In cognitive linguistics, the idea that words are not totally arbitrary is accepted, contrary to what de Saussure stated in his Theory of the Linguistic Sign. When analyzing them, from the etymological and historical point of view, different linguistic motivations can be found that cause a word to have this or that meaning. The interesting thing is that these motivations are not identical if we compare different languages and even within the framework of the same language we can find different motivation for synonymous terms or we can indicate others by comparing some dialectal or social variants of the same language. The purpose of this study is to present and analyze the motivation of the terms that name different temporal entities. Thus, for example, what is the motivation for the word puente that designates a period of non-working days and what its variants can be in non-peninsular Spanish. To carry out the study we will use the tools of cognitive semantics and more especially the concepts that come from the Theory of Cognitive Metaphor and Metonymy.
El tiempo constituye la noción básica que permite comprender el funcionamiento del sistema verbal español. Sin embargo, ciertos usos propios de Ecuador han dado pie al desarrollo de nuevas teorías basadas en la evidencialidad para explicar, en particular, el valor del pretérito perfecto compuesto (PPC) en dicha variedad. Con un planteamiento de corte psicolingüístico, este estudio pretende recabar datos a través de una encuesta sobre la producción y percepción del PPC en Ecuador. Esta información se contrastará con datos de la variedad peninsular, donde los tiempos de pasado no se vinculan con lecturas evidenciales. Los resultados han reflejado diferencias estadísticamente significativas entre ambas variedades; no obstante, salvo en contextos mirativos, estas tienden a ser leves, lo que lleva a cuestionar la necesidad de recurrir a teorías evidenciales para explicar el funcionamiento del PPC ecuatoriano.
Measurements of downburst outflows using standard meteorological instruments (e.g., anemometers) are rare due to their transient and localized nature. However, video recordings of such events are becoming more frequent. This short communication (Technical Note) study presents a new approach to estimating the kinematics of a downburst event using video footage recordings of the event. The main geometric dimensions of the event, such as downdraft diameter, cloud base height, outflow depth, and the radius of the outflow at a given moment in time, are estimated by sizing them against reference structures of known dimensions that are present in the video footage. From this analysis, and knowing the frame rate of the video recording, one can estimate the characteristic velocities in the downburst event, such as the mean downdraft velocity and the mean velocity of the radial outflow propagation. The proposed method is tested on an August 2015 downburst event that hit Tucson, Arizona, United States. The diameter of the downburst outflow increased with the time from approximately 1.10 km to 3.35 km. This range of values indicates that the event was a microburst. The mean descending velocity of downburst downdraft was 8.9 m s−1 and the horizontal velocity of outflow propagation was 17.7 m s−1. The latter velocity is similar to the measured wind gust at the nearby weather station and Doppler radar. The outflow depth is estimated at 160 m, and the cloud base height was approximately 1.24 km. Estimating the kinematics of downbursts using video footage, while subject to certain limitations, does yield a useful estimation of the main downburst kinematics that contribute to a better quantification of these localized windstorms.
La discusión sobre la enseñanza de la gramática no es nueva en Argentina. La desaparición de esta enseñanza se pregona erráticamente desde los fundamentos de la Ley Federal de Educación del periodo menemista, aun cuando los mismos contenidos gramaticales fueran recuperados en los Contenidos Básicos Comunes. Si bien el discurso antigramática (oracional) se arraigó en las escuelas como resultado de la oferta del mercado editorial, en la academia hubo muchas voces que contrargumentaron ese posicionamiento. Las discusiones didácticas en el país han sido sólidas e incluso propositivas, por lo que vale la pena analizar los motivos de su persistencia, teniendo en cuenta el diagnóstico de las aulas, y corriendo el riesgo de ser políticamente incorrectos. En este escrito se repasan momentos relevantes que constituyen la discusión respecto de la enseñanza de la gramática oracional en Argentina; se repasan lo que asumimos son las bases necesarias para un cambio en la manera de ver el problema del área de Lengua en las escuelas; y se reflexiona respecto de la importancia de la inclusión de las variedades no estándares en las clases de lengua para darle sentido al, que asumimos como, objetivo del área: aprender a pensar en la lengua y con la lengua.
Gourmandise and other “minor transgressions”. Sin in Philippe Delerm’s culinary vocabulary
Philippe Delerm’s prose extols the joy that comes from contemplating everyday life. Experienced intensely, it is a source of pleasure and happiness. The pleasures of food are a theme particularly exploited in this writer’s novels. The approach taken in this article is onomasiological in nature. Its aim is to analyse the lexical units that fall within the conceptual field of the term sin, while referring to different types of food and the sensations associated with its consumption. The occurrences have been systematized according to the list of the seven deadly sins established by Evagrius Ponticus.
Previous research has shown that the two languages of early bilingual children can influence each other, depending on the linguistic property, while adult bilinguals predominantly show influence from the majority language to the minority (heritage) language. While this observed shift in influence patterns is probably related to a shift in dominance between early childhood and adulthood, there is little data documenting it. Our study investigates the perceived global accent in the two languages of German-Russian bilingual children in Germany, comparing 4–6-year-old (preschool) children and 7–9-year-old (primary school) children. The results indicate that in German the older children sound less accented than the younger children, while the opposite is true for Russian. This suggests that the primary school years are a critical period for heritage language maintenance.
Markus Christiner, Christine Groß, A. Seither-Preisler
et al.
Research has shown that melody not only plays a crucial role in music but also in language acquisition processes. Evidence has been provided that melody helps in retrieving, remembering, and memorizing new language material, while relatively little is known about whether individuals who perceive speech as more melodic than others also benefit in the acquisition of oral languages. In this investigation, we wanted to show which impact the subjective melodic perception of speech has on the pronunciation of unfamiliar foreign languages. We tested 86 participants for how melodic they perceived five unfamiliar languages, for their ability to repeat and pronounce the respective five languages, for their musical abilities, and for their short-term memory (STM). The results revealed that 59 percent of the variance in the language pronunciation tasks could be explained by five predictors: the number of foreign languages spoken, short-term memory capacity, tonal aptitude, melodic singing ability, and how melodic the languages appeared to the participants. Group comparisons showed that individuals who perceived languages as more melodic performed significantly better in all language tasks than those who did not. However, even though we expected musical measures to be related to the melodic perception of foreign languages, we could only detect some correlations to rhythmical and tonal musical aptitude. Overall, the findings of this investigation add a new dimension to language research, which shows that individuals who perceive natural languages to be more melodic than others also retrieve and pronounce utterances more accurately.
Esther Hur, Julio César López Otero, Liliana Sánchez
Gender has been extensively studied in Spanish heritage speakers. However, lexical frequency effects have yet to be explored in depth. This study aimed to uncover the extent to which lexical frequency affects the acquisition of gender assignment and gender agreement and to account for possible factors behind heritage language variability. Thirty-nine English-dominant heritage speakers of Spanish completed a lexical knowledge screening task (Multilingual Naming Test (MiNT)) along with an elicited production task (EPT), a forced choice task (FCT), and a self-rating lexical frequency task (SRLFT). Heritage speakers performed more successfully with high-frequency lexical items in both the EPT and the FCT, which examined their acquisition of gender assignment and gender agreement, respectively. Noun canonicity also affected their performance in both tasks. However, heritage speakers presented differences between tasks—we found an overextension of the masculine as well as productive vocabulary knowledge effects in the EPT, whereas the FCT showed an overextension of the feminine and no productive vocabulary knowledge effects. We suggest that lexical frequency, determined by the SRLFT, and productive vocabulary knowledge, as measured by the MiNT, account for the variability in the acquisition of gender assignment but not on gender agreement, supporting previous claims that production is more challenging than comprehension for bilinguals.
L’objectif de cet article est d’étudier l’adaptation en bande dessinée de Manu Larcenet du roman Le Rapport de Brodeck de Philippe Claudel. Pour réaliser
cette étude, il est nécessaire d’avoir recours à la théorie de Benoît Berthou sur la figuration : il s’agit d’une forme d’adaptation où l’auteur tire parti des dimensions visuelles d’une œuvre afin d’en exprimer une nouvelle vision et ainsi de se la réapproprier. L’ouvrage adapté acquiert alors un nouveau statut de création autonome et originale. Manu Larcenet arrive à s’affranchir des liens avec le texte initial, tout en y restant malgré tout très fidèle. Il réussit à garder toute la grandeur du texte en faisant sienne l’histoire racontée au moyen des procédés propres à la
bande dessinée : notamment la force des dessins, le traitement des couleurs, et une nouvelle perspective sur les protagonistes.
Ana Maria Vieira Monteiro, Patrícia Nora de Souza Ribeiro
The evaluative studies of hypermedia effects on second language acquisition have been mostly applied to interfaces whose user’s input is limited to clicks, typed texts, and voice. Nonetheless, virtual reality (VR) technology expanded user’s interactions with a data processing machine since it explores a sense of presence through body language, 360-degrees images, and tactile techniques. It is in this context that this paper approaches VR to explore its potential for foreign language vocabulary teaching and learning, considering mainly the appraisal mechanisms novelty and pleasantness proposed by Schumann (1999). This exploratory research presents the preparation and the results of a study applied to sixteen undergraduate English students at the Federal University of Juiz de Fora, Brazil, as well as to nine students from the author’s one private course. The technology used in this study were three Google products: Cardboard™, as the VR headset; Expeditions, for the narrative; and Polly, for the building of the VR scenes. The following methodological actions were addressed to the participants of the study: an English placement test; vocabulary tests; exposure to the virtual environment, a guided visit to Museo Frida Kahlo, in Mexico; and a questionnaire on the evaluation of the experience. At the theoretical level, the present study is based on the assumptions of the Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning (MAYER, 2001) and in the role of affect in language learning (SCHUMANN, 1997; 1999). The results of vocabulary tests, the questionnaire, and limitations of the technology are discussed, giving a basis for the conclusion that VR can significantly contribute to foreign language vocabulary teaching and learning since the technology has the potential to motivate students and immerse them into real-life-like scenarios.
Musicians have considerable experience naming pitch-classes with verbal (e.g., Doh, Ré, and Mi) and semiotic tags (e.g., musical notation). On the one end of the spectrum, musicians can identify the pitch of a piano tone or quality of a chord without a reference tone [i.e., absolute pitch (AP) or relative pitch], which suggests strong associations between the perceived pitch information and verbal labels. Here, we examined the strength of this association using auditory versions of the Stroop task while neuro-electric brain activity was measured using high-density electroencephalography. In separate blocks of trials, participants were presented with congruent or incongruent auditory words from English language (standard auditory Stroop), Romanic solemnization, or German key lexicons (the latter two versions require some knowledge of music notation). We hypothesized that musically trained groups would show greater Stroop interference effects when presented with incongruent musical notations than non-musicians. Analyses of behavioral data revealed small or even non-existent congruency effects in musicians for solfège and keycodes versions of the Stroop task. This finding was unexpected and appears inconsistent with the hypothesis that musical training and AP are associated with high strength response level associations between a perceived pitch and verbal label. The analyses of event-related potentials revealed three temporally distinct modulations associated with conflict processing. All three modulations were larger in the auditory word Stroop than in the other two versions of the Stroop task. Only AP musicians showed significant congruity effects around 450 and 750 ms post-stimulus when stimuli were presented as Germanic keycodes (i.e., C or G). This finding suggests that AP possessors may process alpha-numeric encodings as word forms with a semantic value, unlike their RP possessing counterparts and non-musically trained individuals. However, the strength of musical conditional associations may not exceed that of standard language in speech.
Author/s
Kalenda Eaton
Arcadia University, USA
ABSTRACT
In this article I examine the creation of neo-slave narratives, or fictional texts written in the 20th and 21st centuries, yet set during an imagined period of American slavery or indentured servitude. In these novels the authors, usually African-descended, depict slavery and/or plantation life, generally, to privilege the experiences of the slave. The process of actively writing against traditional plantation narratives of the 18th and 19th centuries can liberate slave histories and allows silenced actors to speak. However, in this paper, I argue that there is a danger of further marginalization when History is the platform for creative expression. I examine two novels whose authors employ the use of satire to discuss slave experience and by doing so, I explore how the images of Black slave and servant women can be either devalued or empowered depending on authorial representation and intent.