. Propositional belief reports reveal the need for a theory of mental representation that can accommodate both fluid representations, in the form of clusters of descriptions, as well as representation primitives through which context dynamically informs the speaker’s repository of names. Recent psycholinguistic theories of lexical access provide viable models of mental representation. A properly equipped theory of mental representation may ultimately not be able to help us evaluate the truth-value of a belief report, yet it will help us concretize what occurs in the mind of the speaker uttering the belief.

Computational Phonology and Typed Feature Structures

Moritz Neugebauer University College Dublin

Computational Phonology is a research area which develops practical implementations to model phonological phenomena with constraint-based, declarative methods. Within this paradigm, this paper provides for a novel representation of the internal structure of speech sounds using the formalism of typed feature structures (TFSs). While this formalism has been applied previously within mainly (morpho)syntactical frameworks like HPSG or LFG, it here serves to represent phonological entities. Unlike in Feature Geometry (cf. Clements

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1985) where feature hierarchies are stipulated by the grammar writer in terms of universal class nodes, the specificity in TFSs can be determined automatically with regard to the actual phonological grammar. Therefore, this paper investigates inheritance relationships in the field of phonology on the subsegmental level. German speech data will be consulted to demonstrate this aspect. The TFS-based approach is presented as a component of the 'Time Map Model', a constraint-based model of speech recognition (cf. Carson-Berndsen 1998). In this model, phonotactic automata are employed to allow only well-formed combinations of speech sounds for a certain language. It will be shown, how the notion of 'phonological type' allows for automata minimization since transitions can be defined over sets rather than individuals.

Issues in the Development of Yorùbá Text-to-Speech Synthesis System

Odetunji Ajadi Odejobi, A.J. Beaumont, and S.H.S. Wong Aston University

This article highlights aspects of an ongoing research work, at Aston University, in which the primary aim is to develop a text-to-speech synthesis system for Yorùbá Language. This presentation has three objectives. The first is to provide a brief summary of recent literatures on text-to-speech synthesis for tone languages and identifying or improvising the most appropriate approach for the development of synthetic speech for Yorùbá language. The second objective is to describe some of the specific problems and challenges that are currently being addressed in the design of text-to-speech synthesis for Yorùbá language. This includes; text analysis, synthesis method and speech unit design. Others include; segmental duration, tone and intonation modelling, which are discussed under speech prosody. The third objective is to discuss the proposed general framework, architecture, tools and design paradigm for the development, implementation and integration of a robust speech synthesis system for the language. This study provides a computational-oriented exposition to various aspects of the Yorùbá language and the resulting prototype would be of use to wide interests groups in computer based speech applications of tone languages.

Language Switching Costs: The Effects of Orthography

Eleni Orfanidou† and Petroc Sumner‡ †MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, Cambridge; ‡Imperial College London

Performance costs when bilinguals must switch between processing stimuli in each of their languages is a well-cited and intuitively logical finding. What is still a point of controversy is the source of these performance costs.

The main goal of this study is to specify the effect of orthography on the bilingual switch cost when Greek-English bilinguals perform a lexical decision task in both their native and second language and to test the hypotheses about its source.

Thomas and Allport (2000) found that language-specific orthography had no effect on the cost of switching between English and French word recognition, and concluded that the cost of switching language arises from outside the lexicon rather than from within-lexicon interference.

For our theoretically motivated comparisons, two experiments were carried out using the same stimulus materials in different experimental configurations, mixed orthography in experiment 1 and blocked language specific/nonspecific orthography in experiment 2. Contrary to previous results, both sets of experiments jointly indicate that orthography has facilitatory effects on language switching, supporting the within-lexicon account of the switch cost. o

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Focus Clitics and Discourse Structure in LFG and PFM

Ryo Otoguro University of Essex

The information structure of a sentence is represented by prosodic, configurational and morphological ways. I focus on the morphological realisation of information structure within Andrews and Manning’s (1999) information spreading in LFG and Stump’s (2001) Paradigm Function Morphology (PFM). Japanese and Hindi have a set of discourse markers called `focus particles.’ Both show properties of clitics. I assume that these focus clitics are inflection at the phrasal level. Within the discourse information sharing domain defined by information spreading, Paradigm Function (PF) applies to a particular node to realise discourse features as a form. Thus, In Japanese _ano otoko=mo_ `that man=FOC’, focus feature is realised by _mo_ attachment to the NP node. Hindi focus clitics _hii_ can be attached to various nodes within the domain, i.e. _in tiin ladkon=ko_ `these three boys=ACC’ can be _in tiin ladkon=ko=hii_, _in tiin ladkon=hii=ko_, _in tiin=hii ladkon=ko_ or _inhii tiin ladkon=ko_. The PF analysis provides a unified account to this phenomenon if we assume Hindi, unlike Japanese, allows PF to apply various node within the domain. Crucially, if the PF applies to D _tii_, _hii_ behaves as an ordinary affix, not clitics.

Experience and Coarticulated Speech Perception

Andrea Pearman Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

This paper investigates whether perception of coarticulatory effects, specifically the spectral effects exerted on and by neighboring segments, is influenced by one’s native language. Two continua, rounded /shu:sh/-/shi:sh/ and coarticulated /u:/-/i:/ in isolation, were presented as native language sounds to Americans and Catalans. As alveolo-palatal fricatives in English typically include a measure of lip rounding, whereas in Catalan they do not, Catalan speakers were expected to not be able to account for the lower formant frequencies introduced by lip rounding (F2 and F3 lowering), consequently attribute them to the vowel rather than the consonant, and thus identify more back vowels in a rounded /sh/ context than in isolation. Americans however were expected to show insignificant differences in response to the two conditions. Resulting trends support these predictions. In order to test the learnability of perception of such effects, the treatment was administered to a group of Catalan advanced English speakers on two different occasions: once presented as Catalan sounds and another as English sounds. Results show marked differences in performance concerning responses in the two languages. A clear link is seen between experience and perception. Pladevall-Ballester, Elisabet and Susagna Tubau Muntañá

Critical Past and Promising Future for Language Acquisition

Elisabet Pladevall-Ballester and Susagna Tubau Muntañá Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

The study of language acquisition has always been a crucial and nonetheless controversial issue of research within Generative Grammar. The purpose of our paper is twofold: (1) we critically review the two main trends which have dominated the field over the past two decades, the Continuity and the Maturation Hypotheses and their drawbacks and (2) we outline how the Minimalist Program can shed light on the issue of optionality in child language.

Whereas The Continuity Hypothesis claims that child grammars and their adult counterparts have an identical underlying syntactic structure, the Maturation Hypothesis states that some syntactic elements are present in the adult system which are missing in child language. More specifically, different opinions arise with respect to the availability vs non-availability of functional categories during the process of language acquisition.

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We argue that a better explanation for optionality within stages is to be found in the reformulation of the notion of category Minimalism proposes. Categories, now seen as bundles of formal features, are predicted to be acquired gradually. Such an approach naturally accommodates children's productions "between stages", i.e. problems of optionality and contradictory structures in child language, which are problematic for any category-based account. Rakosi, Gyorgy

Reciprocal Predicates in Hungarian

György Rakosi University of Debrecen and Utrecht Institue of Linguistics-OTS

This talk investigates problems concerning the semantics and the argument structure of reciprocal predicates in Hungarian. Firstly, I argue that reciprocity is a feature assigned to predicates in the lexicon. Though Hungarian is a highly inflecting language, there is no unitary morphological marking on reciprocal predicates. Therefore I claim that the set of lexical reciprocals is to be defined on semantic grounds: it is equivalent to the set of necessarily symmetric agentive predicates. Secondly, reciprocal predicates have a dyadic (2) and a monadic (3) variant. Dimitriadis (2002) argues that a simple (monadic) reciprocal is created in two steps: first a discontinuous (dyadic) predicate (2) is derived from the non-reciprocal entry (1), then a simple (monadic) reciprocal (3) is derived from (2). I show that the first lexical process does not always take place as some reciprocals are primitives rather than derived entries. I also prove that the DP marked by comitative case in (2) is indeed a comitative argument and not an adjunct. A comitative argument can be existentially bound in Hungarian. (1) Péter verte Jánost. 'Peter was beating John.' (2) Péter verekedett (Jánossal). 'Peter was wrestling (with John.)' (3) Péter és János verekedtek. 'Peter and John were wrestling.'

The Syntax of Translation Technique in the Neo-Aramaic Targummim

Margo Rees University of Cambridge

Within the existing communities of Jewish Neo-Aramaic speakers, there are "targummim", or translations of the Bible - all of which follow a specific pattern of translation technique. This technique is based on a faithful, more or less word-for-word rendering of the Hebrew text into the Neo-Aramaic dialect of the translator. This method involves almost exact replication of the Hebrew syntax of the "original", even at the expense of clarity in translation. On the other hand, owing to their origin and transmission through oral tradition, these targummim naturally retain an inordinate amount of archaisms and Hebraisms within the morphology and syntax of the translations. Because old Aramaic shared more common characteristics with Biblical Hebrew than does Neo-Aramaic, determining which features of the texts are stylistically retained archaisms and Hebraisms, and which are grammatical anomalies resulting wholly from the translation technique can be extremely difficult. In fact, this distinction may be inherently blurred due to the traditionalistic nature of Bible translation methodology within religious communities. Using primarily an unpublished manuscript of a Neo-Aramaic targum of Ruth, I will explore the unique syntax resulting from this type of Bible translation, and attempt to probe and address some of the linguistic questions it raises. Richards, Marc

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Keeping Order at PF

Marc Richards University of Cambridge

Various authors have recognized that Kayne's (1994) Linear Correspondence Axiom, when reformulated in terms of the Bare Phrase Structure of Chomsky's Minimalist Program, fails to determine the ordering between two head-level elements merged at the base of the structure (see inter alios Chomsky 1995, Uriagereka 1998, Moro 2000). In this paper, I consider whether a basic VO/OV directionality parameter should be revived in order to resolve this issue, and question the form such a parameter should take. On the basis of data from Scandinavian object-shift constructions, I argue that such a head-parameter should act as a PF-level constraint that preserves the 'shape' of syntactic representations (cf. Williams 2002). Adopting Selkirk's (1995, etc.) edge-alignment and a version of the prosodic hierarchy, I show how the VO/OV parameter falls out from basic assumptions about the mapping between syntactic and prosodic phrases. In particular, I propose that the mapping to PF proceeds according to a phase-based derivation of syntactic structures (cf. Chomsky 1998, 1999, 2001), and that the patterns of object shift arguably obey a Phase Integrity Condition operative at the syntax-PF interface. Round, Erich and Lesley Stirling

Split-Ergativity and Animacy: A New Analysis of a Typological Exception

Erich Round and Lesley Stirling University of Melbourne

In so called split-ergative languages, it is common for the morphological system to be split according to the animacy of Noun Phrases, and a few basic principles are found to hold in almost all cases. Briefly, taking (i) Transitive-clause subject, (ii) Intransitive-clause subject and (iii) Transitive-clause object, then higher animacy NPs tend to bear distinctive morphology for (iii), not (i) or (ii), while lower animacy NPs bear distinctive morphology for (i) and not (ii) or (iii); medium level animacy NPs sometimes exhibit a third pattern, either with no distinction at all, or with a three-way distinction between (i), (ii) and (iii). When stated predictively, this generalisation is often known as the Silverstein Hypothesis. This paper examines case marking morphology in Kalaw Lagaw Ya (Torres Strait, Australia). KLY is interesting because its Saibai dialect is well accepted as constituting a rare exception to the general rule outlined above, and has been analysed as such by respected typologists on two occasions (Comrie 1981, Dixon 1994). However, incorporating additional evidence from the Mabuyag dialect, we argue that KLY is in fact consistent with the Silverstein Hypothesis, provided one takes into consideration certain other universals regarding morphological marking and category neutralisation.

Automatic Genre Classification of Web Pages

Marina Santini University of Brighton

Genre, or text type, is one of the most distinguishing features in information searches. Genre classification can be based on surface cues and can be as useful as topic detection. Genre may be crucial in many areas: Web Navigation, Document Management, Digital Libraries, Search Engines, etc., and can be integrated into content-based systems to make Information Retrieval more efficient. This poster will present the first steps in the development of a system that automatically analyzes Web pages and categorizes them into a genre. Web genres include not only traditional paper genres, but also novel genres, such as chatrooms, FAQs, home pages. Genres will be seen as bundles of properties, and not as monolithic units. If genres are multi-faceted entities, the system can be trained to categorize unknown genres with respect to specific features. A more comprehensive document analysis based on textual and layout

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features will be attempted in order to have a deeper insight into Web texts. The Web is a challenging corpus because it is a huge repository of running texts. A new resource, the Internet Archive and its Web snapshots, is likely to be a valuable source for determining what sort of texts populate the Web and in what proportions. Sasaki, Miho

L1 Orthographic Effect on L2 Reading

Miho Sasaki University of Essex

The paper will investigate orthographic processing in L2 reading. The written form of language includes the orthographic information which can be used in order to access and store words in the lexicon along with the phonological information. Especially, in L2 learning circumstances, adult learners often utilise spellings of new or orally unrecognised words to obtain meanings or simply to remember. In order to examine use of orthographic information in L2, Japanese and Italian intermediate learners of English were tested in an English word recognition experiment. It was speculated that both groups would rely on more orthographic information than phonological information in L2 reading. However the data showed different processing procedures between Italian and Japanese: the Japanese learners made more errors than the Italian learners on phonologically primed but orthographically dissimilar words. That is, the Italian learners of English could utilise orthographic information more effectively. The results confirmed the facilitation for the L2 learners with a similar L1 orthographic background (Muljani, Koda, and Moates 1998). Furthermore, the paper will discuss that use of orthographic information in L2 processing can be relative to learners’ familiarity with the L2 orthography and its processing. Schroeter, Birgit and Christine Howe

Children's Communication Styles in Peer Group Discussions: Variations According to Temperament and Socio-Metric Status

Birgit Schroeter and Christine Howe

University of Strathclyde This (pilot-) study set out to examine the relationships between childhood temperament, communication style and peer socio-metric status. It was hypothesised that communicative behaviour will vary according to childhood temperament and socio-metric status, as well as showing developmental change. Parents of 80 children drawn from three age groups (nursery class, primary 3 and primary 6) were asked to complete the Child Behaviour Questionnaire (Rothbart 1989) and socio-metric status was assessed for each of these children. Subsequently, same age/same sex triads were observed in four conditions - free play, limited toys task, story sorting task and Raven's matrices task - which were chosen to elicit discussion amongst the children. Communicative characteristics were coded using the Noldus Observer software. Results weakly indicate variation in communication style according to socio-metric status and temperament, and there are signs of developmental change. However most findings fail to reach statistical significance. Methodological improvements for subsequent studies were addressed. Kate

Gendered Stories and Chat - The Role of Secondary Reported Dialogue in Conversation

Kate Segall University of Surrey Roehampton

The aim of this research was to find out how men and women differ in their use of Secondary Reported Dialogue (SRD) in story and non-story (chat) parts of conversation. This furthers both the understanding of SRD as social behaviour and of the roles of stories and chat in conversation. Previous research shows how the amount and type of SRD is related to the sensitivity of the topic which in turn shows a strong gender bias (Segall, in press). SRD is a significant feature of conversation so it is surprising that relatively little is known

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about where it occurs and therefore how sensitive an index of communicative context SRD might be. Does SRD occur outside the boundaries of the story and if so what purpose does it serve and how might this lead to a better understanding of the nature of SRD? Is gender a significant variable in SRD differences between chat and story and if so why? The study used tape recordings of informal conversations between single and mixed sex pairs made in 2001-2002. Results show that most SRD actually occurs in chat rather than stories, that there were differences in the type and density of SRD used and that gender was a significant variable. T

Tense and the Ancient Greek Infinitive

Christina Sevdali University of Cambridge

This paper aims to argue for an analysis for the Accusativus-Cum-Infinititvo property of the Ancient Greek (AG) infinitive: (1) Elegon ou kalo:s ti:n Ellada eleutheroun auton. Said-they not well the Greece-ACC to-free him-ACC. ‘They said that he would not free Greece in a good way.’ In the above example the subject of the infinitive features in the Accusative case. I will argue that AG infinitives have Tense manipulating Stowell’s (1982) and Enc’s (1987) theory of Tense. Infinitival tense has the properties of relative tense (Comrie, 1985). AG infinitives are arguably CPs. A link will be established between the C and the T node in order to derive the correct Tense interpretation, using features. This claim is also supported by certain temporal AG clauses introduced with the complementizer ‘prin’ and the infinitive as shown in (2): (2) Epi to akron anavaini: o Heirisofos, prin tinas aisthesthai to:n polemio:n. To the top(of the hill) climbs the Heirisophos , before someone-ACC to-understand the enemies-GEN. ‘Hirisophus climbs on the top of the hill, before someone of the enemies senses him.’ The syntactic manifestation of this phenomenon is the fact that AG infinitives are able to check off case features of their subjects. Remarks will be made concerning the case of the infinitival subject and the Portuguese inflected infinitives will come into play. S

On the Loss of the Dative in Greek: Two Cases of Structural Change

Efthymios Sipetzis University of Cambridge

The dative case of classical Ancient Greek was gradually eliminated and it was replaced by the genitive, accusative and various prepositional constructions. The aim of this paper is to examine historical data and to provide an account of the underlying causes that led to the dative's loss, by framing the synchronic analyses in terms of the minimalist framework (Chomsky 1995, 2000) and the diachronic analyses in terms of parameter resetting (Lightfoot 1999). The central case relates to changes that took place during the Hellenistic and Byzantine period of Greek. Over this period, dative case is being replaced with concomitant effects on the clause structure. In the first instance, I will argue that the loss of dative case is related to a change in the positions of the pronouns, namely the appearance of the clitics immediately after the head of their phrase or alternatively in second position of a sentence (Horrocks 1997). The position change then resulted in overlapping functions, which led to the dative being replaced in indirect object position. I also show that well-known English case evolution facts parallel the Greek situation. Specifically, I claim that accusatival substitutes of dative, which should normally be barred because of Burzio's generalisation (Burzio 1986), parallel a similarity to English for- constructions with regard to the reanalysis of one type of dative argument

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as an "ECM" accusative subject of the infinitive. In conclusion, this paper shows that the loss of dative case was an example of parameter resetting and consequently it had obvious syntactic effects. Skoufaki, Sophia

Determinants of Idiom-Transparency Intuitions

Sophia Skoufaki University of Cambridge

In Keysar and Bly (1995) subjects are taught the original or opposite meaning of obsolete idioms through contexts biasing towards either of the two and are asked which meaning was more sensible. Their conclusion is that intuitions of idiom transparency are not determined by idiom characteristics. An experiment testing their claim via a different methodology is reported.

Most of the idioms in their study are of low transparency. So, their claim may hold only for low-transparency idioms. The presentation of idioms in highly biasing contexts may have lead subjects to base their answers more on the contextual information rather than on idiom-internal features. In this study, Greek learners of English guess at the meaning of idioms unknown to them and describe the train of thought that lead them to it. Half of the idioms are of high and half of low transparency. Half of the subjects see the idioms out of context and half in biasing contexts.Interpretations of the high-transparency idioms did not differ significantly from those of the low-transparency ones in terms of variability. Therefore, Keysar and Bly's conclusion holds not only for low-transparency idioms but also for highly-transparent ones. Descriptions of the idiom-interpretation process indicate a higher reliance on certain idiom-feature-based strategies, but not on those used least frequently, when idioms were presented out of context than within. Spiegel, Rainer

A Novel Computational Approach to Extract Rules from Sequences of Phonemes

Rainer Spiegel University of Cambridge

Research in psycholinguistics has shown that language acquisition takes place at an early age. Marcus et al. [1] demonstrate that 7-month-old infants can learn sequences of phonemes. When repeatedly exposed to a sequence with the same grammatical structure as a novel sequence, they attend less to the novel sequence. However, when the novel sequence of phonemes has a new grammatical structure, they attend longer. Marcus et al. [1] and Pinker [2] explain this result by arguing that the infants have learnt a symbolic rule of the sequential structure. Though infants might rely on symbolic rules, my data suggest that there is not enough evidence for Marcus' and Pinker's arguments yet. I will present simulations from a new computational model that is purely based on general learning mechanisms (though no classical connectionist model). Like the infants, my model is able to learn the grammatical rules. However, it applies a general learning algorithm instead of symbolic rules. [1] Marcus, G.F., Vijayan, S., Bandi Rao, S. and Vishton, P.M. (1999). Rule Learning by Seven-Month-Old Infants. Science, 283, 77-80. [2] Pinker, S. (1999). Enhanced: Out of the Minds of Babes. Science, 283, 40-41. Spinillo, Mariangela

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Such is Such

Mariangela Spinillo University College London

In this paper I examine the word-class status of what I would like to refer to as ‘prenominal’ and ‘pronominal’ such, illustrated in (1) and (2), respectively. (1) Such an attack (2) Such is their awareness Both ‘prenominal’ and ‘pronominal’ such represent a challenge to most grammatical treatments when it comes to assigning them to a particular word class. In this paper I consider their syntactic and semantic properties and argue that the conventional dual treatment of prenominal such as a determiner and of pronominal such as a pronoun (Biber, Johansson, Leech, Conrad and Finegan 1999, Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech and Svartvik 1985), is unwarranted. I also discuss some more recent treatments (Altenberg 1994, de Mönnink 1996, Siegel 1994) and argue that, although an improvement on the conventional treatment, these too, cannot fully account for the facts. Based on syntactic evidence drawn from the British component of the International Corpus of English (ICE-GB), I argue that the analysis I refer to as the ‘uniform adjective analysis’ of such (Huddleston and Pullum 2002) which claims that such is an adjective, both when it occurs prenominally and when it occurs pronominally, best explains the facts. Stadthagen-Gonzalez, Hans, Jeff Bowers and Markus Damian

How Early or How Often: The Effects of Age of Acquisition and Frequency in Visual Word Recognition

Hans Stadthagen-Gonzalez, Jeff Bowers and Markus Damian

University of Bristol Two experiments assessed the contributions of Age-of-Acquisition (AoA) and frequency to visual word recognition. Three databases were created from electronic journals in chemistry, psychology and geology in order to identify technical words that are extremely frequent in each discipline but acquired late in life. In Experiment 1, psychologists and chemists showed an advantage in lexical decision for late-acquired/high-frequency words (e.g. a psychologist responding to cognition) over late-acquired/low-frequency words (e.g. a chemist responding to cognition), revealing a frequency effect when words are perfectly matched. More importantly, there was no advantage for late-acquired/high-frequency over early-acquired/low-frequency words (e.g. dragon), contrary to the prediction of theories that exclude AoA as a factor. This last finding was replicated in Experiment 2 with geologists using geology words matched with early-acquired words in terms of concreteness. Taghvaipour, Mehran A

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Persian Relative Clauses in HPSG

Mehran A. Taghvaipour University of Essex

This presentation is organised in three parts: Introduction to HPSG, Persian Relative Clauses (RC), and Persian RCs in HPSG.

In Part 1, my discussion will include the following: Properties of HPSG, Signs, Types, Hierarchies, Constraints, Lexemes and Lexical Types, Phrases and Phrasal Types, Head Feature Principle and Valence Principle.

In Part 2, I will discuss some general properties of RCs in Persian, including ‘ke’ as a Complementizer, Restrictive and Non-restrictive RCs, Similarities and Differences between Resumptive Pronouns and Gaps. I will refer to some evidence from coordinate structures, parasitic gaps, and crossover phenomenon.

In Part 3, I will suggest an HPSG treatment for Persian RCs. I will discuss the bottom of the dependency where there is a gap or a resumptive pronoun in the form of a SLASH/RESUMP feature. I will then discuss the middle of the dependency, consisting of local trees with a SLASH/RESUMP feature on both daughter and its mother. I will finally discuss the top of the dependency where a SLASH/RESUMP feature appears on a daughter but not on the mother. In the end, I will suggest some constraints and a type hierarchy to capture the properties of RCs. Traat, Maarika

About Theme and Rheme Pitch Accents in Estonian

Maarika Traat University of Edinburgh

Mark Steedman (2000a, 2000b, 2002) proposes that certain pitch accents in English always go with theme, while others always accompany rheme. The goal of the present paper is to try to apply his theory to the Estonian language, which differs greatly from English.

Until now very little work has been done on both Estonian intonation and the information structure of Estonian sentences. Nobody has explored the possible connection between the pitch accents used and the information structure of the sentence.

The present paper analyses several prosodically annotated Estonian examples from information structural point of view. The principal question is whether any regularities will emerge about the use of pitch accents in connection with theme and rheme linguistic material.

Word order in Estonian being considerably freer than that in English, there is a good chance that some effects in meaning achieved by means of intonation in English may be achieved by variation in word order in Estonian. The above claim is supported by Asu's (2002) analysis of Estonian questions according to which the intonation of the questions which use very straightforward morphosyntactic marking does not differ from that of statements, while the intonation of the morphosyntactically unmarked ones does. Tubau Muntañá, Susagna

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Enunciative "que" in Child Catalan Declarative Sentences

Susagna Tubau Muntañá Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

In Catalan, adult declarative sentences contain no overt morphological mark of assertiveness. However, the data of three Catalan children between the ages of 2;8 and 4;0 years old show evidence of the use of an enunciative particle, homophonous with the complementiser “que”, in non-marked declarative sentences. The use of enunciative particles which introduce non-emphatic declarative sentences is considered one of the most relevant syntactic properties of Gascon, one of the dialects of Occitan, spoken in the South of France and the North of Catalonia. In the child Catalan data, the use of the enunciative particle “que” co-occurs with the production of declarative sentences with no morphological mark, i.e. adult-like declaratives. Therefore, we hypothesise that data from child Catalan provide evidence for Theoretical Bilingualism (TB) (Roeper 1999), a concept which accounts for optionality within stages in language acquisition. TB predicts that children may use incompatible features of grammar simultaneously: such features are allowed by UG and, therefore, available to the child. In line with TB, we argue that Catalan children are using two grammars for constructing declarative clauses, one of which will be abandoned at later stages. Turner, Emma and Jeffrey S. Bowers

Testing Orthographic Input Coding Schemes in Skilled Readers

Emma Turner and Jeffrey S. Bowers University of Bristol

A central component of any model of visual word identification is the input and output letter coding scheme. The scheme has to code both the letter identity and its position in the word, and this is achieved in different ways. Most commonly used are Slot coding schemes which explicitly mark each letter in terms of its position, with the D in DOG and COD coded as unrelated D's. Spatial coding schemes, however, do not explicitly code for letter position. Rather letter order is coded by the level of activation of each input unit, such that the D in DOG and COD are the same but with different levels of activation.

The predictions these schemes make about the relative difficulty of identifying words are different. One of these differences relates to the effects of so called Transposed letter (TL) words (CLAM / CALM), with Spatial coding schemes predicting greater similarity for these words compared to word neighbours (CALM / PALM), and slot-coding the opposite. A number of studies, utilising lexical decision and perceptual identification tasks, have been carried out to examine the key predictions of spatial coding schemes, specifically how length and position of change effect the relative difficulty in identifying the word. Vargas Solis, Marco Antonio

Drama and Language Learning

Marco Antonio Vargas Solis University of Essex

During the last 50 years there has been a constant concern about the relationship between drama and language learning. In this paper, I will talk about the state of my doctoral research, its aims, and why such research is still worth tackling. I will discuss some relevant theoretical frameworks, compare some important models, and describe how these models have evolved. I will also try to explain how the relationship between drama and language learning covers several aspects linked to Applied Linguistics; such as pragmatics, classroom interaction, the teaching and development of communicative competence, cultural awareness. Within this context I wish to examine the possibility of the drama/language learning approach as a way of working that allows the inclusion of elements of negotiated syllabus, either as a part of a regular language classroom. or as an end in itself. Based on my own findings in some previous research, I will comment on what kinds of data are expected to be obtained and what features of this data lend themselves to be researched.

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The Syntactic Distribution and Prosodic Features of Modal Phrases in Natural Conversations

Elodie Vialleton

Universite de Paris III - Sorbonne Nouvelle Based on the joint analysis of discourse and intonation in a recorded corpus of free conversations between native speakers of British English, this paper examines modal phrases and their association with prosodic patterns. Using Antoine Culioli’s definition of four orders of modality (assertion, valuation, epistemic and root modalities), and applying Morel and Danon-Boileau’s description of spoken French to English, we look at the possible distribution of various markers of modality in the three possible constituents of ‘oral paragraphs’, or paratones: the preamble, the rheme and the post-rhematic segment.

We find that the syntax of spoken English and prosodic features both have to be taken into account in the interpretation of modal phrases, at three linguistic levels: semantic, discursive and interactional. The position of markers of modality in a paragraph and the presence or absence of pitch and intensity modulations are instrumental in determining the status of modal phrases, as simple grammatical tools within a predicative relation, as discourse connectors, or as markers of intersubjective relations in verbal interactions. This provides significant clues as to the interpretation of natural conversations and to the various linguistic functions of intonation. Vos, Mark de

Head-Movement and the Prefix Problem in Dutch

Mark de Vos Leiden University

In Dutch the past-participle marker ge- is in complementary distribution with so-called "inseparable" prefixes, be- her- ver- ont- er-. However, in Afrikaans varieties complementary distribution is absent. (1) a. ont-spannen ‘relaxed’ (Dutch) b. *ge-ont-spannen (Dutch) (2) a. ge-ont-span (Dialectal Afrikaans)

A prosodic approach (cf. Kager 1999) suggests that the OCP prohibits adjacent, unstressed prefixes. This approach cannot explain the Afrikaans data where two adjacent prefixes seemingly do co-occur.

I propose that this asymmetry is because the participle marker ge- is in different structural positions in Afrikaans and Dutch (De Vos 2003). In Dutch, the participle marker and the prefix are joined by head movement. They are always spelled out within the same phase and thus subject to the OCP. In Afrikaans, the participle marker and the prefix are not joined by head movement, are thus in different phases and are spelled out separately; the OCP plays no role. (3) a. [vP v* [T2 ge-ont-spannen [VP tspannen [AspP tont tge ]]]] (Dutch) …_Phase 2_| |____________Phase 1_______________| b. [vP ge-v* [T2 tge [VP ont-span [AspP tont ]]]] (Afrikaans) …_Phase 2_| |____________Phase 1_______________| This structural difference can be correlated with other syntactic and semantic differences between these languages. Wallace, Kate

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Some Social Variation in the English of the Southampton Area

Kate Wallace University of Leeds

This paper will introduce work in progress on a study of variation in the English of the Southampton area. Southampton, like the rest of the central Southern coast of England, has been relatively neglected by dialectologists (Edwards et al. 1984: 33).

The paper will begin by examining questions of linguistic identity raised by the city’s location. The core Survey of Regional English (SuRE) methodology (Upton and Llamas 1999) and additions made to it for the Southampton area study will be discussed briefly, and the linguistic and social variables under examination explained. Focus is then placed on findings to date concerning lexical variation in the speech of a number of respondents.

Wang, Yan

A Model of Conversational Structure for Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) Systems

Yan Wang

University of Dundee and University of Birmingham Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) is used by people whose disabilities mean they cannot speak. A number of prototype computer-based AAC systems have been developed to try to improve the communication rate and effectiveness of AAC users. These developments raise some important theoretical questions. To answer these questions we need a linguistic model of the structure of conversation that can account for both ordinary and AAC-assisted conversation. We will present work in progress towards the development of such a theoretical model. This model is intended to guide researchers in the analysis of AAC conversation. The model will we hope contribute to the design of AAC systems that could empower AAC users to make use of a wider range of speech moves than is often observed in the conversation of such participants. It will also facilitate the comparison and evaluation of AAC systems and allow comparisons between AAC and unassisted conversation to be made in a logical and consistent manner. Wrona, Janick

The Old Japanese System of Complementation: Survival of the Fittest?

Janick Wrona University of Oxford

Pre-Old Japanese appears to have had a two-member system of complementation with one complement type encoding quotations, and another, nominalised complement encoding all other complement types. The unmarked member of this system disappears completely in the transition from Old to Early Middle Japanese, by which time a third, adnominal complement type has taken over all functions of the nominalised complement. I will briefly discuss the major results of my investigation of the usages of the Nominal and Anominal form in Old Japanese, and then employ Henning Andersen’s ideas on actualisation and Theory of Markedness (Andersen 2001) to show how his conceptual apparatus can shed light on the actual change scenario resulting in the diachronic correspondence mentioned above. Wu, Yi-Cheng and Ronnie Cann

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The Dynamic Syntax of Chinese Bei Constructions

Yi-Cheng Wu and Ronnie Cann University of Edinburgh

This paper addresses the issue of Bei Constructions as passive constructions in Mandarin Chinese within the framework of Dynamic Syntax (Kempson et al. 2001). It is claimed that (i) the morpheme Bei is actually a patient-focus marker without any lexical content, and because of this peculiar function, Bei is called a passive marker and Bei Constructions are called passive constructions; (ii) from the functional point of view, Bei Constructions are similar in certain ways to topic constructions: syntactically, the pre-Bei patient behaves like a topic which is left-dislocated in sentence-initial position; semantically, Bei Constructions are truth-conditionally the same as topic constructions. By treating the Bei Construction as a type of left dislocation, we have provided a principled account of various types of Bei Construction. Under the dynamic approach, various patterns of Bei Constructions, the canonical agent-taking or agent-lacking Bei Constructions, Bei Construction with a retained object (BCRO), Bei Construction with an embedded Ba Construction (BCBC), Bei Construction with a locative patient(BCLP), etc., can be successfully characterized in an original and elegant way. Yamada, Yoko

The Positioning of Focus Particles in English: A Case Study of "Only" in Written English

Yoko Yamada University of Edinburgh

What is the unmarked position of "only" in written English, that is, the position in which it occurs most frequently and most neutrally? This question has long been discussed in English language classrooms and grammars but there is no generally accepted answer. This paper presents the results of an experiment which explored the occurrence of "only" in sentences where it highlights either object NPs, PPs, noun modifiers or clauses. The experiment tested the reaction time for reading pairs of context and sentence containing "only" and for judging whether the sentence describes the context. It also tested the position where subjects put "only" to complete the sentence. One salient finding is that the unmarked position of "only" is not always fixed even with respect to the same types of constituent; the unmarked position of "only" varies depending on the number of syllables in the verb and the number of syllables in the direct object in a given clause. "Only" applying to PPs, noun modifiers and clauses varies its position according to the types of PPs, etc. Some of the claims made in previous studies, relating e.g. to the occurrence of auxiliary verbs and the unmarked position of "only", are not supported.

Successful Application of a Language Awareness Learning Model Designed to Improve Performance in a Second Dialect

Androula Yiakoumetti

University of Cambridge The present study addresses the issue of bidialectism and language education with reference to the bidialectal community of Cyprus. It has commonly been observed that Cypriots underachieve in Standard Modern Greek which is the official linguistic variety for education. The study assesses the effects of a bidialectal language model applied to primary schools to improve linguistic performance in the standard. (Improvement is defined as a reduction in dialectal interference in terms of phonology, morphology, syntax and lexicon.) The language model has its basis in Language Awareness and uses the dialectal mother tongue (the Cypriot dialect) to provide explicit comparison with, and subsequent improvement in, the target standard variety. A quasi-experimental design was used for the model's application and evaluation. Quantitative analysis of the results reveal that the model produced a marked improvement in oral and written production of the standard.